Where to complain if there is no hot water?


Where to go if the hot water supply is not turned on on time?

If the outage is planned, the residents were notified about it in advance, then all that remains is to wait for the completion of the repair work.
The period of annual preventive repairs cannot exceed 14 days , and residents must be notified about this 10 days before the start of work.


If hot water is not provided, you can:

  • contact the management company or HOA with a written application or call them by phone;
  • call the emergency dispatch service.

The numbers can be found at the information stand at any entrance.

Where to go if the water is turned off without warning?

  • There are several authorities where you can contact if there is a sudden water outage that you were not warned about. These are the executive authorities of your district, the housing and communal services department, Rospotrebnadzor, as well as the housing inspection. By the way, you can also contact your local prosecutor’s office with a similar complaint.
  • In addition, there are hotlines and emergency services that you can also contact. But this is more difficult to do due to their eternal overload.


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As a rule, hot water is often turned off in the summer. The water shutdown is caused by the following reasons:

  1. Planned renovation work has begun
  2. The sewerage system is being repaired and reconstructed
  3. Carrying out preventive work
  4. The need to install or replace individual components

These are reasons of which all residents must be informed in advance, and the period of absence of hot water should not exceed two weeks. If the reason for turning off hot water is the presence of arrears in payment, the subscriber who incurred the arrears must be informed about this.

  • Did the water disappear without warning? The first thing you need to do is call the housing office or management company. If you cannot get through by phone or if you are not given an intelligible answer, try contacting the emergency dispatch service , whose telephone numbers are often listed at the entrances or in the entrance corridor on the notice board.
  • If they couldn’t tell you about the reason and timing of the resumption of supply, contact the housing inspector or water utility.
  • A complaint, if the water was turned off illegally and did not appear within the promised time frame, should be submitted in this order - first to the management office. If there is no result, your path is to Rospotrebnadzor and local authorities, where specialized commissions deal with issues of public utilities.
  • If the water is turned off only in your apartment, it means that you have accumulated a significant debt by not paying your water bills on time and in full. But they still had to warn you at least a month before disconnecting from the system. In such situations, you only need to contact your housing office (management company), and even then not with complaints, but in order to pay off the debt or draw up a schedule for its payment.
  • There was no cold water in each of the apartments, and no one warned the residents that repairs were planned or preventive maintenance would be carried out - it is also necessary to begin to find out the water shutdown by contacting the management company or dispatch service. If the question remains open, you should call or prepare a written appeal to the local administration, housing inspectorate, city water utility, Rospotrebnadzor.

Important phone numbers
Important phone numbers

  • Of course, it’s good to have the phone numbers of all utility services in advance, because “dry” taps in an apartment are, unfortunately, not uncommon, and you may have to call more than once. But if the situation takes you by surprise, take any receipt for payment of utility bills; as a rule, it contains the contacts of the necessary services.
  • In addition, if the water is turned off , you can find out the necessary telephone numbers on the Internet, on the websites of relevant enterprises and organizations. Also, such information is often posted in entrances or on the entrance doors to the house.

What to do if there is no long term?

If there is no hot water for a long time or the water temperature does not meet the standards, then you need to contact the management company or the local housing and communal services department with a written statement.

If there is no result or inaction of the responsible persons, the next step is an application to a higher authority.

The list of institutions for filing complaints about poor quality housing and communal services is established by Art. 13, art. 20 Housing Code of the Russian Federation, clause 124 of Order No. 170.

These are local authorities or government agencies that have the authority to control the provision of quality services to the population:

  1. District or city administration. This is the first instance where you need to contact in case of inaction of the Criminal Code. It is recommended to write a complaint addressed to the head of the district administration.

  2. Housing inspection. This institution controls all issues related to maintaining the good condition of the housing stock. The right to apply sanctions if it is discovered that services are of inadequate quality.

  3. Government services. To submit a complaint remotely, registration on this portal is required, but not all institutions can be contacted.
  4. Rospotrebnadzor. Resolves all problems with organizations that violate consumer rights and provide low-quality services. Has the authority to impose sanctions on the violator.
  5. Prosecutor's office. It is recommended if appeals to all other authorities have not brought results, or there are material claims, for example, a requirement to recalculate payment for services not received
  6. Court. The last authority that decides cases involving violation of rights and material claims, for example, compensation for moral or material damage. The defendant in the claim must be the organization providing the service.

