Anglian Water
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Very disappointing customer service with no priority.
I’ve been a customer of AW for over 35 years but never called upon their services until we had a blocked sewer last week through no fault of ours. Our next door neighbour called to say her sewer cover was leaking and full to overflowing. She asked me to check ours and when I did I found it was completely blocked and was backing up to the six houses that were down from us, so very urgent action was required. I thought to get it unblocked would be simple and because it was affecting the street it would be given a high priority, but how wrong I was. Phoning AW was the first hurdle, announcing a 30 minute wait or better to use the call-back service, which I did. I also got a message to go on-line as it was easier. So I did. The website was so disappointing as it gave me no option to log a blocked sewer problem or to say it was urgent. The only box I could tick for a blocked sewer was ‘I can see sewer water’! I did get an email back saying ‘thanks for letting us know’. No job reference number and more importantly when the un-blocker would be coming. I then received my call-back and logged the blockage but when asking if someone would be out that evening I was told they were extremely busy from the storms (I must have missed them) and it would be sorted in two to five days. No sense of urgency or help what so ever. I pleaded that it was urgent but same useless reply. Just that the job will be passed to the planners. Some help to us and with no eta. When my partner came home she got on to AW and had to wait half an hour for her call-back, where she voiced her frustration but still got the same unhelpful ’two to five days because of the storm’. She also asked if we could get Dynarod out and send AW the bill. Definite no, no to that question. At this point we felt AW was being so unhelpful that their plan was to try and force us to get someone in to unblock and we foot the bill. After contacting Dynarod we found they couldn’t come out until the next day so we decided to see what the morning brought (and hoping the sewer may have unblocked itself). After very little sleep worrying about the blockage and how it was affecting the street we thought we may get an early notification about when we could expect a call. Disappointingly we received nothing; however we were completely surprised at 08:30, to answer the door to a workman from Wrights of Twycross who said he was here to unblock our sewer. We were totally flabbergasted, but so relieved to see him despite no notification of his attendance. He said Wrights were working with AW as they had so much work on. To his credit he quickly had the sewer unblocked and running and all was back to normal in half an hour. Why could AW have not texted us to say the guy was coming? Then we had a phone call from ‘Sheila’ at AW about an hour later (at 09:40) to say our blockage had been given a high priority. My partner informed the caller the blockage had been fixed already. She sounded very surprised. I have to say that you get more communication, messages and updates when ordering a tap washer on-line than we received from AW over this blockage. To cap it all the current advert on Heart FM from AW says ‘we are working 24 hours to help you!!!!’ Despite sending this feedback complaint to AW I have received no reply or acknowledgement. Call reference number for the blockage - 1970328.