Am I being unreasonable to feel a bit annoyed? (a long tale)

[Oldgreybeard]

As I've mentioned before, we've had problems with water leaks in our lane since we started building the house. We don't have a mains water supply as we were told that Wessex Water had no pipes down our lane, so we'd need to bear the full cost of closing the lane for a couple of days, digging it up, laying pipes, then making good. All told their quote was over three times the price of putting in a private water supply and sewage treatment system, so we’d have been daft not to!

Wessex Water have known about a fairly big leak under our lane since June 2013, when they came out after we uncovered a hidden pipe of theirs under the road At the time they discovered it was leaking further up the hill and the chap told me it was now marked as being for "urgent replacement" due to it being nearly 80 years old (dates back to 1934). He emailed me a copy of the plans for the new replacement pipe, with an offer that I could have a connection to the new pipe if I wished.

In addition to the above known leak from 2013, they've known for at least the past 8 years of leaks at the upper part of our lane, that flow across the road at times (it gets reported to them every time it happens). Nothing has ever been done about this, at least since 2013, when I know their chap knew about it and reported it in to his management in Bath.

Last Thursday, late afternoon (about 5:30pm), after walking back from the village with an elderly lady that lives further up the side of the valley from us, I decided to take the shortcut home coming down the steep hill at the top of our lane, rather than back tracking to take my normal route along the valley bottom. I didn't know about the ice, between an inch and maybe four inches thick, completely covering the road (I posted a photo in another thread). Needless to say I went backside over elbow. I saw car headlights coming down the lane, and moved into the hedge as a small silver hatchback slid sideways on the ice, completely out of control. When the car came to a halt across the lane, I went over to it, to find a very shaken up lady that thought she'd run over me. We got her car straightened out, there was no obvious damage (by torchlight, it was dark here by then) and she went on her way.

I got a bit further down the lane and heard a hissing noise, like water squirting from a leaking pipe. I had a look around with the torch, but couldn't find anything other than some soggy ground in the verge. By this time it was too late to phone Wessex Water, their contact line for this type of issue is only open from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. I used their "report an issue" online form to describe, partly, what had happened. The form is word limited (as perhaps, I should be) so there was no room for the lot. They replied within an hour, saying someone would call on the 16th (yesterday). No one called or showed up.

Last night, I reported the major leak again, because by then the hissing noise was louder and the ice was even thicker. I had an automatic acknowledgement, but that's it. Bumped into the neighbour this afternoon, whose house is fed by the pipe. Before I’d said a thing he said that his water pressure has dropped for the past few days, he thought there may be some problem with freezing pipes, so he’d called Wessex Water last Monday (12th December) but they'd not responded yet.

I walked with him up the lane, first to where the hissing noise is coming from (it's now even louder) then up to where the sheet of ice was further up. Poor bloke nearly had a fit, he had no idea that the problem with his supply was coming from up there. He's complained again to Wessex Water, but frankly I don't hold out any hope of a speedy resolution.

In summary I have emails and photos going back to 2111, photos of water leaking from under the road in 2013, photos of water running across the top of the road from 2016 to 2020, an email/screenshot trail of correspondence with Wessex Water since 2011, including acceptance by them there was a (never repaired) major leak from 2013.

I now suspect that the soil erosion that caused our fence to tip over and our drive to subside on that side, may well be because of the ongoing leak from this water pipe over the years, that may have washed out the finer soil particles, leading to the ground sinking.

They won't talk to me directly; as soon as I tell them I don't have a customer number they say they can't help and hang up!

Am I unreasonable to be a bit angry about their behaviour, and to think that enough is enough and try and use more stringent measures to fix this?

[Countrypaul]

I'm sure anyone would get upset ub that situation - especially as the water companies are supposed to be reducing leaks rather than just ignoring them.

You could contact Ofwat and since your description of the leak being up the lane, say you are concerned about getting flooded once the frost goes (has yours gone yet?) amongst other worries.

[AE-NMidlands]

After all this time (and the brush-offs) I would escalate it directly to the top with a formal complaint to the Chief Executive, cc your MP, also the Chief Constable (road safety risk/making a public highway dangerous and unusable, which is probably a criminal offence in its own right.) Also OFWAT as the company has ignored evidence of leakage and deserves to be hauled over the coals for that. Cc the Guardian and Beeb too...

Eventually you come to realise that making polite representations and alerting "the authorities" gets you nowhere.
A

[Bugtownboy]

I think you’re being entirely reasonable.

Interestingly, we had a leak in the road next to our property two years ago - this was made apparent when water was flowing out of one of our retaining walls. This is approx 12’ below road level.