The water was not turned on on time: where to go?

  • Where to go if the water is not turned on? The right step would be to file a complaint and demand from the management company not just a recalculation for the time when the service was not provided, but also penalties against the person responsible for the illegal disconnection for poor quality service.

If you have filed a complaint, and water has not appeared within three days, you can contact several authorities, from housing committees and district authorities to Rospotrebnadzor and the court. The appeal can be collective, in which case it must be signed by all residents whose names are indicated in it.

  • You can also leave your request to turn off the water on the appropriate website of a particular authority. And remember that by law, no organization will consider anonymous letters.

How to file a claim?

There are no uniform requirements for drawing up such a document, but it must be remembered that this is an official document and will be received by an employee of a government agency. The result of the appeal largely depends on how correctly it is compiled.

For this reason, when filing a complaint, you must adhere to certain rules:


  • the complaint can be written on a regular A4 sheet, since there is no unified form;

  • The writing style must be formal, polite, you cannot use personal thoughts, threats, or curses;
  • the situation must be described briefly but clearly, without inventing anything or adding anything on your own;
  • to confirm information, the numbers of laws, regulations, details of contracts or other documents are indicated;

You will need to provide all available evidence, for which all supporting documents are attached to the complaint.

It is necessary to put forward demands commensurate with the offense that has arisen.

Procedure for filing a written complaint:

  1. At the top right is the full name of the organization to which the complaint is being sent, its address, and details. You can write the full name and position of the head of the organization to send a complaint to him.
  2. Information about the applicant is entered: his passport and contact details. The address to which the response should be sent is required.
  3. A little lower in the middle of the line is the name of the document, for example, “Complaint about lack of hot water.”
  4. What follows is a text that clearly states the essence of the case, the reason for the appeal, with references to violated standards and laws. You should write the address of the house, the time of violations, the dates of appeals to various authorities, indicating the names of these institutions. You can enter a claim for late notification or violation of work deadlines.
  5. There is a requirement to take appropriate measures (eliminate the violation, make a recalculation, organize an inspection, send an order) and bring the perpetrators to justice.

At the bottom there is a signature with a transcript, date, and a list of attached documents . If this is a collective complaint, then all residents of the building must sign it.

It is imperative to indicate what kind of water supply disruption is occurring and how long it has been going on.

You will need to make 3-4 copies of the document, since its copies must be sent to regulatory authorities. One copy remains in the hands of the applicant with a note that the complaint has been accepted for consideration, indicating the date and signature of the person who accepted the complaint.

The complaint can be submitted in person or sent by mail with acknowledgment of receipt.
Mailing is effective if any agency refuses to accept the application. However, this method of handling will require a lot of time.

What to do if there is no heating?

Many apartment residents wonder if there is no heating, what should they do to solve the problem? First you should find out whether there is heating in neighboring apartments. If the problem is in the whole house, you need to draw up a collective complaint and send it to the appropriate authority. There is a hotline to resolve the issue related to the lack of heating, which any resident of the house can contact.

If the owner of the apartment does not have free time to find out the cause and solve the problem associated with the fact that the heating battery does not warm up, you can call the emergency dispatch service. The dispatcher will record the details of the apartment tenant, the date of the request and send a plumber to identify the cause of the lack of heat. If the breakdown is simple, the worker will quickly fix the breakdown. If the problem is serious, the service will send an employee of the management company, who must draw up a report.

If the problem that there is no hot water and heating could not be resolved peacefully, then you can contact the following authorities:

  1. local government bodies. To do this, a representative of the house council must prepare a complaint from residents regarding the lack of heating and make an appointment with the official to whom all housing and communal services report. Of course, you can also contact us on your own behalf by sending an email. But the likelihood that the letter will be responded to quickly is very low;
  2. Rospotrebnadzor authorities. In response to the complaint, the government agency will conduct an unscheduled inspection of the house to determine temperature violations. Will draw up the appropriate document and send it to the organization that is responsible for the heating system of the house. In case of failure to comply with the order, the company will be forced to pay a fine;
  3. The prosecutor's office is the last authority where you should contact if there is no heating in the apartment, when complaints to lower authorities did not give the desired result. When contacting this body, you must draw up a written complaint against the head of the management company in order to initiate an administrative case.

