31/10/2026
🎃A HALLOWE’EN HORROR STORY💀
A TALE OF TWO UTILITIES
Part Two: The Haunting of Dunlop Crescent
It began with the sinister telephone messages.
“Hi, we’re phoning from Business Stream about your water account.”
I had opened no account with Business Stream. The voicemail messages offered no useful explanation.
So I ignored them.
Then, many months later, came a bill for £3,196.17.
According to Business Stream’s records, two ghosts inhabited our premises. One lurked beside a toilet. The other kept to the outside rear wall.
They had names: 07A095414 and 19T327638.
They were water meters.
Nobody sent to investigate has found or verified either as serving these premises. This has not prevented Business Stream from attributing estimated water consumption to both.
In 108 days: 97,000 litres.
Nearly 900 litres, the equivalent of 18 normal washing-machine loads, every day.
We run a physiotherapy clinic and movement studio.
Two toilets. Two sinks. No washing machine.
Perhaps the dweller in the cellar has been busy with its ablutions.
We do not have a dweller in the cellar.
We do not have a cellar or do we? 😳
—
The September 2026 invoice added £739.79 in new charges to an unexplained previous balance of £2,456.38.
The bills classify us as a restaurant. Residents say the former Highland Star restaurant’s cooking oil still blocks the drain outside.
On 17 September, an investigator attended on Business Stream’s behalf. He searched inside and outside. Neither meter appeared.
He told me he had also failed to locate a meter before the Council’s 2023 refurbishment. Identifiable 2025 readings in the records, he advised, belonged to neighbouring premises.
This seemed a promising clue.
On 21 September, two Scottish Water representatives investigated for approximately 35 minutes.
Still no meter could be found.
—
By then, I had begun writing complaints.
This is how one becomes trapped in ghost stories. You imagine that supplying the missing information will reveal the exit to wake you from the nightmare.
Then, on 27 October 2026, came news of a “new meter”.
For a moment, I imagined an ordinary object attached to an ordinary pipe, measuring water that had actually passed through it.
But there was one supposed difficulty.
A Scottish Water visit had allegedly been attempted on 30 September. Access had not been obtained. Business Stream explained that the arrangements had gone to the wrong email address.
I had been working in the clinic that day. No visitor or request for access had reached me.
I checked my email correspondence. Scottish Water had already used the correct CIC email address to arrange its completed September visit.
The next morning, Scottish Water emailed that same address.
They proposed a visit on 12 November.
I read down to the description of the work.
“Water Meter Survey.”
I had gone looking for a billing error and found a Hydra. Resolve one problem; two more grow back. Hadn’t Scottish Water already established that there was no water meter?
—
Business Stream has confirmed that the account is on hold until 24 November.
It has not been cancelled or corrected, merely suspended.
An unmetered property can still owe water charges. I am not arguing this but asking Business Stream to substantiate these insane charges, the opening balance and whom it says is liable.
Behind this story is Renfrew Wellness Hub: a community interest company, rehabilitation and movement space that I am building through my own unpaid work.
Every evening spent dealing with a utility company’s incompetence is an evening taken from developing services for our local community.
How many people pay disputed demands because they are frightened, exhausted or cannot face another round of correspondence?
Business Stream’s failure to explain its records has become another unpaid job.
Business Stream is welcome to bring the evidence to explain this horror story of a bill.
I’ll bring nearly 3 months of unanswered complaints correspondence.
Events as at 31 October 2026.
Please share this to help get a response from Business Stream. Every hour our small community-interest company spends chasing utility companies is an hour diverted from supporting local people.
