Economy Energy Final Bill/Refund Not Received

axarquian

I am an ex Economy Energy (EE) customer who switched to a new supplier shortly before they ceased trading (therefore my account was not switched to OVO).

I have been waiting for a final bill for more than a year.  I have been in contact with the EE Liaison Team on numerous occasions however a final bill was never produced prior to the team disbanding at the end of April 2020.

During March the account was reconciled and I received an email early April 2020 from the EE Liaison Team detailing the calculation and stating that Grant Thornton the liquidators had been instructed to authorise a refund.  As the refund did not materialise a further request was made by the EE Liaison Team later in April 2020, again no refund has been received.

I have contacted OVO on a number of occasions and am informed that they have no record of my Economy Energy account, The EE Liaison Team have now disbanded, I have therefore contacted  Grant Thornton the liquidators about this matter but they are unable to help me. They state that they have provided OVO with ALL information regarding credit balances and that any refund related queries are to be raised with OVO.

This being the case I have requesting OVO to investigate this matter as I think that it is either untrue that Grant Thornton have provided information regarding ALL credit balances, or, OVO have mislaid the information. As I have already contacted OVO regarding this matter I suspect that they will reply once again stating that they have no information regarding the account.

I am quite surprised that the liquidator can choose to stop  producing final bills/issuing refunds at an arbitrary date rather than when the task is completed. Has anyone had a similar experience, if so how did you resolve the issue, are OVO obliged to investigate ?

MWT

OVO is the correct place to focus on, but they will have been concentrating on live customers first and the front line staff may not have access to the customer files for those who did not transfer across. So do continue to pursue them and I would suggest writing a letter and marking it 'Complaint'  to start the clock ticking on when you can escalate this to the ombudsman.

It is normal for the liquidators to stop their work once all the assets have been dealt with and the protected creditors have been handed off to the company responsible for sorting them out, OVO in this case.

Flt._Lt._Biggles

axarquian said:

I am an ex Economy Energy (EE) customer who switched to a new supplier shortly before they ceased trading (therefore my account was not switched to OVO).

I have been waiting for a final bill for more than a year.  I have been in contact with the EE Liaison Team on numerous occasions however a final bill was never produced prior to the team disbanding at the end of April 2020.

During March the account was reconciled and I received an email early April 2020 from the EE Liaison Team detailing the calculation and stating that Grant Thornton the liquidators had been instructed to authorise a refund.  As the refund did not materialise a further request was made by the EE Liaison Team later in April 2020, again no refund has been received.

I have contacted OVO on a number of occasions and am informed that they have no record of my Economy Energy account, The EE Liaison Team have now disbanded, I have therefore contacted  Grant Thornton the liquidators about this matter but they are unable to help me. They state that they have provided OVO with ALL information regarding credit balances and that any refund related queries are to be raised with OVO.

This being the case I have requesting OVO to investigate this matter as I think that it is either untrue that Grant Thornton have provided information regarding ALL credit balances, or, OVO have mislaid the information. As I have already contacted OVO regarding this matter I suspect that they will reply once again stating that they have no information regarding the account.

I am quite surprised that the liquidator can choose to stop  producing final bills/issuing refunds at an arbitrary date rather than when the task is completed. Has anyone had a similar experience, if so how did you resolve the issue, are OVO obliged to investigate ?

Welcome to MSE.

I am not in the same situation, but do have experience of what happened when another supplier went bust.

So to assist you, I first looked at the Ovo website.
I did this because it is often the case that one of the responsibilities of the SoLR appointed is to refund credit balances, even of customers who left the now defunct supplier before a switch to the SoLR would have otherwise have taken place.

According to Ovo:

I had already left Economy Energy. How do I get a refund?

If you’ve already received a final bill from Economy Energy, please get in touch with us to register your refund claim. We’ll need to speak with Economy Energy first to get some more information, but we’re aiming to be able to accept refund requests soon. If you haven’t received your final bill yet, you’ll need to wait before you contact us.

Source: https://www.ovoenergy.com/economy-energy

So then I looked to see if the Economy Energy website was still available, and if so what it said. Yes it is still available, having been updated as recently as 07 May 2020.(just over a week ago)

It says:

I have an outstanding credit on my account; who do I contact to raise a query?

The joint liquidators have finalised all credit balances and are unable to work any queries.

Customers with a credit balance should contact OVO Energy on 0330 102 7517 from a landline or 01179 303 100 from a mobile to discuss any queries and how to obtain a refund. Please note that it can take four-five weeks for OVO to action a refund and for those customers who are still with OVO, and this should be automatically applied to your account.

Source: https://www.economyenergy.co.uk/

So the liquidator has not, as you put it, " choose to stop  producing final bills/issuing refunds at an arbitrary date rather than when the task is completed."

The liquidator does not issue former customers with refunds, but has completed the task of finalizing all former customers accounts.

Hope that assists you.