United Utilities are not exactly united when it comes to their various departments and computer systems communicating with each other. This has a tendency to frustrate and eventually infuriate their customers.
Take a rather large leak of water that we have had at Ford Park.
Lets start back at the beginning, a very good place to start, as Julie Andrews once sang in doh rey me, but I digress. It was Friday, not last Friday but the one before that, the 27th of January. I was walking the fences around our yet to be opened play area when I noticed rather a lot of water had gathered inside the mounds we had formed around the swings. In fact what we had were a couple of sizeable duck ponds. There was also water flowing through the play tunnel so I traced this back up the field and found that we had a flow of water coming out of the ground just above the play area, not just a trickle.
I called our trusty water engineer who came to look straight away. He reckoned that we had a mains water leak somewhere close to the wall, near to the Hospice. You need to call United Utilities, which we did, on the Friday. 'We'll get somebody out tomorrow to have a look, we'll call you when they're on their way'. At 3pm on the Saturday we called to ask when they would be arriving, only to be told that it may be Monday before they could come. Jackie had a few sharp words at this point as this leak was damaging our 72,000 pounds worth of new play ground. A few minutes later they called back to say a man was on his way from Lancaster. Why they didn't have somebody in Furness we didn't even ask. At about 4.30pm a man arrived with a long listening stick who told us we had a leak. Well we knew that but where is it, we asked. He came on to our field and prodded about with his listening stick in a spot that seemed very boggy. Suddenly water started to gush out of the small hole he had made. "That's annoyed it" he said, the leak is around here. It's on private land, this leak, so it's not our problem you'll have to get your plumber to repair it. He tried turning off the valve in the street just to prove that he had nailed the problem, and then he left, back to Lancaster, leaving us with an even faster flow of water than we had before he came.
We called Andy from Hydrojet and told him the tale. He said it would take a few days to organise things, he would have to get a mini digger to investigate and he could start on Wednesday 1st and could fix it.
So on Wednesday morning Andy starts digging where the United Utilities man had said the leak was. Within about fifteen minutes he unearthed a broken land drain and water was now cascading into the play area and across our fields. But this was not the source of the leak. He wanted to investigate nearer to the wall. An hour later we had another big hole and he had found, not a two inch pipe, which UU had said we had but a four inch steel pipe with a very bad fracture. The water was now gushing into the air a bit like the fountain at lake Geneva.
Andy tried to shut the valve down, identified by our UU man on Saturday but found that it wouldn't close completely. He didn't want to force it because if he broke it then UU would be very unhappy with him and would probably charge him for breaking their stuff.
So, we make arrangements for him to return on Friday with the bits to repair the said pipe and we would contact UU to have them turn off the valve at the same time. This is where things start to go slightly pear-shaped. Jackie has a conversation with a man called Dan at UU emergency leak line. The good news is that they tell Jackie that they can repair the leak for free under some scheme or other. She asks him to confirm that this is in fact so three times. Three times, like St Paul and the Jesus thing he says that he will fix it for nowt. He even gives her a job number. We trot off to tell Andy not to bother going to Penrith for the part as UU will fix it for nothing. He'll come back and fix the land drain after the nice man from UU has repaired the leak for free.
They will be in touch in 48 hours to tell us when they are going to come and fix the leak. 48 hours come and go. It's now Friday, one whole week since the leak was spotted. Jackie calls UU, but it's bad news. Seems as though Dan was wrong about the free fix as its a private pipe, and they don't fix private pipes for free. Jackie goes a bit mental down the phone and in the end they promise to send someone out on Monday to review the leak.
The weather turns to freezing and the water running across the drive has become treacherous with ice, then over the weekend it snows. A nice man from UU comes to visit on Monday 6th, today. He has a look and seems to be quite senior, and the sort of man who can make decisions. He decides we've had a lot of agro from UU and that it will be fixed for nothing, and fixed tomorrow. About 1.30pm we get a call to say that the job has been actioned for tomorrow, Tuesday.
But just when everything seemed to be going right Jackie picks up a message left on her answer phone to tell us that the job has been cancelled as they won't repair our pipe for nowt as its on private property. As we don't pick up this message till about 6.30 pm Monday we don't know which message came first. The one that said they would fix it, or the one that says they wont. Tomorrow is another day, and we wait with baited breath to see which bit of United Utilities is running the show.
Is it the software, or is it the engineers in charge, search me, meanwhile thousands of gallons of unmetered water is escaping onto our park. No wonder our water bills are sky high with this level of incompetence and miscommunication.
United Utilities, I don't think so.
Watch this space for the next exciting instalment......
Take a rather large leak of water that we have had at Ford Park.
