South East Water UK Reviews 

(REVIEW LEFT BY WRAS APPROVED PLUMBER)

What an absolutely terrible company, elderly vulnerable customer with no water reported Friday morning to south east water.

4 days later and over 6 phone calls and around 4 hours worth of time on the phone and we are still no further

Customer had a burst water mains on friday and has been left with no water in the house, we have proved that the pipework is old still going off of the boundary so we are unable to carry out a repair or replacement of there mains until the section of pipe from outside the boundary to within the boundary is changed to plastic

keep getting told we will get a callback with an update on when the dig team will attend as we are legally not able to do anymore as pipework requires replacing under the pavement

So fed up and disappointed this company can treat elderly vulnerable people in such a terrible manner leaving them without water for so long

Terrible service from south east water 1st engineer comes out done his investigation & said I had water leak under my property so contacted my insurance company who sent a third party company out to investigate & they found a faulty meter after fitting there teat meter to confirm with in 10 mins & advise I go back to SE Water to arrange new meter. SE Water sent out engineer to fit new meter & when it was fitted new meter dials moving very slowly so engineer investigates & says I have a water leak in same place of 1st SE Water engineer so contacted insurance company again who sent out previous third party to investigate they removed new meter & found O ring seal on meter not seated properly causing meter to show a reading as if water is being used I contacted SE Water that apologied & said they would compensate me & pay for any investigation cost from my insurance company they also requested the reports from what my insurance company third party had found in which I sent them as requested but once they found out my insurance company had paid for the investigations senior management on south east water changed there mind & said they wasn’t going to pay for the investigations & that what I have insurance for I them said to them if they had done there job properly with such a simple fault I did not need to call out my insurance company to occur these cost in the first place I also said I have use up 4 days of my holiday allowance as I had to be at home for these investigations they only apologised & offered me 1 months free billing which is around £30-£40 I said to them not to bother as an insult to me as you said you would cover all cost & back peddled & now have a claim on my home police which will affect my insurance for the next 5 years terrible customer services from senior management I feel .

Shocking!!!!!! Awful customer service.

Making money off innocent people due to their incompetence and mistakes.

It's all about profit and filling their pockets, not about the customer.

Absolutely disgusted with this company, South East waters is a joke!!!!!!

Absolute rubbish and amateur website - I am tech savvy and could not work out how to set up an account.

Myself and a few neighbours have been suffering from low water pressure for about 18 months. Sometimes the water just dribbles out of the mains tap. At best the flow gets to 6 litres a minute which is considerably less than the 11 litres a minute requirement. This is insufficient for a combi-boiler and dangerous if you are having a shower.

We have all had multiple conversations with SEW Customer Care, who are polite but promise to call back, (which they rarely do) or promise that the issue will be looked into. Until recently progress towards resolving the issue has been negligible. Much to the amazement of all of us and after 21 months their contractor seemed set to install a new connection to the mains to remove the problem of low pressure. They were due to start on the 22nd April. Previous to this date there was no pre-project communication to anybody affected by the works. Of course nothing happened! Apparently their contractor Docra, do not have a new start date and as usual there was no communication!

Please talk to your customers!! This is an appalling company!

Thursday 6 June 2024

I am pleased to say that SEW,s contractor has replace the 20mm diameter feed pipe off the adjacent main, with pipes with sufficient capacity to supply mains water to 4 cottages south of Hurstpierpoint an acceptable water pressure. We are obviously pleased with this end result.

However the lessons for SEW to be learnt from this repair are as follows;

1) Why has it taken in excess of 2 Years?
2) Why do the staff in Customer Care
rarely communicate with their customers about maintenance projects?
3) There have been various trips to look at this issue, which quite frankly could have been organised in a much more efficient manner.

Please just communicate more!

Lucy can you explain why I was asked to use less water? It would appear that the reservoir in Canterbury is due now and perhaps another one or two need to be built to ensure we have drinking water into the future. As regards executive pay happy to look at this again but how has CEO pay increased in comparison with other employees? has reductions in work force or productivity resulted in increase in profits and CeO pay? How much water is lost to leaks each year. I appreciate you don’t deal with sewage and apologise for that comment but if you are going to send something to me send the full facts and be honest about good and areas for improvement or don’t waste postage etc. I want to see leadership with vision, values and integrity and perhaps you can point me in the right direction to find these in your response and I’ll happily delete the first message ?

I tried to give a zero score. How dare this company send me an email about how I can save water over the summer. I’ll do this if share holders stop taking dividends until they have fixed the problems their greed has caused by putting profit above the rights of the consumer to have clean rivers and sea.

Scare tactic letters in the post every month since we moved in. Home serve acting on behalf of South east water, headed letters trying to frighten you with potential costs of repairs if you don't take out there cover. Every letter over the passed year has also had an offer that ends soon!
Discussed with the tactics and outright harassment, south east water sort out your affiliated company.

My water supplier is South East Water. Thames Water mixed up my address with a very similar address and fitted one of their smart water meters in error. When I realised what had happened I contact South East. All the people I spoke to were really friendly and helpful and so was their engineer who came and removed the Thames meter and installed a new South Easter Water Meter. Customer service at South East Water couldn’t have been better. I tried to report the error to Thames whose response was awful and they didn’t want to know about their error.

