Customer service standards in SEQ

Water and wastewater services

Water and wastewater services are provided to South East Queensland (SEQ) residents and commercial businesses by three distributor-retailers:

• Queensland Urban Utilities – servicing Brisbane, Ipswich, Scenic Rim, Somerset and Lockyer Valley
• Allconnex Water – servicing Gold Coast, Logan and Redlands
• Unitywater – servicing Sunshine Coast and Moreton Bay.

View a map showing the geographic areas (PDF, 190K)* (including local council boundaries) in which these businesses operate.

Customer service standards

The South-East Queensland Water (Distribution and Retail Restructuring Act) 2009 sets out a number of customer protection provisions. These provisions are designed to ensure the distributor-retailers’ standards of service comply with stated requirements, and include:

• ensuring complaint handling procedures comply with national and international standards (Australian Standards and International Organisation for Standardization standards)
• setting out standardised content for billing information
• requiring minimum annual meter reads
• providing standardised metering verification standards (i.e. when a meter is deemed be reading accurately)
• stipulation for when security deposits can be obtained and placing maximum caps on what security can be requested
• requiring distributor-retailers to communicate customers’ rights around services by publishing customer service charters.

Additionally, there are a number of other requirements placed on distributor-retailers as water and wastewater services providers under the Water Supply (Safety and Reliability) Act 2008.

These provisions apply to all of the water and wastewater services provided by distributor-retailers, and to all of their customers, large or small.

Customer service protection

Residential and some small business customers who receive certain services from distributor-retailers are covered by additional standards outlined in the Government’s Customer Water and Wastewater Code.

Effective from January 2011, the Code is made by the Minister with the advice of the Queensland Water Commission. It is intended to provide some additional safeguards around the distributor-retailers’ standards of service offered to their 'small customers', which under the Code is:

• a residential customer; or
• a non-residential customer who uses, or would use, if connected, no more than 100 kilolitres of drinking water and/or reticulated recycled water per annum (special rules apply for those small non-residential customers with no consumption history).

The Code covers services such as reticulated potable water (e.g. drinking water), dual reticulation water and certain sewerage services. 

Download a copy of the Code (PDF, 453K)*.

The first Code is intended to be the platform in a staged development of improved service standards.

Dispute resolution services

'Small customers'—residential, or small businesses that use less than 100 kilolitres a year—who have tried to resolve a dispute with their distributor-retailer are able to make a complaint to the Energy and Water Ombudsman Queensland (EWOQ) if the dispute is about non-compliance with the Code.

See the Energy and Water Ombudsman's website for further details.

View a comprehensive list of FAQs (PDF, 137K)* on the Customer Water and Wastewater Code and the Energy and Water Ombudsman.

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