Switched from SSE to Ovo without realising: am I liable?

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Back dated energy bill from 2017 - do we have to pay?.

huchick

I signed up with SSE in 2017, and i was happy with their service, i also have boiler service, which i pay monthly for it, and my fit reading with them. I received a letter to an unknown male person through the letterbox but to our address, in October 2020 from OVO energy that that unknown male under our address ( my husband owns the house and we never had tenant) owes OVO £3027. I binned the letter, then i got another one but my husband rang OVo up and said that this person never lived here and to stop sending letters to our address, as we are with SSE. 
In March this year, a meter reader rang the doorbell from OVO. I explained that we are with SSE, he asked my name i gave it to him, i didn't let him in, and he asked me to take a picture of my electricity meter reader and i showed it to him. The meter reader serial number matched. So a week or so later, i received another letter from OVO, this time with my name on it, and the detailed estimated meter reading since April 2018, and that i owe them £4027.26. My husband rang OVO to explain that we are paying SSE, and they should not send it to me, as I don't owe them. My husband checked our joint account and realized that we didn't pay electricity and gas since April 2018. Even though, it should not be over 4000 pounds.
We didn't want to be in more arrears so we set up an account with OVO to pay our debt with electricity and gas together.
I still wanted to know, who messed up , although we never asked to be transferred to OVO energy. One of the customer service agent explained it to me at OVO that, Leamore energy took over our account in 2018, then it went to liquidation, then OVO took over on 13 December 2019, and it took them nearly 10 months to contact the property, but with a different name.
Am i liable to pay the standing charges, though i have never been informed that another energy supplier took over from SSE?

[Deleted User]

Yes, you haven’t switched supplier: SSE was taken over by The Ovo Energy Group. This is how business works. 

The two questions you have to ask yourself is ‘what efforts did I make to contact my energy supplier’ and ‘ how did we fail to notice that we weren’t paying for energy since 2018’? It’s a hard lesson to learn but you cannot really ask other energy users to pay for your lack of attention.

welshmoneylover

Did you not notice your dd not leaving the account for that length of time? Did you supply meter readings and check it against your bills?
yes you should pay it as it is your responsibility to manage your utility bills.

huchick

My husband didn't notice dd, as he puts money on that account where the household bills gets paid from, i believe last time i had a meter read it was in 2019. On the detailed OVO letter is only estimated readings. But if one company took over from the other one why did they not contact me though they had my mobile number, did they not miss that they weren't paid for months?
I put my hands up, yes, it was our neglect, but theirs, too.

[Deleted User]

huchick said:

My husband didn't notice dd, as he puts money on that account where the household bills gets paid from, i believe last time i had a meter read it was in 2019. On the detailed OVO letter is only estimated readings. But if one company took over from the other one why did they not contact me though they had my mobile number, did they not miss that they weren't paid for months?
I put my hands up, yes, it was our neglect, but theirs, too.

Meters no longer have to be read: the supplier has to obtain one meter reading every 12 months. I suspect that if you read the terms and conditions of your energy contract it will state that the supplier expects you to provide regular meter readings. Given what has gone on, are you asking people to believe that in the three years that you were using £4000s worth of energy that you never looked at your online energy account or your bank account? 

Takeovers in the domestic energy sector are happening all the time. For example, E.oN has recently taken over NPower and merged these customers and its own into a new company called E.oN Next. You cannot expect a supplier to give you a call on your mobile when all the information you need to know is available in your online account. If your husband has put money aside for the last 3 years to pay for your energy, than settling the account shouldn’t be a problem. Consider it as a 3 year interest free loan.

You are of course entitled to make a complaint about poor customer service but I very much hope that in fairness to the millions of energy consumers who do pay their bills on time - if necessary, by chasing up late bills - that the supplier does not write off any of the money owed to it. That would be plain wrong.

Cardew

huchick said:

My husband didn't notice dd, as he puts money on that account where the household bills gets paid from, i believe last time i had a meter read it was in 2019. On the detailed OVO letter is only estimated readings. But if one company took over from the other one why did they not contact me though they had my mobile number, did they not miss that they weren't paid for months?
I put my hands up, yes, it was our neglect, but theirs, too.

Surely that account should have had a £4,000 larger credit balance.