Knowing who to call if there is no heating will help solve the problem of heating at home. The main thing is not to panic and act wisely. True, sometimes in order to determine who is to blame for the problem and to get the culprit to take action to correct the situation, it may require a lot of strength, perseverance and patience. But it's worth it. After all, you can’t leave your house without heating.

Evidence base


When turning off hot water, the first thing you need to do is record the fact and time of the shutdown.

To do this, you need to contact the utility services, report the lack of water, and find out the reason.

The utility employee usually specifies the reasons or time frame required to identify the causes of the lack of water and correct the problem.

It is advisable to obtain information in writing. This will become an important argument when protecting your interests. To do this, you must submit a written claim.

What else can you do to prove the lack of hot water:

  1. If there is no accident at the site , but cold water flows from the tap, the applicant has the right to independently measure the temperature. If it is below the norm established by law, which is 40°, then an application is also submitted to the dispatch service to record the non-compliance with the standards.
  2. The applicant has the right to call a specialist to take measurements and record the violation. By law, the master must arrive no later than two hours from the moment the application is submitted. Based on the results of the inspection, a report is drawn up, one copy of which remains with the applicant.
  3. If there is no hot water supply all the time , a specialist needs to be called several times. Having several acts in hand, you can contact the management company, where they write an application demanding recalculation and restoration of the standard water temperature.

If the inspection shows compliance with the standards, but the owner of the apartment does not agree with this, an independent examination can be carried out, based on the results of which a report is also drawn up.

The management company must be notified in advance of the date of the examination. You can install a meter equipped with a temperature sensor, but management companies are reluctant to agree to register such devices.

In addition, according to the law, payments are calculated based on the number of cubic meters of water received, and not the amount of heat. Therefore, it is very difficult to use temperature sensor data as evidence in the event of disputes with the management company.

Where to contact?

To find out why it was turned off, you should contact the emergency dispatch service or call the city water utility hotline.

Moreover, it is better to call the emergency service first, since 90% of unplanned outages are caused by an accident that occurred in the water supply networks.


But there are other reasons:

  • Disconnection for debts.
  • There is a fire or natural disaster nearby.
  • Poor water quality.
  • Exceeding the permissible level of consumption by any of the residents.

Important! It often happens that employees of the organization supplying water simply made a mistake and disconnected the wrong apartment.

When can I expect results?


The deadline for responding to citizens' appeals regarding poor-quality provision of utility services according to the law is no more than 3 days.

This is stated in paragraphs. “k” clause 31 of the Rules for the provision of public services (Resolution No. 354).

Consideration of an application requesting recalculation of the cost of services provided takes no more than 10 days (Article 31 of the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights)

The response from the prosecutor's office will need to wait no more than 15 days , after which the applicant will receive written notification of the results of the prosecutor's inspection or the imposition of administrative penalties. Sometimes the period for consideration of an application is extended to 30 days.

After receiving the statement of claim, the court conducts a pre-trial inspection within 5 days. After this, the case will be put in a queue for consideration, a date will be set, and the plaintiff and defendant will be invited to the hearing. The result will be a court decision that comes into force one month after its adoption.

Disabling DHW in Moscow

The period of termination of hot water supply will begin in May of this year. It will be completed by September. The planned shutdown of hot water will take place in Moscow from May 13, 2020 to September 1. The same period is relevant for New Moscow. The termination period for hot water supply will not exceed ten days. For some areas it will be limited to 3 days. In some homes, water shutoffs are not expected at all.

The schedule for turning off hot water at the address can be clarified in the form at the beginning of the article, on the official website of the Moscow United Energy Company OJSC. Or call the toll-free hotline, which is available to citizens 24 hours a day.

Notification must occur no later than 10 days before the start of work. The information will be constantly updated. Therefore, for individual areas and streets it must be clarified during the period of preventive work.

In the form or on the MOEK website, hot water shutdowns can be specified for individual administrative districts of the capital and microdistricts.

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