Water…finally!

In August, when I was away in sunny Scarborough, Russ rang me and said, "I've had a call from Yorkshire Water. They want to connect next week..." In the interest of propriety I will protect you from the rest of the conversation. Needless to say it was deferred - we simply weren't ready. A new date was set.

We knew where the connection should be made (we'd had a plan sent) but when we spoke to the neighbours whose house it was alongside, it became perfectly clear that it wasn't where it said on the map - it was in their garden under a printed resin driveway! So far no good. Andrew and Alison were lovely. They had not long completed an extension and knew where the main was outside their property as their builder had gone through it with his digger! To say we were grateful to them was an understatement. It would be an inconvenience for a day or two but we wouldn't have to dig up their drive!

Then we began to ask other questions.

According to YW's Meter Location Policy there would be a stop tap in the adoptable highway but we do not have an adoptable highway, all the land is private. Thus began a series of contacts with the developer section of YW. And the answers we got were nil, nothing, zip. No response, no reply.

I first contacted by both phone and email on the 28 September and was told that it would be 5 days before I would get a reply. Ten days later I tried again, this time emailing my original and an update to the questions. In the meatime I was in communication with Abbie from the connections team who tried her best to answer the questions but said she would pass it on to her manager who would get in touch. He/she didn't. It was now mid-October with a planned connection date of 21st and Russ was about to start digging the trench and laying the pipes.

On the morning of Friday 14th I rang the developer team again. Sarah could see the history of my contact and immediately said she would send it to the manager of the technical team as well as her own manager. Someone would contact Russ or me during the day. Come 4:30pm we'd heard nothing. So I rang again and spoke to the same person. Once again she escalated the issue but said it would be Monday before anyone would get in touch.

Monday. Nothing.

Tuesday: another call. The same thing: utter disbelief on the part of the operative and a commitment to send again. By close of play we'd once again heard zilch.

Wednesday (two days to connection). I rang again. Same old - but this time I could sense that these lovely people were being made to look like fools because of the ineptitude of their managers.

10:15am YW called. In five minutes I'd had my questions answered and the connection was on!

This could have happened at the end of September but we were taken to the wire and would have postponed again had these simple questions not been clarified.

Anyhow, despite upsetting all my future neighbours by having to leave a big hole for the electricity connection and mangling up the access route with diggers (we won't mention going through a gas main!) we were connected on Friday 21 October but not until the engineers had to cut off all the water because they'd brought the wrong ferrule and it wouldn't seal the pipe. We had geyser like Old Faithful!

All in all, an example of a British utility company being utterly inept and showing little to no concern for their customers.

Nationalise the lot!