Why am I being forced to change my Direct Debit?

Hmm… That’s unusual. I’ll keep an eye out on the forum in case anyone else reports the same issue. If they do, I’ll ask for it to be investigated.

In the meantime, if you wish to discuss your payments, the Support Team via https://help.ovoenergy.com for Live Chat or on 0330 303 5063, or the Collections Team on 0800 069 9831 might be able to help.

I have tried to contact OVO without success, both by phone and chat, told I am number in the queue but after 30 minutes still no response, how about OVO contacts me to discuss?

Hey @bobsheppard,

Sorry for the issues you’re having,

Every customer should receive two direct debit review communications. Do you get other emails from OVO? I’m wondering if we have the correct email address on your account.

I’ll get someone from Forum_Support to reach out to you, they can take a look into it. Please keep an eye on your private messages.

Hope this helps. 

JohnM (OVO) has apparently fixed the issue my account was set not to receive them, I am surprised that this capability is available to turn off all notifications, especially something as important as account changes.

OVO shouldn't be able to switch off direct debit notifications as the direct debit guarantee states that a company must notify you of changes to your direct debit.

@Emmanuelle_OVO can you confirm that this notification function cannot be switched off?

Hey @bobsheppard,

I’m really glad to hear this has been rectified for you,

@M.isterW financial communications can’t be ‘switched off’, only marketing preferences. It sounds like in this situation there may have been a technical issue with the email address, or no communication preference was selected. Sometimes we can attempt to send communications which ‘fail’. 

@bobsheppard, if you’d like any previous communications re-sent to you, just let our Support Team know. 

Now I have had some time to think about this the words from your agent were

“Firstly I wanted to apologise sincerely If you have not received communications advising of the direct debit review. I can see that email communications have been attempted several time but on each occasion they have failed. After investigation I can see that you were not set up on the account to receive emails so I have implemented this feature so that future attempts will now be successful. Please allow 24/48 hours to take effect.”

From the above there is a communication success or failure status recorded. If sending these notifications is a regulatory requirement that has to be met this status should be checked and appropriate action taken to rectify the situation if the message fails. Should OVO be reporting itself to the regulator to say they have failed in this respect?

Bob

They do have to be sent, but delivery is beyond OVO’s reasonable control. If your email provider chokes on them or spits them out and refuses to deliver such emails, there’s nothing OVO can do about that.

Whilst I agree with your synopsis, this was not the case, mine was not enabled, hence in the above statement “After investigation I can see that you were not set up on the account to receive emails” I did not get a postal notification either, this is why I made the above statement.

As an aside I get email from all sorts of other providers with no issues, especially as I use a professional paid for email service.

If emails fail for regulatory either OVO should consider moving to a mailbox system where I get an email telling me there is something awaiting my review or as previously suggested they should be investigated or re-sent, or a postal letter sent..

It already is set up that way. As far as I can tell, the emails with your bills etc are sent via AWS SNS aka Amazon Web Services Simple Notification Service. That’s already a professional system, albeit probably not exactly a cheap option.

OVO also pays for a pretty expensive internal email system. I know what they use, but I don’t reveal that information. You cannot use stuff like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 to send out several million emails a day from a single account though - you’d get banned if you did that for breaching Terms of Service.

As for having an In-App Mailbox feature, while that would be really nice to have on the forum, I can’t see that happening for MyOVO. You’d be welcome to suggest it though. However, given that not everyone wants to log into MyOVO just to check a bill and given that it’d duplicate functionality that already exists… I’m not too sure I’d be keen to support such an idea myself.