An account of horror from a Warsaw housing estate. “The amount is absurd”

Mr. Jakub has been renting a 43-square-meter apartment in the Czyliwa Praga estate in Warsaw at ul. since August last year. Modlińska. He has a room with a kitchenette and the bathroom has a bathtub, but he immediately points out in our conversation that he mainly uses a shower head. – Plus washing machine and dishwasher. So where does the water bill for over PLN 5,000 come from? – he asks.

Shows the settlement invoice for the first half of 2024. In fact, the amount to be paid is PLN 5,209.67 by September 10, 2024.

– I only sleep at home. I'm at work all day. My parents have a house with a garden and they pay a maximum of PLN 250 per month. And this comes to almost nine hundred zlotys a month – he worries.

Did your neighbors also get such large bills? – we ask. – No, there are over forty apartments in the block. Others received normal water bills. And mine is like if I set up a jacuzzi, my girlfriend and I would have a swimming pool on the balcony and we would sit in hot water all day for half a year. But no one cares. I have to pay the bill because it is what it was, and the amount is horrendous and absurd, says Mr. Jakub.

What bills did you have before? – The previous water bill was for the period from August to December 2023. It was completely normal, it was about PLN 580 – replies the tenant of the apartment.

Therefore, Mr. Jakub contacted the owner of the apartment, who then wrote two appeals addressed to the management board of the housing community of the Czyliwa Praga Housing Estate.

In a letter dated September 11, 2024, the owner of the apartment estimates that “it is physically impossible for one person living in this premises to use this amount of water.” According to the invoice, it is almost 144 m3 in half a year.

The next letter is dated September 17, 2024, in which he asks “to discontinue the settlement of cold and hot water”. The reason given by the apartment owner is that “the calculated m3 are irrationally high compared to the previous settlement.” He states that “this is almost impossible to consume in such a short time for one tenant.”

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The building is managed by P-Administration. The company's representative prepared a response to the above letters. He explains that “after analyzing the consumption and meter readings of your premises, no measurement anomalies were noticed by the measuring devices.” “Consumption is not questionable,” he says, adding that “maybe the user of the premises uses water and heat quite a lot and that's why there is such consumption.”

– Maybe the tenant used that much? Well, a circus. It's hard for me to even imagine why he would pour so much water and why he would use so much of it – Mr. Jakub gets nervous in his conversation with us.

He does not agree with the amount of the bill, so he offered the owner of the apartment a water meter assessment, but it did not help because “the owner of the apartment does not want to cover these costs.”

– It's PLN 600 per water meter. We have two, so it's 1.2 thousand. zlotys. If the expert opinion shows that there was actually something wrong with the water meters, the costs will be covered by the administration. If it turns out that everything is OK with the water meter, then the money is transferred to the recipient – he explains.

Mr. Jakub decided to contact the editorial office Contact24 and shared his problem. He thinks there must be some mistake in the water billing.

– You'd think there's a leak somewhere, but I live on the fourth floor. The neighbors below me would already know that I flood them with so much water. I'm very stressed about this situation because the owner is putting pressure on me to pay this bill and if I don't, then get out. What will happen to the deposit then? – our interlocutor is worried.

We contact the Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Company in Warsaw. I hear in a telephone conversation that the waterworks have an agreement with the building's administration, not with individual apartment owners. Therefore, the company cannot comment on Mr. Jakub's individual situation. Unofficially, an employee of the company admits that “it looks like someone made a mistake in the comma”, and at the same time directs us to Veolia, a heating company. Most of the bill is the price of heating the water.

Aleksandra Żurada, communication director In Veolii, tells our editorial office that the company “only supplies heat and does not settle accounts with residents individually, only with the cooperative or community.”

So we return to the P-Administracja company, which, as we read on the website of the developer Robyg, manages his estates.

“This matter has been the subject of analysis since the end of August – unfortunately, the only way to clarify this matter is to dismantle the meter and have it examined – which was proposed to the Resident, but he did not consent,” we read in the response.

However, he then adds that “by decision of the Community Management Board, after informing the owner, we will dismantle the meters and submit them to the Office of Measures for an expert opinion.” The cost of the expert opinion will ultimately be borne by the P-Administration. Mr. Jakub will have to pay the bill if the suspected meter error is not confirmed.

This issue will certainly be clarified – assures P-Administration.

We ask Piotr Strumiński, legal advisor and partner at the KAASS Law Firm, about who should pay for the expert opinion in a situation where the amount of the bill is suspicious. Is it the tenant renting the apartment, the apartment owner, the administrator or the waterworks?

“According to the Act on collective water supply and collective sewage disposal, unless the supply agreement provides otherwise, the service recipient is responsible for ensuring the reliable operation of their water supply installations and connections or sewage installations and connections, including the measuring device,” explains Piotr Strumiński.

He explains that the recipient of services is anyone who uses water supply under a contract concluded with a water and sewage company.

In the case of an estate or multi-family buildings, – explains the lawyer – “the contract is concluded, as a rule, with the owner or manager of the property, i.e. the community or housing cooperative that acts as the recipient of the services.”

Piotr Strumiński also raises another issue, i.e. that water meters are subject to mandatory legalization, i.e. inspection and regulation every 5 years. He emphasizes that the obligation to dismantle it and deliver it to the appropriate authority rests with the recipient of the services. If the recipient is not the owner or property manager, he or she must contact them to agree on the method of dismantling and charging fees during this period. In practice, most often the manager replaces meters and returns the old ones for legalization.

The legal advisor indicates that the costs of legalization are borne by the recipient of the services, i.e. the entity that concluded the water supply contract. In case of doubts as to the correctness of the water meter readings, the service recipient should ask the supplier to prepare an official expert opinion. Such an expert opinion is prepared by an authorized employee of the Office of Measures.

He points out that who bears the costs of the expert opinion depends on its result. If it is confirmed that the indications are overstated, the costs will be borne by the supplier and the bills will be adjusted accordingly. However, if the expert opinion does not reveal any irregularities, its costs are borne by the ordering party, i.e. the recipient of the services.

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