This was New Years Eve. Called WW, sent out an inspector - yes there’s a leak in the road (NSS). We expressed our real concern given how much lower than the leak we were and what damage was being caused to other retaining walls/garden/garage foundations.

A ‘team’ came out ( 2 guys) who instantly did not instil confidence (IYKWIM). They found a leak on the opposite side of the road, didn’t accept the logic that the hole they’d dug in the middle of the road was dry so how was it leaking on our property ?

Anyway, they repaired the leak, switched the supply back on and the leak through our wall re-started. ‘Oh, that’s residual water’ - why didn’t it flow when you switched the supply off ? ‘Oh water does strange things’.

Our pressure was really down (still) - ‘Oh it’s your fault - there’ll be some sand/particles in your stop cock. Re try in the morning’ It was now 00:30, they bu99ered off.

Next morning, still pouring out of retaining wall, rang and stated it was URGENT.

Another inspector, yes there’s still a leak in the road (NSS)

Anyway, long story not too long, we had two more teams out over the next 48 hours. Each one had more knowledge/skill/ability to instill confidence.

It took many phone calls, each getting more irate to talk to the Despatch Manager (?) who said she’d send the A team. In fairness , they were good, great comms and knew what they were doing.

At no point did anyone in seniority actually own the problem - without us pushing it and getting increasingly arsey, I doubt it would have been resolved as speedily ( )

We moaned and kicked off when it was actually resolved and had the area manager attend to be moaned at - never accepting they could have done better.

Funny thing, when I spoke to them about compensation, they were quite bemused. After stating the OFWAT guidance, they asked us what we thought was fair ?

OK, we got some £ back, which it want about, but it highlighted how crap they are at actually owning a problem and resolving it adequately. I despair thinking this could have been someone less belligerent who’d accepted everything they were told.

Sorry, replied probably in more words

In summary, and I’m sure many of the services are the same, but you cannot let up on your complaint. The more people you can get to support you, the better.

I’d almost imply personal injury from the fall on the ice to get their attention.

[spread-tee]

Oh come on chaps, how can the water companies possibly look after the shareholders pockets if they have to deal with pesky customers??

As a plumber I get loads of grief due to these blatant con artists parading as service providers, usually around here it is low pressure problems which causes electric showers and combi boilers to malfunction. We have one customer who suffers regularly from low pressure, but if we put a gauge on their system it will read just over 1bar static, but with a very small flow through the tap the pressure collapses down to less than .5bar at times of high demand. Their arguement is that if the static pressure is 1 or more then they have fulfilled their obligation, if I point out that condition is only satisfied provided she doesn't use water rather defeats the object of having a water supply, they just waffle some nonsense bollox.
On top of which they have released raw sewage over 3000 times in the last year,

oh and distributed over 3Bn in dividend, so thats ok.

Desp

[Joeboy]

Such a precious resource. I'd make it a personal project to ensure improvement. Even within a small area will be 1,000's ltrs per day.

[Swwils]

Can we use the ice they are producing to combat ocean temperature rise?

[smegal]

Make formal complaints. I've not worked with Wessex Water, but the water companies I like REALLY don't like formal complaints. It can have all sorts of Ofwat consequences for them.

[Oldgreybeard]

I can't thank you enough for the above replies. My wife has been on at me about "not making a fuss about nothing", but this thing has been gnawing away at me for the past 24 hours, and I can't help feel that the incident on Thursday could have been a great deal more serious, thinking about it after the event.

The problem locally is that everyone seems to have low expectations of public services in general. We know it's going to take the best part of forty minutes to get a fire engine, probably longer for an ambulance, we we're generally a pretty self-reliant community. We are used to helping each other out, as that's, more often that not, the quickest and easiest way to sort things, even significant medical incidents (doctor lives just down the road, we have defibrillator at the village hall, etc).

OFWAT seems to be the next logical step. I think I'll try and put together a summary of what's happened over the past decade, perhaps include references from our neighbour, who's in a far worse position than us, and see what happens. I did have some success with OFGEM, SSE and our FIT payments recently. Took a long time to reach a resolution, though. Our neighbours are worried they may lose their water when they have their family coming to stay over the New Year. I might go and get a roll of 25mm MDPE (it's cheap enough, I have loads of spare fittings and I could always use it as a spare pipe to the well pump). That way, if the worst comes to the worst I could hook them up to our well supply easily enough.

Does annoy me the way the utilities behave. When building this house the thing that caused the most stress, and took the most time, was dealing with the utilities. SSE PD were slow and expensive, but BT OpenReach were far and away the worst. I thank whatever god you may believe in that I didn't have to deal with Wessex Water . . .

[spread-tee]

BT Openreach AKA open & retch around here...........

Desp