Anglian Water
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TL;DR A complete lack of communication…
TL;DR A complete lack of communication caused a very negative impact on my credit score, be warned as you may also be affected and AW doesn't seem to contact people with this issue. Quite a long read.. I moved into my current property in Oct 2017 and notified Anglian Water (AW from here on in) of us moving in. The letting agents that we were renting from had already contacted AW to let them know we were supposed to move in 2 weeks prior to that (property wasn't in a fit state to live in at that point so we pulled out but that's a whole other story). AW didn't bother to contact us to let us know that despite the fact we weren't physically at the property for those 2 weeks, they still charged us £16 but when we actually did move into the property and notified them, they closed the other account and opened up a new one which we put on direct debit and have never had an issue with, again zero communication from them regarding the old account or any debt we were in. 3 whole years later I am checking my credit report (as you all should!) and it says I've got a negative mark due to a missed payment from AW, I was very confused as my DD payment of about £18 a month has never been a problem as we were always in credit so I called AW up and spoke to an advisor who looked at our account and said "there must be a mistake, your account is all up to date and you are in credit by some ammount". After a long winded dispute with one of the credit agencies they said that the report was coming from AW and they wouldn't change it unless told to do so by AW, so again we go to AW who on the second time of calling now start looking properly by searching the address rather than just on the account number. Bingo, this chap finds the old account and says there is an outstanding balance to the bank shattering sum of £16, ok I say, why weren't we told about this? He says they don't chase people for payment when it's under £20, so I file an offical complaint that they have then suddenly sent off a report to credit agencies saying that I've not paid something I've never been aware of. According to a representitve from Anglian Water, they went through an audit with the credit agencies around March time and were advised to report anyone that has an outstanding balance of more than £5. Fair enough as previously they weren't reporting people with balances under £20 (but not writing it off either?), but the big mistake here is that AW sent *NO* communication via email, text, letter or telephone, or anything else they just straight up reported the missing balance to the credit agencies and caused a negative impact onto our credit report with absolutely zero consideration for what impact and stress it would have to their customers. This is my warning, and my reason for the negative review. Full disclosure: Thankfully they have since wiped out the £16 debt and paid back money that we lost out to due to their lack of communication they also updated the credit agency to remove the mark against our name, so while they have fixed the issue that their lack of communication caused, I think it's important to warn people as AW doesn't seem interested in contacting people who could be affected. Their legal team also spewed some rubbish about how it wasn't their fault (despite the fact that it is, due to zero communication with myself or my wife) and yet paid the exact amount we were out of pocket for.