lad seeks legal advice

[daf]

have been having fun & games ¹ with the cunts at Thames water...

i suppose the alarm bells should've started ringing when they told me i was unable to stop my liability for the water bill for the flat when we left because i didn't have an address to which i was moving.

apparently, being homeless thanks to eviction does not preclude you having a postal address! yeah, i found that more than a little strange too.

but, this bureaucratic nonsense aside, my woes with them really began when i called to arrange paying off the bill for invincible towers in instalments... i spent a good 15 minutes on the phone to one of their customer representatives explaining that they could send the correspondence to monika's place but that i was neither moving or living there, nor moving anywhere else.

naively, i thought that that was that and all i had to do was make sure they didn't try and keep the direct debit active once i had paid off the outstanding balance. how foolish of me! on monday, rather than just the £37.73 i was expecting to leave my account, there was an additional payment of £71.25!

when i phoned them i discovered that the extra payment was not them trying to recoup the money owed a little quicker, but the first payment for the water bill for monika's address! after an hour or so on the phone i managed to get that sorted, but the fuckers aren't going to reimburse me straight away... the best they can manage is to pay back the money they took "within ten working days"

and just to rub salt in the wounds they are not prepared to reimburse me for bank charges for not having sufficient funds for the direct debit that i have suffered as a result of their error, the bank apparently will be willing to rescind the charge because the payment was a mistake! and when i tried to ascertain how i was supposed to pay for travel to and from work without any money and how exactly i'm meant to feed myself their response was "i'd can only apologise on behalf of Thames Water"

understandably, i'm fuming and will be writing a very angry letter to their complaints department.

before i put pen to paper, however, i thought i should ask if any of you people happen to know if i can take some kind of legal action against them to recoup bank charges, lost earnings, etc. and also whether it is possible to take action about the unauthorised direct debit & their unacceptably slow repayment?

1: the "games" as i erroneously describe them have not, in fact, been fun at all.

Comments

[spoox.livejournal.com]

I doubt that you would be able to get anything for lost earnings. If your bank refused to rescind their charges then I think that they would be recoverable from Thames Water. In relation to them re-imbursing you for the money that you paid as a result of their fuckup, they clearly have no right to that money and need to repay you. A court would probably consider 10 days to be a reasonable time frame for that. If they refuse to pay then you could take them to court but that would be hassle and take much longer than 10 days. I know nothing about how direct debits work. I suspect that if they have simply made a mistake and have repaid you your money, you won't get any additional satisfaction from them as a result of that. You can always call or email me if you have any problems, just so you know.