Head of Customer Operations for Irish Water, Eamon Gallen, has expressed his thanks to over 25,000 Irish Water customers who have already contacted the utility to change their personal details in advance of refund cheques being issued.
The deadline for changing details is Friday, November 17th. Irish Water estimates that there could be up to an additional 30,000 customers who still need to update their details.
The refunds section on the website water.ie/refunds has had almost 160K hits over the past 10 days as customers sought information on different aspects of the process.
In addition almost 35,000 customers logged into the Online Account Management service to check that their contact details are correct and to see how much they paid in domestic water charges. Almost 280K customers have an online account and those who do not can still sign up. In the past ten days almost 7,000 new online accounts have been created.
Commenting on the high volumes of calls, Eamon Gallen said:
“We would like to thank all of those 25,000 customers who have contacted us to update their personal details. It is essential that we have the most up to date address if the refund cheque is to be sent to the correct location ensuring that customers get their refund as quickly as possible.”
“There is still time to contact Irish Water and change your address by calling 1850 448 448. We expect that the legislation will pass soon and when it does Irish Water will begin the refund process. That is why we are appealing to customers who have moved and have not already done so.”
“Irish Water will issue almost one million refund cheques. We want to ensure that the cheques go to the right people at the right address. Based on CSO data we can estimate how many people may have moved since domestic billing was suspended. We know that those who sold a house will have informed us as they were required to under law to confirm that there were no bills outstanding on their property, but exactly number of those renting who paid domestic water charges and have since moved is less clear.”
“It is inevitable given the volume and the fact that we have not issued bills in almost 18 months that our contact details for some customers will need to be updated. If people do not contact us we will send the cheque to the last address on file for the account holder.”
