Man gets £7,000 water bill as meter thinks he's having 300 baths a day

Man gets £7,000 water bill as meter thinks he's having 300 baths a day The water company has promised to send a plumber to take a look A man who was sent a £7,000 water bill checked his meter and found it had recorded him using enough water in 24 hours to fill 300 baths. Mick Foy's water meter said he’d used more than a million litres in under a month when he checked it after getting a call in July from South East Water. The 64-year-old - who lives with his wife Debbie in a three-bedroom property in Ditton, Kent, said the company told him the usage was “totally out of the ordinary". He said: “We have had consistent bills for forever and the spike was just off the scale. I asked the lady on the switchboard when it started, and she said it could be any time in the six months leading up to July. I thought, 'well, that’s not very helpful.'” South East Water froze the bill and promised to send a plumber by August 4, but Mick couldn’t wait, and headed up his drive to take a look at the meter. “It was spinning around like there’s no tomorrow. It was just going into a complete frenzy,” he said. “It’s just been in complete freefall.” Mick, whose son works for South East Water, took note of the meter reading, and 24 hours later returned to find it had recorded that his property had used 54,000 litres - about 300 baths. When South East Water’s plumber failed to show on August 4, Mick says he grew “frustrated". He said: “There’s nowhere that sort of water could come out of here in a private residence. I’m thinking, a plumber, are you for real? I’m telling you, there’s no water anywhere.” Since then, the construction industry worker says he’s recorded a meter change of 1,212,428 litres between July 24 and August 13 - enough to fill more than 6,700 baths. He said: “It didn’t really faze me as much as it did my wife. She lost a bit of sleep the first night, but you can’t do anything about it. “You’ve got to wait for the powers that be. But it does faze you a little bit.” South East Water has rescheduled the plumber’s visit for today, August 20, and says a supervisor will oversee the work, but Mick says this isn’t good enough. Mick’s MP Helen Grant has contacted South East Water to ask the firm to investigate his concerns and “treat them with the urgency they deserve". The water company said it was not able to comment on individual cases but would be very happy to escalate the customer's concerns internally “as a matter of urgency".