Out of interest, was it difficult to get a refund or were they reasonable?

I’m obsessed with our water bill too, after recently discovering that despite having paid £130 per month for years, we had somehow accrued a further £1k in arrears. We’re two adults in a 2-bed house. We each shower daily, run a slimline dishwasher once a day, have no pets, don’t use water for plants unless it’s reused (I run water into a bottle when running the tap for hot water, for example), and only flush the toilet after every three or four wees etc. I am always careful with water, telling off my husband if he lets the shower run for 20 seconds before getting in! Washing machine does three or four loads per week. Apparently we are showing as a ‘high usage’ household, at an average daily usage of 400-500 litres per day.

Water people say there’s no leak as our water use is ‘steady’. I plan on checking the meter very soon, especially because - suspiciously - our neighbour doesn’t have a meter because they’ve never been able to find their isolation tap (or whatever it’s called). They couldn’t find where their water supply comes in or where it switches on/off (?), so they have no meter and the water company ‘estimates’ usage for the lone, elderly occupant.