Ovo taken too much money on DD

wordsfan

My daughter is in her first flat of her own. She generally copes ok but today has discovered ovo her energy company have taken 3 times the amount they should have for her direct debit leaving her seriously short. 

They are saying it will take up to 14 working days to refund her the money. Money she desperately needs to live on. She’s not due to get paid until the end of the month. If they’d taken the correct amount she’d have been fine but this has really messed her up! 

I’m desperately trying to find the industry regulations on this and getting precisely nowhere! 

Nothing in ofgem site, citizens advice we’re hopeless she barely understood what i was asking at first and then when I broke it down so she could understand all she could say was “it depends on the companies terms and conditions” except that the law, the regulations will supersede those t&c’s if they aren’t within the regulations. 

Im now on with home energy Scotland who frankly are being just as useless despite supposedly being “expert” advisors to consumers on energy. 

Shocking the lack of knowledge and information they have. 

Can anyone help advise how i can get this matter resolved for my daughter or advise her ASAP? 

Appalled they can just just take her money leaving her so short for so long! 

brewerdave

Get her to contact her bank and claw the whole DD back as unauthorised transaction under the DD guarantee - I assume they didn't give her advance notification of the increased DD?

wordsfan

No they didn’t give her any notice at all! I hadn’t thought of that. The difficulty then being they will perhaps claim she’s not paid her bill? 

But it I shall pass the advice on thank you. 

Streaky_Bacon

The bank will refund the money immediately.

Ovo can then challenge the refund, but it seems that they agree that the money has been taken incorrectly.

The key thing is she gets the money straight away, without having to wait for Ovo to OK it.