South West Water Reviews 

I tried to contact south west water using their virtual assistant I was disconnected 3 times so 3 different assistants all asking the same information, again, and still no resolution to my query as I was then disconnected mid way through typing!!!!!!

Terrible company. polluting the water. extortionate innacurate bills. persecute sick and vulnerable people. Never speak to them on phone unless you record it as they lie, get paper trails. overcharging people

I had a massive one at the pub with big kev and naturally all the kebab reared its ugly head the following morning and clogged the streets plumbing

I called SWW and Keelan Trainer Roulstone came out within the hour, solved it with minimal fuss, only a few comments about the smell
Didn’t fancy staying for a cuppa but was pleasant

5*

South West water got my review took down because I told everyone to watch Channel 4 "Dirty Business." It aired 23rd 24th, and 25th Feb 2026 and exposes Water Companies lies about their sewage dumping. South West water featured heavily. The Environment agency were also shown to be complicit in all of this criminality. How arrogant that you think you will try to stifle the truth again by having my review taken down. WELL YOU WONT!!!!

For decades, you’ve pumped sewage into our bathing waters. You’ve made us sick. You’ve dodged accountability to protect your profits and left us all paying the price. In our skyrocketing bills, and our health. This is no accident. It’s a choice.

🤒 Since 2020, nearly 3,000 people told SAS they’ve been sick after using the water at a South West Water beach.

📉 South West Water has consistently received a 2 EPA rating. In 2021, it had a 1 rating. In 2025, it has been rated red for its environmental performance for the 14th year in a row.

💩 South West Water was responsible for 189 pollution incidents in 2024- double the number recorded in 2023.
💩 In 2024, South West Water dumped sewage into its bathing waters over 9,000 times.
💩 In 2025, it dumped sewage into bathing waters for over 50,000 hours, triggering over 2,000 sewage alerts on the Safer Seas and Rivers Service.

🤑 It paid out £126.9 million in dividends in FY 2024-25.

💷In 2023, South West Water was handed a £2.1 million fine for pollution offences and breaching its environmental permits.
💷 In 2024, it was ordered to pay back £17.4 million to customers for underperforming.
💷 In 2025, it was told to invest the £24 million it should have been fined for its woeful failings

There is something seriously systemic wrong with SW water. All I wanted to do is inform them of a change of address. Apparently that is too simple. On a watts app call I was told the meter was in the garden. It isn't, and there is no garden, which I knew to be the case. He then kept messaging me for three hours about meter readings even after I'd told him several times I was not well enough to continue the unnecessarily stressful conversation at that point and get back to them later. He still kept sending me messages against my wishes. In the end I had to block him as he was just harassing me and didn't listen. This was merely me trying to change address!!! Previous time I spoke to SW water they told me I'd have to lift a manhole cover and they know I'm disabled!!
Obviously I shall be raising a complaint with them and speaking to manager as it's not acceptable but what I've come to expect from their staff. They seem to think that if they harass you and are as obstructive/ unreasonable as possible yet add the words ' I'm sincerely sorry' or ' I sincerely understand ' on the end of all their ridiculous advice and comments it somehow mitigates their unacceptable customer services. Actually it's worth not living in the south west just to avoid this lot, it can feel like they enjoy upsetting their customers, their training must be terrible

Received latest bill of over £1,000 for 6 months, only 2 people live at the address. Checked the meter reading and it was wrong and had used less than half the amount. When I spoke to them they said the meter had been read 1 week before but I had to remove about an inch of debris to take the reading so it was obvious it hadn't been read in sometime. I would strongly advise everyone to check the meter reading when they receive a bill from South West Water

Water bill increase 13.22% increase for 26/27 on top of the 34.4% increase for 25/26. Continually have tankers collecting sewage overflowing manholes in Kingsbridge and made people sick in Brixham. Useless robbing organisation.

This company is so incompetent that we now have to pay extra fir their stupidity. I received a demand letter today even though I'm in credit. Ran by idiots and employs idiots. Time we in the south West were able to have a choice instead of these FOOLS.

Absolute robbers £800 +. For water and crap in the sea at its highest levels ever.Still share holders are doing OK and exec bonus so who cares.

Not only do they pollute the oceans and charge you for it. They like to send threatening letters if you don’t pay your bill within 2 days. The letters themselves sometimes show up a week to 10 days after they’ve been sent.

