It is reasonable for customers to expect good communication and transparency from a utility provider. Regrettably, the Water Services Corporation and the company handling their billing services, ARMS Ltd, appear to be falling short in this respect.

My family has a modest apartment and we have always paid our utility bills on time. Typically our quarterly water consumption is between one and 6m3. Imagine the shock on receiving a water bill for April 2017 for 163m3 of consumed water which WSC are attributing to a leak. Please bear in mind that 163m3 is approximately equivalent to 1,000 baths and such a leak would not have gone unnoticed.

I have to say that communication with ARMS Ltd has been fraught with difficulty. Nobody (especially the management) at ARMS Ltd appears to take ownership of customer issues, which meant I was dealing with a different person every time.

After six months, I was advised in writing that an anonymous advisory panel had reviewed my case and was offered an unsatisfactory partial credit. The senior under-signatory to the letter received apparently does not take calls from the public. 

The consumption records show that the alleged leak suddenly stopped around April 25, 2017 which suggests that a WSC engineer had visited. I find it very strange that the WSC has consistently refused to supply me with a copy of their engineer’s inspection report detailing the nature of the leak and how they apparently resolved it. Nor have they explained why with modern real time consumption meters it took an engineer around three weeks to visit. 

When a public utility like WSC behaves like judge and jury in the context of customer relations there is arguably a serious problem. My attempts to reach an improved compromise have been met with folded ARMS.

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