Account credit still held by Avro

booshya

MWT said:

booshya said:

They are seeking the refund of the credit owed to them.
Octopus say it's nothing to do with them and that the complainant should pursue the matter directly with the Avro administrators.

Ofgem, the industry regulator, say that Octopus is responsible for refunding the credit balances of Avro domestic customers, both current and past

That is a different situation, and it shouldn't have needed to go beyond internal escalation as the CS advice was clearly incorrect, Octopus know that former customer refunds will go through them, they just don't know when the details will come across from the administrators.

Not all CS staff outside the avro@octopus.energy team are as well briefed as they should be.

In what way do you think it is a different situation to that of the OP of this thread?

I agree, it really shouldn't have needed to go beyond internal escalation, but it has been required as Octopus seem to have fallen out with the Avro administrators, and are now expressing that frustration (in the "sorry, nothing to do with us", "nothing we can do", etc responses they are now often giving out) to affected Avro customers.

Octopus have not even updated their former daily update page on their website for the past 3 weeks!

MWT

booshya said:

In what way do you think it is a different sitiation to that of the OP of this thread?

This was the situation for the OP:

"They have said, as far as they know, credit balances from recently departed Avro customers will be honored, but this is a seperate process and they don't have a lot of information on the timescale.  Since then I've sent a followup email once a month and both times it's come back with a stock "We have not received any account credit information from the administrators and have no indication when we will receive this"."

They were not denying responsibility, just unable to give a timescale, and that is something the Ombudsman isn't going to touch.

Your new case was one of denial of responsibility which is obviously wrong.

booshya

MWT said:

booshya said:

In what way do you think it is a different sitiation to that of the OP of this thread?

This was the situation for the OP:

"They have said, as far as they know, credit balances from recently departed Avro customers will be honored, but this is a seperate process and they don't have a lot of information on the timescale.  Since then I've sent a followup email once a month and both times it's come back with a stock "We have not received any account credit information from the administrators and have no indication when we will receive this"."

They were not denying responsibility, just unable to give a timescale, and that is something the Ombudsman isn't going to touch.

Your new case was one of denial of responsibility which is obviously wrong.

With respect, I would urge to to carefully read all the OP again, and then read fully the reply I gave in post#2 of this thread.

I said then that "Assuming you are a domestic customer, your money is safe. Octopus have to refund it to you by order of Ofgem, but they have not put a timeframe as to when.", yet you cherry picked another part to claim my reply was unhelpful.

As I understand it, the complaint now lodged with the OS started out as not being able to put a timeframe on when the credit would be refunded (they understood it would take time), but then transcended into the denial of responsibility as the relationship between Octopus and the Avro administartors clearly soured over time.

Is there really much of a difference between a supplier saying they cannot start to estimate when a customer will get their credit back (3 months ago they were hoping it would be all sorted within about 4 weeks), and a denial to refund a customer their credit?
In reality, there is no difference for the affected customer. They've not got their money and have no idea if/when they ever will get it.

MWT

There really isn't much point in repeating everything over again, the section I quoted was directly from the first post, hardly 'cherry picking' anything.

You encouraged the OP to go to a compliant based only on the inability to say when the refund would occur, that is still a pointless exercise as neither the Ombudsman nor Octopus have any power to enforce a time-line on the administrators of the failed company.

... and yes, there is a world of difference between denying responsibility and being unable to say 'when' in these circumstances.

I greatly prefer to point people in the direction of solutions and explanations rather than reaching for the Ombudsman unnecessarily and potentially fruitlessly, you take a different tack, and it is ultimately up to the poster to decide which way to go.

booshya

MWT said:

There really isn't much point in repeating everything over again, the section I quoted was directly from the first post, hardly 'cherry picking' anything.

Oh dear!
Picking up on just a small part of an overall response is cherry picking!

You encouraged the OP to go to a compliant based only on the inability to say when the refund would occur, that is still a pointless exercise as neither the Ombudsman nor Octopus have any power to enforce a time-line on the administrators of the failed company.

... and yes, there is a world of difference between denying responsibility and being unable to say 'when' in these circumstances.

I did indeed encourage the OP to to go to a complaint.
And I would encourage anyone in a similar position to do likewise.
It'll take about 6 months to complete the entire complaint process including OS and implementation.
If the complaint is resolved before then, all will be good.
If not, the OS will hopefully encourage Octopus to get their finger out!
(by then it'll be a good 9 months since Octopus were appointed the SoLR)

The longer you delay, potentially the longer you will wait before you get a resolution.

