Eine britische Frau weigert sich drei Jahre lang, die Wasserrechnung zu bezahlen, aus Protest gegen verschüttetes Abwasser

Honestly respect the dedication if this was actually possible, Three years of no water just to prove a point is wild.

Everyone should watch Dirty Business on Channel 4 and get full of rage

Honestly, they’ve failed to deliver an effective service and because of the DUMB MONOPOLY RULES enforced by government, you’re entirely unable to change your provider.

I went the other way. When I moved into a house, I asked for a water meter. It is no exaggeration that my water bill then dropped to 1/10th of what it was before (a 90% „discount“). Instantly. Because I started paying for WHAT I ACTUALLY USE not some made-up bollocks that nobody’s questioned in decades.

They’ll be struggling to pay back the costs of that meter install for decades to come, and I don’t care. Hell, I’m TECHNICALLY still running on the credit they made me pay because of the stupendous cost of the bill originally, and my pittance drops out of it every months, with a small payment to „eventually“ break even, but I’m still running on the credit from my own overpayment.

And now I’m looking to reduce all water usage I can. I fill my pond from a water butt on my gutter. I’m looking into greywater systems. I’ve got an atmosphere water generator (for drinking water) on order. It won’t give me free/cheap water, but it will give me water that I made, not Thames Water, so they will get paid even less by me.

Every time they raise prices, I find some way to compensate to push what I give them back down. Them fixing their infrastructure is NOT MY PROBLEM. They spaffed the money to do that on their shareholders, which is literal fraud / embezzlement, but the government don’t seem to care. So my solution is not „don’t pay my bill“. It’s pay every penny of my bill, on time, every time. And make it so PATHETICALLY small that they make a loss on me, while I’m doing nothing „wrong“.

Like when my bank once decided to give me an overdraft fee by holding onto a cheque (only one out of hundreds) to the very last second of their maximum processing time. Something they’d never ever done before or since. But they realised that if they did, they could technically charge me a fee before my next payment cleared.

And as they wouldn’t give me any grace on that… I wasted an hour of the local branch manager’s time pretending that I wanted to open accounts, etc. He twigged after the hour and said it wasn’t very productive and I said neither is charging your customer who „can’t afford something“ a monetary fine. And, by the way, how much do you earn per hour? Because I bet it’s more than I just paid you. And every time you do something like this, I’ll find a way to cost you even more money than you cost me. In new and interesting ways.

The manager ran scared of me every time I entered the branch, and even years later when I was in the same bank but a different branch and he was there while I was with a friend. I’d never got such good customer service in my all my life and the friend said „What the hell? Why was that guy so nice to us?“ when we got outside again.

I’m not going to just „not pay my bill“. That gives them a reason to initiate debt proceedings and court cases and shut off your supply and all sorts. Nope. I’m going to find a way to be a negative-profit customer instead. For as long as I possibly can be. While still having a bank account / running water.

Thames Water is on my hitlist. My electricity company too (solar panels and batteries are GREAT! Every month I use less electric, which I use to buy more panels and batteries). ISPs (I have a triple Internet connection so am not reliant on BT at all). Then it’ll be fuel companies next (all electric car + solar panels….)

I intend to retire utility-independent.

Good on her, we should have all done this, alas I didn’t have the balls.