Electricity just disappearing? Ovo says it is.

[OoohLaLaLa]

I have a neighbour who is 93. He has his electricity from Ovo.

He lives alone and is just about managing. The village has a rota for hot meals.

He has a a Rayburn for heat and hot water and his electricity bill has been about £30 a month.

Until three months ago when it was £500 and then £800 then another £800. Another neighbour queried it and got told it must be shorting into the ground somewhere.

Can this possibly be true? Ovo are sending him increasingly threatening letters but will not help or check his meter.

I’ve tried to help but they won’t speak to me without his consent and he’s now very scared and anxious and won’t talk to them.

My understanding of electrical things is very very limited but surely that can’t be right? That £770 worth of electricity is just disappearing into the ether?

I wonder if someone has tapped into his supply or his meter is malfunctioning? Has he tried getting an electrician out to take a look?

Not yet, but he can. I don’t think it’s possible that someone else is using it- his house is detached and the nearest neighbours on both sides are good people.

Meter failure sounds very likely to me

Is there some kind of ombudsman he could contact? Doesn’t sound like Ovo are being very helpful.

I’d agree possibly a meter failure. They can come install a second meter to measure the accuracy of the 1st meter.

If it a meter failure then surely ovo should be checking that before get threatening.

I will help him contact the ombudsman but it’s just wrong that this is happening to him. He has started talking about the workhouse for his unpaid debts poor man.

Can someone help him call customer service and use key words like elderly, ill health and vulnerable?

Also, perhaps citizens advice could advise the next steps to force ovo to act.

Finally, open complaints on social media sometimes help people.

I thought utilities had a register for the vulnerable which protected them a bit more? If he will, get him to call while you are there (assuming you are willing) and get them to add you as a trusted contact.

Ovo’s website says it has a vulnerable persons register. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Ask the elderly person to sign a statement allowing you to discuss his account. Make a phone call to them with him next to you. He can tell them on the phone you are accepted by him to deal with his utility bills. Send that confirmation letter into them by email, including his account number, to make sure you can speak to several people at OVO if needed. Ask that he is on their vulnerable customer register. Ask them to stop seeking payment until the matter is investigated by an engineer. Take a photo of the meter, if possible, including the serial number stamped on it. Ask them to look at his consumption over previous years as a comparison. For what it is worth, I have had several of our energy accounts disputed over the years, as the bills were unexpected sums. It always boiled down to faulty meters or one admin error where a neighbouring property was mixed up with ours. Having smart meters helped, but I moved all our accounts from EDF to Octopus last year as I found dealing with EDF to be insanely difficult. Some energy companies are utterly useless. If this isn't resolved, you have the right to go to the energy ombudsman. It is amazing how proactive an energy company can be when you use the magic word ombudsman to the complaints manager.

There are charities up and down the country that help people with energy issues just like this, as well as helping get grants for insulation and the like. A look at your local council website might find your local one. Or give the local CAB a ring, if there is a specialist energy charity in your area they'll know.
As for OVO just call them while you're with the neighbour, he only needs to do the security and you can do the talking. They really shouldn't have any issue with getting the meter tested, especially given the disparity in consumption. Is it an old style meter or a new smart one?
And check if he's on the PSR - priority services register - with them. All the energy companies share the information and with the water suppliers. So you only need do it once. It won't help with this but he should be on it.

@OoohLaLaLa that's so kind of you to help him out

If mum needs to phone a company, she will often just put me on the phone after saying she gives me permission to speak on her behalf

If there's any chance of making the call with him, that would help. They should definitely send someone to look at the meter. Something has gone very wrong there. You don't need to escalate to the ombudsman yet.

Have you been able to check his actual usage against his bill? We had an issue recently with Scottish Power when they billed us about £3000 when our electricity bills were obviously never as much as that. We checked our statement and our usage was exactly as it usually was, they had billed us wrongly. It took a while to sort out but it is fixed now.

I've had this with water at my parents house. Getting ridiculous bills for an EMPTY house! Luckily it was easy to spot because in one period there had been usage for 5 days by 3 people, plus 2 days by 2 people and the bill was higher than the bill for our house where, in the same period, there had been 3 people in the house for all but 5 days!

The company checked it and turned out that the meter was faulty and recording constant use - you could literally see it continuously turning! They replaced the meter.

It's very much on the home owner to insist that something is wrong though, and I had quite a long email and phone conversation where there were hints that I probably just didn't realised how much water was been used!

Also EMPTY PROPERTY didn't even register with some people. After they had done one of there checks, we had a nice letter saying "your water usage is normal" and I was like "yes exactly "normal" water usage in a month when the house had been occupied for a totally of two, ten minute periods by the neighbour who checks the house every fortnight and uses NO WATER! We have a big problem!"

Good luck with helping your neighbour on this!

Re you calling you can tell them that he is in the room with you and wishes for you to talk to them, explain he is 93. You can pass the phone to him, he can confirm that and then you can talk to them on his behalf. Dh used to do this for me with cancelling car insurance as I am hearing impaired so struggle sometimes with calls made to call centres due to their background noise.

There is no age written on accounts for electric so definitely get him registered on the vulnerable persons register.

Ovo are being ridiculous. The issue is now that the market has opened up the regional board owns the meter, Ovo need to arrange someone to look at the meter because clearly something is very wrong. Look up their complaints procedure or better yet ask them to email you a copy of it.

I had murders with Ovo and my complaint is now with the Ombudsman. However, to go to them you need a deadlock letter. He needs contact with the actual complaints team. The people who answer the phone are utterly useless and do not give a shit. I would put a terrible review on Trust Pilot, that normally gets things going. He needs to be registered as a vulnerable customer. Initially I found CAB very helpful too. There are some dedicated Ovo angry customer pages on Facebook too. You could initially email them ([email protected]) and set out what has happened. You may get a better response from that. I feel your frustration. I do not know how this company is still going, it’s utterly appalling.

OVO are the worst - they should be shut down. I had debt collection agencies chasing me for OVO debt for an address I’d never lived at or owned. The best way to get through to them is to write a formal letter via snail mail with formal complaint across the top. Only then did I manage to get the problem solved with them.

Thank you all for your helpful advice. He’s meeting with his goddaughter tomorrow to organise giving her LPA as it turns out there are many more problems.
She will be following your advice and we’re grateful for it, thank you.

And yes- shame on you OVO! This whole mess has been so sad.

Definitely sounds like a faulty meter! If someone else was using it then it would be after the meter so likely tampered with internally so this is unlikely. Any tampering before the meter wouldn’t affect his property (and would be dangerous to whoever was doing it)

OVO have 8 weeks to deal with a complaint as set out in the electricity statutory requirements. After that, or if you can get a deadlock letter first, this can then be escalated to the Ombudsman. They can also be reported to Ofgem. Ofgem won’t directly investigate this individual problem, but they can investigate reports of issues and look at the company themselves.

there is a priority services register for both OVO and your local DNO (distribution network operator) who are the people you would call in a power cut so it’s also worth making sure he is registered on that too especially coming into the winter months.

hope he gets it sorted!

I can't type it all out again but have a look at post here https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5391321-octopus-energy-ps4k-elec-bill-for-11-months?reply=146403934?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share i had a total nightmare with ovo charging me for electricity i absolutely didn't use. It took years, two goes with the ombudsman and my mum to finally sort it out.

This^^