Paperless billing terms and conditions

1. The United Utilities Paperless Billing service is operated by United Utilities Water Limited (registered company number 02366678) whose registered office is Haweswater House, Lingley Mere Business Park, Lingley Green Avenue, Great Sankey, Warrington WA5 3LP.

2. By using the United Utilities Paperless Billing service, you agree to accept and be bound by these terms and conditions.

3. These terms and conditions apply in full and if you don't wish to be bound by them, please do not subscribe to Paperless Billing. Please ensure you read them carefully.

4. By using the Paperless Billing service, you accept that you will no longer receive a paper bill from us when your account is due for payment.  However, you can choose to switch back to paper bills at any time.

5. Should you wish to cancel your use of the Paperless Billing service please opt out of the service within the ‘My Account’ portal - click on 'My Details and you can amend in 'Check and update account details' section. We will cancel your paperless bills immediately and following that date no further notification of any bills will be sent to you via email. However, you shall remain fully responsible for payment in full to United Utilities of any bills of which notification has been sent to you on or before the date on which your paperless bills account has been cancelled.

6. You agree to use this Paperless Billing service responsibly and agree not to:

6.1 Transmit material of a racist, obscene or otherwise derogatory or inappropriate nature

6.2 Maliciously interrupt or damage our services

6.3 Use Paperless Billing for any fraudulent or illegal purpose

7. United Utilities reserves the right in its absolute discretion to refuse the Paperless Billing service to any customer at any time. Further, United Utilities reserves the right to modify or discontinue (permanently or temporarily) the Paperless Billing service to you or all recipients at its discretion.

8. From time to time and in the course of normal business activities we may share your information where necessary with third parties. Your information will only be used to effectively administer your account and may be passed to third parties doing this on our behalf. Where United Utilities engages another organisation to carry out services and to process information on our behalf, we will maintain control of the way in which information is used and we will regularly monitor and audit compliance to maintain information security and protection.

9. You must hold a valid and recognised email account to use our Paperless Billing facility. You must provide us with the correct and valid address of the email account to which you would like notification of your bill(s) to be sent. It is your responsibility to ensure that this email account is both accurate and valid. It is your responsibility to ensure that this email account remains valid and if you wish notification of your bills to be sent to an alternative email, you must change these details on the ‘update billing details’ page. Failure to notify us of a change of email address means that you are liable in full for any bills sent to the previously registered email addresses. Should you add an additional customer’s account to your own in the “My Account” feature the original account holder will remain liable for the payment of all invoices should you not pay by the due date. All legal notices and reminders will be issued upon the original account holder in the absence of timely payment.

10. We will only allow you to register for the online account section of the site using your customer account number (which can be found on the top of your bill).

11. If you need to contact us about your online account, you can call us on our published telephone number which is available on our website. You may use this number if you are experiencing problems with using your online account, if you are unable to view your bill or are unable to make a payment.

12. If your account is outstanding we reserve the right to issue paper based documentation which will be issued to the account holder’s address.

13. If you opt for paperless billing, payment slips will not be included on your bill. This means you are agreeing to make payments by a method that does not require a payment slip.

14. United Utilities cannot guarantee uninterrupted access to our Paperless Billing service and must highlight that from time to time it may suffer from disruption to its service including for reasons of maintenance or upgrade to our systems and processes.
15. All bills of which you receive notification by email after signing up to Paperless Billing are due and payable on the "please pay by" date shown on the first page of each bill. As the account holder, you shall remain fully responsible and liable to pay any bills of which notification has been sent to the email address you have specified, regardless of whether or not you have accessed that email account in the billing period and read the relevant email notification. You remain responsible if you are disconnected from your email account or your email account is closed down by your service provider and you have failed to update your contact details either on the self serve portal or by contacting us by telephone.

16. United Utilities expressly reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by posting new terms and conditions on the Paperless Billing service website. We will notify you of any changes on your log on screen. It is your responsibility to read the website terms and conditions thereafter to make sure you are aware of any changes. We recommend that, from time to time, you print off and keep a copy of these terms and conditions for your own records.

17. If any provision of these terms and conditions shall be unlawful, void or unenforceable for any reason then that provision shall be deemed severable and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions.

18. These terms and conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.

19. None of the provisions in these terms and conditions affect your statutory rights as a consumer.

20. Failure to pay your bill on time may result in our demanding payment in full. We may refuse to allow you to pay by installments. Failure to pay may also result in our searching the files of credit reference agencies. Please note the following:  

United Utilities Water Limited complies with the requirements of the Data Protection Act (2018). We may need to search the files of credit reference agencies who will record the search. If you move out of your property without giving us your forwarding address and still owe us money, or you are still living there and fall into debt, we may (i) share your information with other credit providers, credit reference agencies and tracing agencies which may affect your credit rating and/or (ii) we may share your data with other utilities and local authorities who will use the data to help us or them locate, trace and recover the monies you owe. Any personal data relating to your My Account will be used solely in accordance with United Utilities’ Privacy Policy (which includes points of contact for any data protection queries)                                                    

21. All intellectual property, including copyright in this web site, the contents contained therein and the United Utilities logo is owned by or licensed to United Utilities. Reproduction is limited to the downloading a copy of the terms and conditions to a local hard disk for your personal use. The content of the web site may not be copied or otherwise incorporated into or stored in any other web site, electronic retrieval system, publication or other work in any form without the prior written consent of United Utilities.