Spark Energy switched without consent

Ant174

Thanks to Jenny from Spark for dealing with this.

The ET procedure should be back underway now.


An update for anyone reading this thread as I feel people should be aware of this:

According to Spark, our property address was passed on to them by a rather large national letting agent, within a 'data feed'. A method used between Spark and letting agents to communicate addresses that they should be ordering supplies for. Apparently, the information is taken on good faith to be accurate.

The Erroneous transfer was initially rejected on the grounds that it was initiated by our original supplier and Spark apparently will refuse the ET until they have done an internal investigation. Some notification of this would have been appreciated.

Thankfully for us, Spark were able to confirm with the letting agent that a mistake had been made. And as such they can now accept the Erroneous Transfer process.



People should be aware that this can happen - someone can send your property address (and it seems your meter access numbers) to an energy company and switch your supply without any knowledge from you. Leaving you with the stress of sorting out the consequences.

To be honest, this seems to me, to be a data breach. And what amazes me, is that information required to set up an energy contract for any property, is publicly available - addresses, meter access numbers and current suppliers. So much for General Data Protection Regualtions. Even for people like us, who are extremley careful with personal data, we are still at the risk of a data breach.


A warning to all: If you receive mail addressed to 'The Occupier', take it seriously. We nearly disregarded the 'Welcome Letter' as we knew we hadn't applied for a switch and thought it was spam, AND we hadn't had timely notification from our own supplier that we were leaving them. Check your emails carefully, as the "Sorry you're leaving" notification that came from our original supplier came only by email and was easily overlooked. It also only came less than 24 hours before the switch took place.

It's rather worrying that this sort of error can even happen. And it's good to see (according to recent headlines) that Ofgem are stepping up the rules on Erroneous Transfers.

However, we did get this issue resolved in the end, but the greatest issue was the total lack of communication from boths suppliers. Having your supply switched in error and being left completely in the dark, with no explanations or responses to communications, left us feeling stressed and frustrated, wondering where this whole debacle was going to take us.

Thanks again to Jenny. We had little assistance from anyone else at Spark.
We now await for the ET process to go through and to be returned to our preferred supplier.

Benight

Ant174 wrote: »

Thanks to Jenny from Spark for dealing with this.

The ET procedure should be back underway now.


An update for anyone reading this thread as I feel people should be aware of this:

According to Spark (as Jenny explained to us), our property address was passed on to them by a rather large national letting agent, within a 'data feed'. A method used between Spark and letting agents to communicate addresses that they should be ordering supplies for. Apparently, the information is taken on good faith to be accurate.

The Erroneous transfer was initially rejected on the grounds that it was initiated by our original supplier and Spark apparently will refuse the ET until they have done an internal investigation. Some notification of this would have been appreciated.

Thankfully for us, Spark were able to confirm with the letting agent that a mistake had been made. And as such they can now accept the Erroneous Transfer process.



People should be aware that this can happen - someone can send your property address (and it seems your meter access numbers) to an energy company and switch your supply without any knowledge from you. Leaving you with the stress of sorting out the consequences.

To be honest, this seems to me, to be a data breach. And what amazes me, is that information required to set up an energy contract for any property, is publicly available - addresses, meter access numbers and current suppliers. So much for General Data Protection Regualtions. Even for people like us, who are extremley careful with personal data, we are still at the risk of a data breach.


A warning to all: If you receive mail addressed to 'The Occupier', take it seriously. We nearly disregarded the 'Welcome Letter' as we knew we hadn't applied for a switch and thought it was spam, AND we hadn't had timely notification from our own supplier that we were leaving them. Check your emails carefully, as the "Sorry you're leaving" notification that came from our original supplier came only by email and was easily overlooked. It also only came less than 24 hours before the switch took place.

It's rather worrying that this sort of error can even happen. And it's good to see (according to recent headlines) that Ofgem are stepping up the rules on Erroneous Transfers.

However, we did get this issue resolved in the end, but the greatest issue was the total lack of communication from boths suppliers. Having your supply switched in error and being left completely in the dark, with no explanations or responses to communications, left us feeling stressed and frustrated, wondering where this whole debacle was going to take us.

Thanks again to Jenny. We had little assistance from anyone else at Spark.
We now await for the ET process to go through and to be returned to our preferred supplier.

Sorry, I don't fully understand your post, and maybe you too do not know the answers either, but perhaps you would like to investigate ... you might get some goodwill gestures if a supplier is at fault.

Firstly, absoluteley anyone can request to switch over the supply account of another address, either accidentally or otherwise. There is no data breach - all a person needs is an address they are applying to switch the supply at.

But they would need to give their own name to the new supplier, and the new supplier would start the process of putting the account in the applicant's own name as opposed to the existing account number.

"The Occupier" is normally only used by suppliers when they know the previous account holder is no longer appropriate to the address (e.g. they have moved out) and the supplier does not know the name of who the new account holder should be.

So one needs to question why the correspondence was addressed to "The Occupier" in your instance

As a partial fail safe to prevent someone changing supplier at an inappropriate address, a supplier with an existing account holder would normally write to that account holder by name with a 'Sorry you are leaving...' message.
That would alert and allow the true account holder to challenge any unauthorised change of supplier.

As mentioned by Bicusit Tin above, I would also recommend contacting the existing supplier to complain about any ET once it has occuured, as they are the ones that have most to gain by retaining your custom.
It's not for a new supplier to challenge an ET and deny it unless they have evidence to suggest it was correctly applied for in the first place; it's certainly not for them to reject an ET request whilst they take time to investigate whether or not they have the appropraite authorisation to switch supplier to themselves - they should not be starting the switch process unless they are sure they have the appropriate authorisation.

Be aware that any demand for payment i.e. bill addressed to "The Occupier" is not enforcable in law, it needs the name of an actual person or other legal entity.

I hope Ovo Energy trading as Spark energy are giving you a goodwill gesture for their error in this case. If not make a complaint, and if nececessary take it to the ombudsman at the appropraite time, who I feel sure will award you something for the "stress and frustration" caused to you by all this.

Also why did you not get a 'sorry you are leaving ...' meassage from the existing supplier as questioned by Biscuit Tin above? Again, a possible goodwill gesture available from them too.