Thames Water 'sorry' after woman gets 'catch-up' bill five times higher than usual

A water firm has apologised after a woman whose usage wasn't being properly tracked received a bill nearly five times higher than normal.

Carla Jo Francome, 46, was 'absolutely gobsmacked' when she received the statement for £979.92 from Thames Water earlier in September. Assuming it was a mistake, she immediately rang the firm and asked them not to collect the sum until it had been looked into, only for Thames Water to debit her anyway.

Francome, from Bounds Green, north London, lives in a three-bedroom house with her partner and two children, and described their family's water useage as 'normal'. For the same six-month period last year, she was billed £205.88.

She told Yahoo News UK: "To get this one from 20 February 2024 to 14 August 2024 was just madness. At first, I thought it was for a whole year, which seemed bad enough, but then it turned out it was only for six months. We mainly have short showers and that sort of thing, I wouldn’t say our water usage is any different from one year to the next.”

Last week, she decided to post about it on X (formerly Twitter) after failing to get hold of someone to speak to. She received automatic messages from the X account belonging to Thames Water.

The company states in online videos that it will 'try to take meter readings from customers at least once a year', but Francome's bills had been based on estimated readings since February 2022. She received the enormous 'catch-up bill' after engineers took an accurate meter reading from her home in August.

On 19 September, Francome said she was contacted by someone purporting to be from the executive office at Thames Water who explained this bill was higher than expected as it was based on an actual meter reading and that her bills previously were based on the past two and half years. She accepted his offer of £250 credit towards her next bill.

Francome believes this was only offered as a journalist had got in touch with the water company. “I told them that we are all ‘the little people’ to them. They said they don’t normally do this, so what about everyone else they’re doing this to?”

“A normal company, at the very least would contact you and explain the situation and do a payment plan with you, they wouldn’t just suddenly hit you with a £1000 bill,” she said. “I wonder how the stress of this would affect older people or those who are vulnerable.”

She added: “I think it’s an outrage, and it’s not right.”

A Thames Water spokesperson told Yahoo News UK: “We are very sorry to Ms Francome for the large water bill she recently received and for any distress this may have caused. We have investigated this matter and confirmed that Ms Francome was being billed on estimated readings since February 2022.

"In August 2024, we visited her property to take an accurate meter reading, and once her account was adjusted for actual water use this led to a higher catch-up bill.

“We are working to improve the frequency at which our meters are read and aim to read meters at least once a year to make sure our customer bills are accurate. As a gesture of goodwill, we have credited Ms Francome £245 (or 25% of her bill) and have paused her billing, while we work to put a payment plan in place with her.”

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