Hiya,
Bit long, but if you stay with me, thanks! The letter is copied here, so you will get the general complaint. I have obv altered the water company name, and also my own details etc.
Dear Sir or Madam,
We are writing to you directly due to the severity of our problem. Since early last year, we have had a cracked sewage pipe in our garden, in which we investigated and spent ₤160 for Dyno Rod who used CCTV to investigate the pipe, which indicated to them that the pipe was indeed cracked. We informed our own insurance company. Within a number of weeks, they had turned up, investigated the problem, and received information from (water company)that the pipe belongs to (water company). We sent the CCTV stills from Dyno Rod to you indicating the damage to the pipe, but to this date we have still not received them back and we may need them in a legal situation. We were informed by (water company)that someone would come up to investigate the problem, and I (jofeb04) was asked to stay in a number of times to await an engineer, in which nobody attended the premises. This caused problems to our family and children, as jofeb04 was in the house for a number of days with two young children in lovely weather.
After many telephone conversations with your staff, we was then informed approximately August of last year that the file on our case was closed, and that another engineer would have to be allocated to us! Since then, we have had to make all the telephone calls to yourself, not once did your staff think to phone us, and only a few times did staff actually call us back as promised. We waited in the house again for a number of days awaiting phone calls from your staff, but they were never received.
Late last year, an engineer investigated the problem (again) and told us that we had to remove our shed so they can fix the pipe. However, this was at night, and we feel that they would not have seen the full problem (this engineer has never viewed the damaged pipe from the same manhole that Dyno Rod used). To this date, we have still had no communication from (water company). We have not removed this shed to date, as we do not want to remove it just to find it is going to be another year before you actually come to fix this pipe.
Our concern is also that there is raw sewage seeping out of our wall, into our next-door neighbours back garden where they have young children. This waste then goes onto our road ? again where small children play, and may end up in the local river.
We feel that after approximately a year of this problem, and with such severe customer relations problems that we have endured over this period, that we should receive compensation. This is due to information in your publication stating that for every missed appointment by (water company), you will pay out ₤20 each time. With this, you can only admit that we are due a large amount just due to this, as we have lost count due to the amount of days missed. Also, we wasted a number of days waiting for returned phone calls off a number of people. Secondly, we have had severe external flooding which prompted us to investigate to begin with and it is stated in your publication that you will automatically pay us for the flood. Thirdly, it is also stated that the ₤20 for each missed visit will be automatically sent out. If this were the case, we would not be writing this part of our letter to you.
Whilst this has been happening, we also received a Final Bill asking us to pay our water and Sewage Bill. We paid the amount, but even now, we very much feel that we should not pay this part of the Bill, as Welsh Water are not actually removing all the sewage from our premises.
We also believe that the ₤160 that we paid to Dyno Rod to investigate your pipe should also be refunded.
We have noted that for sewage flooding payments we needed to complain within three months, but as the problem is still here many months later and is still ongoing, we feel that this statement is not acceptable for our claim.
We have no problem with contacting The Environmental Agency about this problem, and if we do not receive a suitable reply, we will be in contact with Consumer Council for Water Wales, and also OFWAT.
Thanking you in anticipation for a quick response, and if we do not receive a reply in the ten days that you state in publications, we will be contacting the Consumer Council.
Yours Faithfully,
What would you want from them?