Terrible organisation. Polluting, supply failures, huge price increases - what's to praise??

In the 2 years to 2022 they spent £228.8m on dividends and debt interest but only £179.8m on investment in infrastructure. This is no way to run a public utility company. Foreign owners get their payoffs but the company is in huge, costly debt.

Despite their very poor performance, CEO David Hinton was awarded just over £100k bonus on top of his £280k base salary in 2023. I thought bonuses were for exceptional performance - at SE Water they seem to be for exceptionally POOR performance.

Meanwhile our bills go up and up. I thought our water bill would come down this year as 2 of the kids left home in the summer. Half the amount of occupants yet our bill has increased.

Charge customers only for water used. There should not be standing charges. My bill is made up of 35% standing charges! They impact greatest on poorer people and those using least water. We need govt to intervene to stop this practice. OFWAT what are you doing?

Very poor company. Without water 4 days Dec 2022.
They sent out incorrect 'compensation ' letters on receipt of many complaints. Some were offered just £75 ...other £250.
A paltry token amount as it supposedly fell outside the guaranteed standards scheme.
(Blamed on the weather!)

Others in neighbouring

There is a leak in our road, (Woodpecker, Eastbourne BN23 7RD) which has been there for weeks, possibly since Christmas. I have reported it & been told it had already been reported. However, I have received several text messages to say 'the problem is being dealt with & water leaks are taken very seriously'... REALLY??? Well, it is now February & nothing has been done.. In a few months we will be told not to use hosepipes as there will be a water shortage!!!

No stars. Came to my place without prior notice. Didn't explain job properly.Blocked access to two schools, one special needs, at school closing time, with their four vehicles. Blocked 24hour ambulance access required by my next door neighbour even after she and I both mentioned it. Took a huge pneumatic drill to a shallow brick and concrete rubble layer hit the sand underneath and fractured my gas supply pipe. Swore constantly and mainly ignored my requests for information. Left leaving a gas leak. Told me this happens frequently! Caused me to lose my appetite and sleep and actually throw up with the stress, I'm 72 and alone in the house.Told me that Southern Gas would simply "fusion joint the pipe'. I had no gas for two days as I have a long and hilly front garden and old piping.. I will have to have an ugly meter box on the front of my lovely old cottage. I have a huge trench now open for twenty five feet up my garden. They are AWFUL. I am seeking compensation

got a letter saying they noticed a substantially higher than expected meter reading ,then saids if your circumstances have changed recently and you were expecting an increase thats fine, problem is they don't say how much the bill is ,I suffer with anxiety cannot phone its the weekend ,Webb site down so going to have a very stressful weekend

I use £28 worth of water a month, south east water demand i pay £60 a month because i owe £126 they gave me that option or pay in full, with times being hard i missed one payment of £60 and they demanded the full amount. Have called them before regarding this and explained that at £60 a month i will be paying for water a year in advance and was told that's what they want, south east water want me to pay a year up front. In February i will have a zero balance, and at £60 a month will pay my bill in march in 2 months, then at £60 a month i will have less money but south east water will have my money in their bank for a service i have not even received, they need looking into by the regulator

They have been overcharging by around 6 times the amount I actually use me for years from someone else's meter. I complained and now they are wanting 4 times the overcharged amount! Their tech chap told me the bills have been coming from a meter of a different make and serial number than the one they say I have. Crooks, frauds, and capitalist charlatans. I refuse to pay and shall take the matter further.

Oh my goodness here we go again !
No water !!!! Called SE water they didn’t know why ….. they called back later to say the water works down the road has turned off the water to replace a pipe but didn’t think to inform anybody !!!!

I reported a water leak back in September. South East Water came out and said it was a leak from the main and they would send out their contractors within 10 Days. Clancy came out, didn't have a clue what they were doing, couldn't find the leak, dug up my garden with a digger, not to mention the mess they have made of my lawn getting access to my paddock, talked about taking down mature oak trees and finally my boundary fence which we objected to. It is a boundary fence with a mature hedge of 15 years plus and our protection to our garden and land. We were told it was the only option and they would put the fence and hedge back exactly like it was, we would never know they had been. The fence and hedge was removed and after further assault on our land and no results, South East Water sent our a leak specialist. It was decided that it was not South East Waters leak at all but my neighbours, no apology just back over my land with the diggers, filled in all the holes and left. My boundary fence is still open and despite numerous calls to South East Water and complaints. I find it absolutely disgusting that they can treat customers and their properties in this way. Clancy are an absolute joke, they sent out an after care manager to review the situation and he suggested we claim on our insurance policy. We were absolutely insulted. He then promised to come back the following week and reinstate the fence and plant new mature hedging for us. We have seen nothing of them either. Be wear, don't let these jokers do this to you or your property.

We have had low pressure for 1 week now and it has been impossible to have a shower/wash hair with very low pressure to have a decent bath. Works have been going on down the hill, but no work at all over the weekend and water has been gushing down the hill. ? How long does South Eastern consider it reasonable to be without a proper water supply. CT2 9BL

SEW failed to send me a Water Bill through the post as normal. Instead I received a threatening letter about non payment. Disgusting behaviour.