MSE News: Ovo Energy to take on Economy Energy's 235,000 customers

Consumerist

cdsheldon wrote: »

I have attempted to switch my supply from OVO to much cheaper Bulb Energy but I have just been told by Bulb they are prevented from doing so because I have tried to switch to another supplier recently! Even though OVO has stated former Economy Energy customers are free to switch as soon as they have their account number it appears they are blocking switches to other companies. . .

This might be due to your account balance based on EE's closing balance.

There have been reports on this thread of EE exaggerating recent energy consumption so that even if you think your account should be in credit, the data from EE suggests you have a debit balance.

So, you may first need to sort out your actual consumption with Ovo before they can prepare a final bill.

PennyPenny

Welcome email says that OVO take over my account on 12th January.

Welcome letter, posted and received after the 14 day cooling off period days says I'll be switching to them on 31 January.

I've just logged into OVO account to try and put in several meter reads from the dates above and it says I'll be switching to them on 14 February.

I can't wait for this to be all sorted out and be able to switch to a cheaper tariff than OVO.

And don't mention the over exaggeration of the Economy Energy bills :mad:

wavelets

^^^^^^
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=75397849&postcount=10

(as I mentioned earlier in this thread)

:cool:

PennineAcute

Until you have had a request for money, no money is owed. Therefore OVO cannot block for an account in debit, if there has been no formal request for payment.

wavelets

PennineAcute wrote: »

Until you have had a request for money, no money is owed. Therefore OVO cannot block for an account in debit, if there has been no formal request for payment.

Whilst this is generally the case, the issue on this thread appears to be mainly that you cannot switch from Ovo until your account is set up with Ovo, as until then, the system does not recognise you as an existing Ovo customer, so a request to switch from them will not work.

This happens whenever a SoLR gets appointed to protect your supply, when your supplier ceases to trade.

Consumerist

I can imagine that Ovo is having something of a problem with customers opening meter readings compared with EE's closing readings if consumption has been exaggerated by EE.

I think it probable that switching away from Ovo is going to take longer than people expect and regrettably they are going to have to live with it.

In the circumstances it probably isn't Ovo's fault.

falcieri

Well here we are, 6 months and still waiting for a final bill from Ovo. I had a standard email from Economy Energy this afternoon updating me and saying it will be 'some months' before bills will be sorted. I am therefore going to assume it's going to be a year at best before I get my money back. Ovo are just as vague. I enquired with them some time ago about my final bill so I at least knew what I was getting and despite giving them loads of screen shots of accounts and readings they still don't have one for me. They told me to chase them 6 weeks after my initial chase which was a month ago and they still have zero idea when bills will be produced. Incredibly frustrating. It's a good job I'm not desperate for the money but I expect others are an owed much larger amounts of money than me.



All round this leaves me very nervous about leaving too much money in credit with any energy provider so I make a point of dropping my direct debits if it looks like I'm going to end up with too much credit.

Benight

falcieri wrote: »

Well here we are, 6 months and still waiting for a final bill from Ovo. I had a standard email from Economy Energy this afternoon updating me and saying it will be 'some months' before bills will be sorted. I am therefore going to assume it's going to be a year at best before I get my money back. Ovo are just as vague. I enquired with them some time ago about my final bill so I at least knew what I was getting and despite giving them loads of screen shots of accounts and readings they still don't have one for me. They told me to chase them 6 weeks after my initial chase which was a month ago and they still have zero idea when bills will be produced. Incredibly frustrating. It's a good job I'm not desperate for the money but I expect others are an owed much larger amounts of money than me.



All round this leaves me very nervous about leaving too much money in credit with any energy provider so I make a point of dropping my direct debits if it looks like I'm going to end up with too much credit.

If people are that deperatre for the money, why would they lend that much of it an energy supplier, let alone one that goes bust, in the first place.
In any other business, you'd lose your money completely ... or perhaps get a few pennies for every £1 lent , and that can take years to sort out.

Moral: keep on eye on your account balance, and don't let it get too big

Mr.Everready

Benight wrote: »

If people are that deperatre for the money, why would they lend that much of it an energy supplier, let alone one that goes bust, in the first place.
In any other business, you'd lose your money completely ... or perhaps get a few pennies for every £1 lent , and that can take years to sort out.

Moral: keep on eye on your account balance, and don't let it get too big

EE took a full months up front payment, they also did not let you change the DD amount. You'd only get a refund (whether you'd get it or not is another matter) if you had 3 months worth of credit in your account.

falcieri

Benight wrote: »

If people are that deperatre for the money, why would they lend that much of it an energy supplier, let alone one that goes bust, in the first place.
In any other business, you'd lose your money completely ... or perhaps get a few pennies for every £1 lent , and that can take years to sort out.

Moral: keep on eye on your account balance, and don't let it get too big

Companies like Bulb who I am now with are happy to let customers manually up and down their direct debits themselves via the website as their usage adusts. I've already adjusted mine 3 times this year to account for changes as we've moved from witner into spring.



Economy Energy were nothing like this. No communication, poor organisation, deliberately taking direct debits after customers had left them, refusing to refund when asked or simply not doing it. This is not a case of people letting funds build up too high, this was a company that actively made of point of hanging on to your money and not repaying it even if you had built up a big fund. And this is why they went under.