Warning to OVO Customers

Good evening,

I am one of the Forum Volunteers here. Please be advised that I do not work for OVO. ​@Nukecad is our debt specialist, so I’ll let him know about this thread.

Due to the nature of the individuals involved, I’m afraid I don’t feel I can comment much at this time on this specific matter. However, I will leave the guide we have on the Forum in case you wish to review it.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that threads of this type don’t tend to perform well on the OVO Forum as they usually get buried pretty fast. Nothing against you personally, it’s just based on experience as I’ve been around for just over five years now.

I will ensure ​@Bradley_OVO is notified of this thread on Monday when he returns. Please bear with us.

This response has been edited to fix the guide link and force the embed to show. Otherwise it’s as originally written.

Hi ​@zigmonde 

Your post is a bit confusing because you talk about a “warrant of entry” to fit a prepayment meter, but then you also talk about "Enforcement Officer" and "Bailiff" who are people who are authorised by the court to collect money from debtors after a CCJ has been issued.

(I do realise that people often mix such terms up).

So was this a case of a meter engineer turning up to replace the meter - along with a Bailiff with the warrant, and a locksmith to effect entry if needed,  ?

You don’t mention there being more than one person, however I’ve seen such an enforced meter exchange happen, there is usually at least those three who turn up possibly more (and possibly the police as well if trouble is expected).

Or was it a High Court Enforcement Officer, (or a County Court appointed Bailiff) who was looking to collect money or impound goods against an outstanding CCJ?

In the meantime:
The thread that Blastoise186 has linked to above is more about Debt Collector letters threatening to go to court and get a CCJ rather than about the enforced fitting of pre-payment meters.

However the basic principle in the first post of the linked thread spells out the second* mistake that you have made.

OVO and Connexus were not acting together as one.
Once OVO had passed the matter to Connexus it was Connexus who were applying to court for the warrant of entry to replace the meter.
Your complaining to OVO would not stop Connexus proceeding with that.
Papers that you sent to Connexus would not even be seen by OVO.

*The first mistake I can see you have made is that any such legal documents would be addressed to the energy account holders who are in debt; their landlord has nothing to do with their debts.

A landlord (unless they are responsible for the energy bills)  has very little say in allowing entry with a warrant for such meter replacements.
If the tenant is in debt and the supplier follows the legal warrant process, the landlord is generally obliged to allow the entry.

Any response that you gave as their landlord to such documents would thus be meaningless, the documents were not intended for you, you had no authorisation to make a reply to them.
You have no official status in the matter whatsoever, it is not your energy account, it is not your debt, it is not your electricity meter, and so anything that you sent in reply to letters about them would be irrelevant, and would be ignored as such by both Connexus and if it got that far then ignored by the Court.

I'm sure that is not what you wanted to hear, but it is what it is and I don't see your complaint to the Ombudsman going anywhere.

There would have to have been repeated attempts by OVO to collect payment from the tenant before taking the next drastic steps, leading to forced installation of a prepayment meter. This suggests that the tenant had made no arrangement to pay during his absence (and probably prior to deployment elsewhere), so no Direct Debit as would be the norm for a credit account. That was the first error.

I don’t know whether it would be possible to obtain a limited Power of Attorney for the landlord to act on behalf of the tenant in his dealings with, say, utility suppliers and perhaps the local authority in respect of Council Tax. Citizens Advice may know. Foreigners are probably not aware of the perpetual costs (e.g. standing charges) associated with a utility supply, so happily imagine that no usage means no bill. 

I don’t envy ​@zigmonde in this unfortunate situation. I wonder if he’s contacted the USAF unit the tenant was a member of before being deployed. They must have a welfare section responsible for easing relations between the unit’s personnel and civil authorities et al.

A Voluntary Power of Attorney, can be used where/when someone is incapable of acting for themselves appoints someone else to act in their stead. It could be limited to financial affairs or apply to health issues or both.

An “Ordinary” PoA would be for a limited time (as opposed to a “Lasting” PoA which, as the name implies is open ended).

Of course the PoA has to be in place before you can act in someone elses stead.

I would imagine that as military personel they would not get much notice about being called overseas.

However I have to say that I just cannot see this matter being connected to the latest Iran situation.

It is taking months at the moment (and for the past several years) to get any case to court, and applications for Warrants of Entry, or applications for CCJ's as the case may be are no exception to that.

Nor me neither. That’s why I added the rider “[…] the tenant had made no arrangement to pay during his absence (and probably prior to deployment elsewhere),”. We do know, though, that the US military build-up in the Middle East had been going on for months, and it’s not unlikely that MPs would have been among the first to be deployed.

I wonder whether having a county court judgement against him could adversely affect his military career.