Workmen leaving sludge all over road
Contact sww 3 times they fob you off they have little or no customer care at all

 I just, after some effort contacted Southwest water over a technical issue with my new Dishwasher. I need to know the water softness in my area to find out if I needed to add salt to the dishwasher. It was like trying to ask is the moon made of cheese apparently their contact centre is in the Philippines and I believe it rains a lot there so they have a lot of water, but that is the only reason that I can think of for putting their contact centre there. Or as Lord sugar on TV, would put it” it’s a bloody shambles”

47% increase out of the blue how can they do that to an essential service, and there is no one to complain to. Its like living in russia

If only I could give them 0 stars! What a circus. Massive increases in bills should lead to excellent customer services but the experience I have just endured was horrific. I have spent 2 hours on online chat whilst SWW simply avoided answering my questions. When I asked for someone to phone me they just ignored the request - didn't even acknowledge it, not even to say 'no'.

Where on earth do I start. After finally getting through to some foreign call centre thousands of miles away and being put on hold 7 times with no end resolution. Trying to explain to a lady with an extremely strong foreign accent that I had trouble trying to understand. She could not understand what I was trying to explain about the fact that I don’t have waste water run off entering the highway or going into the drains and asking why I’m being charged for this she simply said she doesn’t know why either and that’s as far as it got. On the phone for 55 minutes and got absolutely nowhere Southwest water should be banned from providing a service that does nothing at all to resolve customer issues and I don’t like the conversation ending with a god bless you and thank you for your time today. I didn’t have 55 bloody minutes to waste this is totally unacceptable. The CEO and top Management of this sub service company should be banned from ever being paid massive bonuses on their inability to run or manage the company. Billions being paid to them with absolutely no responsibility to their customers at all.

After receiving stupidly high bills for a 1 person household and told price going up to £72 per month direct debit (53%) I manged to get old meter taken out (which I presumed taking faulty readings) and new meter installed at steet level. I changed to quarterly billing 1st quarter £145 second quarter £120 which was much more in line with what to expect. I decided to enquire about monthly direct debit again. On SWW it equated to £69 per month and when phoned to ask why as this does not equate to my last 2 quarter bills was told it would actually be £72.00 per month. The explanation made no sense at all and did not in anyway equate to my last 6 months usage. They really dont seem to know what they are doing but I would recommend people to only pay by quarterly bill as it seems they want to profiteer from direct debit payers

Absolutely useless! They lie and don’t communicate at all! No water for 5 days and they just lie !

If I was a South west water customers I would cancel my direct debits & raise a complaint with ombudsman about their appalling service.

We lived in location A for 8 years. We set up a direct debit to pay these crooks.
The current situation is thus.

The direct debit stopped when we found out we were in credit - by hundreds of pounds -and asked to have that back. They said, "ok, we will send out a meter reader to verify you are in credit" - they never did.
But the direct debits were stopped until they did.
So we weren't paying them. But nobody talked to us, emailed us, sent us a letter and there certainly were no readers out - at any point - to verify anything.

FIVE YEARS LATER - closer to 6 - we moved locations, which caused our account to close. September 6, we arrived at Place B, where we now live. November 18, I call them about a letter of demand for 1914 pounds. They tell me this is unusual, it's because they've had no readings from us (Because *they* weren't doing their jobs) and that it was a system estimate (So a completely random number, gotcha).
They said they'd put a hold on the account payment and investigate and I'd hear back within 14 days.
Nobody called, emailed, or wrote.

Today, January 7th, I get a letter from them still asking me for 5 years worth of money all at once.
I call them.
I tell them the same thing.
Okay, they will escalate an investigation to some team or another and I should hear back within 1-2 weeks so I can get a *portion* of this amount let go as a good faith gesture or something? They f***ed up 3 separate times!

1) The bloke never did the reading, and *we* didn't stop the direct debit. THEY DID.
2)They never contacted us during the many months to take readings (Which also wasn't our job), or sent a bloke around and ADMITTED to this - they said there should have been someone around every (at least?) 2 years. Nobody for 5 means they missed 2, potentially 3 necessary visits.
3)At no point during sixty plus months were we emailed about apparently an increasing amount of money they weren't receiving. No emails, no calls, no letters through the box, nothing. We thought everything was fine, ffs!

Current situation : Waiting on this escalated team to lowball us and still demand at least 70% of this amount, but more likely 80% despite the entire situation being not only their fault, and not only ONE of their fuckups, but *three* separate instances of total, basic service failure over years.
If they act arsy, it's the ombudsman and the media for me with this. Absolutely unacceptable.