First and foremost CANCEL YOUR DIRECT DEBIT!

Any payment arrangements with Thames Water (TW) must be cancelled to effectively withhold payment. Cancelling a direct debit can in itself be an act of defiance. It gives you the power decide when to pay and how much. TW can no longer rely on you as an automatic cash cow. You will be ready to join thousands of others withholding payment. There is no financial advantage in paying by direct debit other than convenience. TW don’t offer a discount for direct debit payments.

Submit a complaint or query

The actual withholding of payment should always go hand in hand with either a formal complaint or a query to TW customer services. Complaints and queries should be addressed to: [email protected] 

Queries could be about what percentage of the bill is going towards servicing TW’s debt. There is reason to believe that TW is uncomfortable with providing an honest answer. It is fertile ground in itself for pursuing a dispute.

DO NOT AT ANY TIME USE THE WORD BOYCOTT in any correspondence. This is a very bad idea. It will lead to TW instantly rejecting a complaint because deciding to mount a boycott is not in itself a legitimate reason not to pay a bill. By the same token, using the word ‘boycott’ will undermine any point in appealing to the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) or OFWAT later.

It’s a good idea to send an initial email query in which you say that you will be withholding payment pending the answer. You can then reply to the TW reply you receive saying that you are not satisfied with their response. You can wait until all the responses to queries have been exhausted before making your formal complaint.

You should always receive an automatic standard acknowledgement of any email to [email protected]. However it will usually take considerably longer to receive a detailed response. The simple act of making a formal complaint/lodging a dispute/raising a query in itself delays payment to TW.

Formal Complaints

If you have decided to go straight for a formal complaint then the email heading should include words such as ‘Disputed bill’ or ‘Complaint/dispute regarding accuracy of my bill.‘ As with queries or any other correspondence with TW do not use the term ‘boycott’!

Make it clear in the heading of your email that you are disputing the accuracy of the bill, and use the expression liberally in the body of the email. TW should not take enforcement proceeding of any kind for as long as you maintain a dispute regarding the accuracy of the bill.

Here is a useful template for writing to a water company.

Cover yourself! It is strongly advisable to set aside any money that you withhold as a safeguard against the risk you may at some point feel the need to pay up to avoid financial or other penalties, such as damage to you credit rating.

General Tips

Try to make engagement with TW as time consuming for TW and as protracted as possible to maximise impact and delay any threat of debt recovery. In practice, some people have been boycotting for a year or more and are still working their way through the complaints and appeal process with no sign of any threat of debt recovery or notice of posting an adverse credit rating.

Chase up unanswered email. Lodge a claim if there is any delay in responding. Check out Thames Water Service Standards. £20 is a typical pay-out for complaints not answered in 14 days.

It is good practice to acknowledge receipt of any response. You should explain in your acknowledgement that you will be considering their response and will revert to TW once you have done so. It is reasonable to take a couple of weeks before responding further.

Always be polite and good-humoured. Never forget that being a customer service operative at TW is likely to be a tedious, demoralising and not very well paid. These employees are not responsible for the criminal acts of the company they work for. It does no harm to ask how they are and to send friendly greetings at different times. Keep them occupied!