If the OP has taken my advice when I gave it, they would potentially already be about a month closer to a resolution.

I greatly prefer to point people in the direction of solutions and explanations rather than reaching for the Ombudsman unnecessarily and potentially fruitlessly, you take a different tack, and it is ultimately up to the poster to decide which way to go.

Go on then, we're all waiting for your direction of a solution...
I really hope it's something better than 'wait and see' and hoping 'it'll be alright on the night'

regency_man

Well.  Here we are a month later and still no sign of my money.  However in the mean-time Octopus have managed to make the situation several levels worse and mess it up in ways I couldn't possibly have imagined.

16th Jan

I logged into my online account with Octopus and discovered that I now had two accounts with Octopus, my existing Octopus account and a new account which contained references to Avro.  Great I thought, maybe some progress finally with getting my credit back.  How wrong I was.

Looking into it further Octopus had transferred all of my Octopus credit and usage into the Avro account and were billing me at the 'Avro' standard tariffs, which were considerably higher than the tariffs on my Octopus account.

I contacted their support and they said that, as I suspected, the 'new' account was a holding account for my closed Avro account that would allow them to process the account credit from Avro.  However it was a mistake that my usage and credit with Octopus was moved over to this account.  They assured me they would correct this.

17th Jan

I logged into my account to find that I now only have one account again, but instead of it being the Octopus account as I thought, it was the Avro account. I then got an email from Octopus to confirm they had 'solved' this by merging the two accounts and only leaving the Avro account active.  I responded that they should have not done this without my permission as this now created 3 additional problems:
1) My tariffs were still incorrect, now showing as 'Flexible Octopus' rather than 'Avro Flexible' (when I was on Octopus Go before).
2) My referral code had changed meaning the code I'd given to many people was now useless.
3) The progress towards the 'Winter Energy Workout' competition had disappeared from my account.

Octopus responded to say it would require more time to fix the tariff, that there was nothing they could do about the referral code and that they could not restore my entry into the 'Winter Energy Workout' competition as entry to the competition was now closed.

18th Jan

Octopus have been making more changes to my account.  Now I'm on another different tariff but still not the one I was on prior to them making the erroneous change.  More emails back and forth to get this resolved.

20th Jan

Octopus have finally restored my account back to the tariffs that I signed up to, but have been unable to restore my referral code or the 'Winter Workout' promotion.  I'm left in a worse position that I was before they make the mistake and they say they cannot do anything about it.

You really would hope this would be the end of it....but no...

9th Feb

Log into my account and once again Octopus have unilaterally changed my gas and electricity tariffs to 'Avro Flexible'!!   Call them again and their support agent is dumbfounded as to what has happened.  Puts me on hold for a few minutes then comes back asking if I had requested this change.  Obviousy not.  More minutes on hold and he says that he has no clue why it has happened and needs to send it for further investigation.  I ask that he ensure it does not happen again but he responds that he isn't sure why it happened and therefore can't be sure that it won't.

There is serious problem with the backoffice processes at Octopus, the fact they are changing my tariff without my consent or even informing me shows a lack of audit and control processes around their accounts.  I still do not have my credit from my closed Avro account.  I feel I have no choice now but to take it to the Ombuds.

Alpha_5

I've just received an email from octopus saying my credit refund has been processed and will be in my account within the next 5 days.
 
I'm an ex-customer who'd left Avro before they went bust. 

regency_man

I got that email also, I suspect that action is what triggered the other changes to my account.  Still waiting for them to fix my tariffs but fingers crossed the credit arrives before too long.  

oldagetraveller1

Alpha_5 said:

I've just received an email from octopus saying my credit refund has been processed and will be in my account within the next 5 days.
 
I'm an ex-customer who'd left Avro before they went bust. 

Me too, received it yesterday. It's £60 which equates to two penalties of £30 each, credited to my Avro account because they didn't refund my account's credit balance, in the required time, when I moved from them, prior to their demise. Ironically that was to Igloo, there's a pattern here!

I suppose I should be grateful because in reality it's Octopus having to pay the £60 - or their customers?

MWT

oldagetraveller1 said:

I suppose I should be grateful because in reality it's Octopus having to pay the £60 - or their customers?

Neither, it is all of us, you included, by way of the increase in electricity standing charges, which is where the recovery of the costs of the SoLR process are to be found...