OVO Energy Customer Service Failings - Help

richreed2426

Hi,

I was hoping for some impartial advice on the following issue I am having with Ovo energy. It's a bit of a long story but I will try and explain it as concisely as possible without leaving out too much detail.

I left Ovo to go to a new provider and got a final statement which resulted in me receiving a refund. It turned out that the new supplier gave Ovo incorrect final readings (their opening readings) which needed to be amended and which was subsequently done through a read dispute. This resulted in me owing Ovo some money back which was expected and absolutely fine. However when I got the new bill from Ovo it was more than I calculated. I asked Ovo to explain the difference but they couldn’t explain why the new bill was more than the movement in the new readings. I will show the actual calculations at the end so this is clearer.

Ovo and I went back and forth for 6 months until I decided that this needed to go to the ombudsman as they still had not provided a reasonable explanation. As you can imagine by this time I had spent a considerable amount of time on the issue and given that the difference we are talking about is £50 I was quite annoyed that Ovo didn’t just reduce the bill by £50 as goodwill for not being able to explain the balance.

The ombudsman took the case and if by magic found the difference we had been searching for within a day. Basically the problem occurred when Ovo first issued me with the final statement before the read dispute. Again calculations will be at the end but essentially I was refunded a number of gas and electricity units at a higher rate than I was originally charged at. This error unwound itself in my new statement after the read dispute which is where the mystery £50 came from.

As far as the ombudsman was concerned they had proven the balance on the account was correct and so in recognition of that I paid the bill. I did however go back to Ovo and asked for compensation for the time I had spent trying to work out the difference. I feel like Ovo should have been able to do what the ombudsman did within a day when this all started 6 months ago. It is down to Ovo to provide clear statements which easily explain how their charges are made up and if they can’t figure out what their statements are producing then they should only charge customers what they can figure out and not waste hours of time arguing over £50. Ovo rejected this saying the case is closed and they will not discuss the matter further. Ovo stated that the ombudsman is there to assist in such cases as mine and my response was simply that the ombudsman is not their to help Ovo with their maths (A bit sarcastic I know – but true) The ombudsman will also not open a new case to investigate the customer service failings as they claim this would be a duplicate case. I disagree that this is a duplicate case as the 1st case was a dispute about the account balance and the 2nd case is a dispute about the failings of Ovo to provide a timely and reasonable explanation of my account charges.

So I am now a little stuck on what to do. Do I take this on the chin or do you think I have a case to pursue further and if so who do I take the case to? County court? The problem is I can’t really demonstrate a financial loss apart from loss of time. The other thing Ovo did which I didn’t appreciate was hand over the debt to a collection agency before the ombudsman had even investigated the case which I know is in their rights to do but I felt was unnecessary.

Ok here are the calculations. Will just do the Electricity rather than the gas as well as both follow the same pattern.

Readings before the read dispute (Original final statement)

Opening – 17702 Closing – 16822 Movement – (880) This is negative as my new supplier issued these low readings which were subsequently changed.

Readings after the read dispute

Opening – 16822 (as per the closing above) Closing -17862 Movement – 1040

So in theory all I should be charged is the new movement (1040) however I was being charged more. The difference was to do with the 880 credit in the first statement. This 880 was refunded at their standard tariff whereas all charges up to that point were at a lower fixed tariff. This was clearly an error in the first statement where I ended up £50 up and this would have never of been discovered if the read dispute wasn’t raised. Ovo won’t admit this is an error and said it’s how their system works. I tried to explain to them that you wouldn’t buy something from a shop on half price special offer for £10 and then get £20 refunded if you returned the item after the special offer. (Banging head against brick wall)
Any questions or clarifications please feel free to ask.
Thanks in advance.

DoaM

I guess the question is ... what value of loss can you quantify (and prove, with receipts or other evidence)? What value do you place on your time to pursue this further?

You could potentially raise a small claim via MCOL, but you'd need to prove your "loss" on the balance of probabilities.

Probably best to draw a line under this and let it go ... the effort you'll need to go to to try and get anything back is likely not worth it.

agrinnall

I'm inclined to agree with you that OVO were inept in not understanding their own calculations, and that the Ombudsman is wrong not to treat that failing as a different complaint. But I'm not sure that trying to take it any further will be successful, and I'd say that it would probably be better for you to put it behind you, move on, and never deal with OVO again.

richreed2426

There is no evidence of value loss apart from free time wasted on the issue. I agree I don't think pursuing the issue further will be worth it. I am asking the Ombudsman again to look into it for me as I think this is my best bet. Thanks

Thommo78

Afternoon all, I have recently joined the forums to get a feel of Ovo performance or lack of. I have experienced such poor customer experience and the billing is another story. A number of complaints have been raised in the past through verbal dissatisfaction, however the feeling is that Ovo is lacking ownership or leadership qualities.


A formal four page complaint has been raised, after experience multiple complaints not addressed and lack of emails being responded to and being deleted without being read. Incorrectly default applied to the account (now in the process of being removed)


Statements not being produced and over poor service. A request for a SARS request was put forward to Ovo and they even managed to provided only some of the information, rather from inception of the account being set-up. Furthermore to this, when going through the data, Ovo also provided other customers details (account numbers; emails & date of birth and names)


Once received a comms from Ovo, the details will be passed to the regulator as the service overall has been shambolic and how such organisation can be running is beyond me.


Has anyone experienced a similar situation or feel let down by this Ovo? The account was also set-up in 2014, but the feeling is that Ovo set the monthly figure low and didn't increase the payments for 10 months, resulted in building a billing up. The feeling is that Ovo should be taking more responsibility to managed of the account when paying monthly?


Thanks in advance.

agrinnall

I wasn't particularly happy with the documentation that OVO produced, and it was one of the factors in deciding to switch to another provider.



However, the main reason why I'm responding is that I couldn't miss the opportunity to comment on the multiple redundancy in this statement:

Thommo78 wrote: »

A request for a SARS request was put forward to Ovo

If you had written it as "A request for a SA Request request..." then you'd see that it doesn't really make sense, all you needed to say was "A SAR was put forward..." (there's no S at the end, that's an entirely different acronym!).



We know what you meant but it was such a good example that I thought it would be a lesson for other posters to try to understand what they are writing.

Thommo78

Yes! The joy's of using a smart phone txt screen ::D