Complaining To Thames Water

April 18, 2010




Susan Stevens,
HomeServe Partnership Manager – Thames Water Utilities Ltd,
Thames Water Utilities Ltd,
Clearwater Court,
Vastern Road,
Reading, Berkshire,
RG1 8DB.


Dear Susan,

I am in receipt of your letter introducing me to HomeServe, which you describe as a leading supplier of home emergency solutions and offering me the opportunity of taking out cover with them through Thames Water.

Let me say first that I hate Thames Water with a vengeance and am only a customer of yours because I have no choice. One of the great unfairnesses of life is that I am forced to buy my water from you. The Government allows me a choice when it comes to gas and electricity but not water and that is the only reason I am a customer of Thames Water. If I am ever given a choice of water supplier you won’t see me for dust.

I have yet to meet anyone who works for Thames Water who isn’t an idiot. Your upper management are self-serving morons and your customer relations people are time-serving jobsworths who couldn’t care less about their customers. The last time I complained to Thames Water, Bill Alexander was chief executive officer, and I found him to be as big an idiot as the rest of the company’s senior management.

There is no way that I would ever do business with any company that you recommend. Ever. Your billing system is a mess, you can barely maintain the water pressure necessary to run a shower, and you lose millions of gallons a year through broken pipes. Yet you pay your upper management the sort of sums that should be reserved for captains of industry.

Why do I have such contempt for Thames Water?

It goes back to March 1 of 2003 when one of your company’s technicians cut off the water supply to the block of flats where I live. Mrs Donna Price of your firm’s Water Supply Customer Communications Team has admitted this in her letter to me of March 24. As a result of the workman’s error I had to spend four hours without water, I had to go up into the attic several times to check the block’s stopcocks, and I phoned Thames Water six times. Each time they refused to come out and fix the problem. The problem that they caused.

Eventually I had to call out a plumber myself. He has charged the block’s management company £88 for restoring the water supply to the block. The experience left me tired, stressed, extremely dirty, and out of pocket. Despite this, Mrs Price only offered me £20 in compensation.

After complaining long and vigorously to the idiots who staff your company, your customer services manager eventually agree to reimburse my managing agents for the £88 they had to pay a plumber to put right the fault caused by your workman. And she had the cheek to say that this was ‘a gesture of goodwill.’

It is most certainly was not a gesture of good will. There is no goodwill between me and your company. I was also most offended by your customer services manager describing this incident as ‘an interruption’ to my water supply. Your workman cut off my water supply, and the people on your customer helpline refused six times to send someone out to reconnect my supply. I will never forgive you for the way your company treated me.

To sum up, I don’t want to receive any more junk mail from you or anyone else at Thames Water. I despise your company and everyone in it. If I do receive any more junk mail from Thames Water I will bill you £25 for each and every one.

And you can tell Bill Alexander that when I can find the time I’ll be dropping around to turn off his water supply at the mains to see how he likes it.




SR Leather