Lets start back at the beginning, a very good place to start, as Julie Andrews once sang in doh rey me, but I digress. It was Friday, not last Friday but the one before that, the 27th of January. I was walking the fences around our yet to be opened play area when I noticed rather a lot of water had gathered inside the mounds we had formed around the swings. In fact what we had were a couple of sizeable duck ponds. There was also water flowing through the play tunnel so I traced this back up the field and found that we had a flow of water coming out of the ground just above the play area, not just a trickle.
I called our trusty water engineer who came to look straight away. He reckoned that we had a mains water leak somewhere close to the wall, near to the Hospice. You need to call United Utilities, which we did, on the Friday. 'We'll get somebody out tomorrow to have a look, we'll call you when they're on their way'. At 3pm on the Saturday we called to ask when they would be arriving, only to be told that it may be Monday before they could come. Jackie had a few sharp words at this point as this leak was damaging our 72,000 pounds worth of new play ground. A few minutes later they called back to say a man was on his way from Lancaster. Why they didn't have somebody in Furness we didn't even ask. At about 4.30pm a man arrived with a long listening stick who told us we had a leak. Well we knew that but where is it, we asked. He came on to our field and prodded about with his listening stick in a spot that seemed very boggy. Suddenly water started to gush out of the small hole he had made. "That's annoyed it" he said, the leak is around here. It's on private land, this leak, so it's not our problem you'll have to get your plumber to repair it. He tried turning off the valve in the street just to prove that he had nailed the problem, and then he left, back to Lancaster, leaving us with an even faster flow of water than we had before he came.
We called Andy from Hydrojet and told him the tale. He said it would take a few days to organise things, he would have to get a mini digger to investigate and he could start on Wednesday 1st and could fix it.
So on Wednesday morning Andy starts digging where the United Utilities man had said the leak was. Within about fifteen minutes he unearthed a broken land drain and water was now cascading into the play area and across our fields. But this was not the source of the leak. He wanted to investigate nearer to the wall. An hour later we had another big hole and he had found, not a two inch pipe, which UU had said we had but a four inch steel pipe with a very bad fracture. The water was now gushing into the air a bit like the fountain at lake Geneva.
Andy tried to shut the valve down, identified by our UU man on Saturday but found that it wouldn't close completely. He didn't want to force it because if he broke it then UU would be very unhappy with him and would probably charge him for breaking their stuff.
So, we make arrangements for him to return on Friday with the bits to repair the said pipe and we would contact UU to have them turn off the valve at the same time. This is where things start to go slightly pear-shaped. Jackie has a conversation with a man called Dan at UU emergency leak line. The good news is that they tell Jackie that they can repair the leak for free under some scheme or other. She asks him to confirm that this is in fact so three times. Three times, like St Paul and the Jesus thing he says that he will fix it for nowt. He even gives her a job number. We trot off to tell Andy not to bother going to Penrith for the part as UU will fix it for nothing. He'll come back and fix the land drain after the nice man from UU has repaired the leak for free.
They will be in touch in 48 hours to tell us when they are going to come and fix the leak. 48 hours come and go. It's now Friday, one whole week since the leak was spotted. Jackie calls UU, but it's bad news. Seems as though Dan was wrong about the free fix as its a private pipe, and they don't fix private pipes for free. Jackie goes a bit mental down the phone and in the end they promise to send someone out on Monday to review the leak.
The weather turns to freezing and the water running across the drive has become treacherous with ice, then over the weekend it snows. A nice man from UU comes to visit on Monday 6th, today. He has a look and seems to be quite senior, and the sort of man who can make decisions. He decides we've had a lot of agro from UU and that it will be fixed for nothing, and fixed tomorrow. About 1.30pm we get a call to say that the job has been actioned for tomorrow, Tuesday.
But just when everything seemed to be going right Jackie picks up a message left on her answer phone to tell us that the job has been cancelled as they won't repair our pipe for nowt as its on private property. As we don't pick up this message till about 6.30 pm Monday we don't know which message came first. The one that said they would fix it, or the one that says they wont. Tomorrow is another day, and we wait with baited breath to see which bit of United Utilities is running the show.
Is it the software, or is it the engineers in charge, search me, meanwhile thousands of gallons of unmetered water is escaping onto our park. No wonder our water bills are sky high with this level of incompetence and miscommunication.
United Utilities, I don't think so.
Watch this space for the next exciting instalment......
Hello.This post was really interesting, especially since I was looking for thoughts on this matter last week.
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I suggest you erase your comment as I think it's one of those catch all comments with the sole purpose of advertising their products.
ReplyDeleteI have a direct line to the head of United Utilities Cumbria (which I only use on specioal occasions) - if this helps. It came about through one of their employees - a former Ulverstonian who works in head office and routed a previous complaint to the top and back down where appropriate. This contact, our Town Council has consistently ignored. So far this guy has always come up with the goods - I've even received £25 for my trouble in the past.