Jump to content

Advice needed with water bill


bob mccluckie
 Share

Recommended Posts

Help urgently needed with this problem. 

I have a house in Brittany that I visit a once a year in the summer. When I return to the UK I always turn the water off at the mains stopcock in the garden. In the last 12 months I have been there for 2 weeks last August. In March SAUR installed a new water meter in the garden. Today I received a water bill claiming I've used 710 euros worth of water in the last year! I have my garden tended monthly and the people who do that have twice checked in the last year that the water was turned off. I suspect there is some discrepancy between the old meter readsing and the new but I have no idea how to go about challenging the bill and my French isn't up to it. Where on earth can I get some help with this problem?

Any ideas are most welcome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all, send a letter Recommandé...   you can get an example here:

http://www.modele-lettre.com/lettre-3569/contestation-facture-eau.html

It seems to be a common thing - if they have created a letter for it!!

You can read the example and copy it, or you can pay 2€ and fill in some fields and have the letter filled to your requirements.

There also sites online where you can send the letter from the web, recorded delivery...  for little more than the price of the paper, envelope and stamp...   La Poste do this I'm sure.

Good luck.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Be prepared to fail though.  Hate to be pessimistic, but last year (I had no washing machine, bath, dishwasher, swimming pool or any other water-greedy thing - just a shower, a loo and a kitchen tap - without leaks), I was charged nearly €800 for six months.  Try as I might, I couldn't do anything about it.  In the end I paid up.  For the same period this year, my bill (now with washing machine) was around €300.  The guy who came to read the meter was convinced I was up to some sort of scam - even came back twice to check the reading again.  Inexplicable!  But I wasn't complaining - I was told that someone else in the village who also has a tiny house - no luxuries - got a bill for almost €5000 for the half-year!  [:-))]

Do make sure that no one else can "borrow" water from you though.  Some friends who have a holiday house here had builders using their garden tap to supply a complete house renovation....[:(]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes - I guess I forgot to mention that bit.

It seems that meters cannot go wrong in France.

In the UK I had a faulty meter, and with one ask I got a refund for far more than I expected...

Here in France, I helped a friend to try to get a refund from EDF - much the same situation of an empty house, nothing on...   But EDF came out to check the meter and all the man did was watch the wheel go round and said that it worked!

I ran a 1kW heater for an hour - which should be one unit - and it registered almost two...   multiply that by everything running in the house and it's massive errors going on.  So in a few weeks, the house was using more power than would normally be expected over a year...   EDF insisted on 4.000€ bill being paid.

But - I find that the local-ness of my water company makes them very approachable...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I'm sure that you don't need to be told that this is a complete nonsense.

Around here we pay 0.7€/m3, but I believe that this is a pretty cheap rate. However, even if your water is charged at twice that, your €700 bill is still getting on for 500m3 (I know that there'll be a bit for standing charges etc).

The template letter stuff is helpful, but what you really have to do is get your maintenance people to check the meter over a 2-3 day period and see what's registering. At the rate of your bill, you'll be clocking up a metre or two (1k-2k litres) per day without anybody there!  That's a big ...............  and dare I state the obvious, leak. Nobody 'borrowing' water is going to take that much.

Where you go from there, I don't know - but it's a start. Good luck.

   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gardians observation (of a leak) put me in mind of a place we rented when first moving to France.

We heard a running water noise, and notified the owner straight away, but the owner wasn't close enough to be bothered by it - so long as we had water they didn't see it as a problem.

I initially had trouble with finding the owner, and not knowing the urgency, I spoke with the water company - who advised that they would come and look when the owner asked.

We moved out and heard nothing more...

Over a year later, the owner contacted me to pay the bill!!  

There were over a thousand units of water lost in the space of four months...  The total bill including the work came to 2.000€...

I didn't!!   I also pointed out that if they had dealt with it promptly, there would have been less expense...  not only that, but the water company had told me they would come out and read the meter, and not charge for the lost water - but the owner didn't call them, and so they lost!!

It turned out that they couldn't deal with it, because they couldn't speak a word of French...  but I offered!!

I felt happy about it as I had already found out how much I should have paid for the rental, and they charged me more than double!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...