Why am I receiving bills for previous occupiers?

Hey @Rosita, 

@Nukecad has given a great response above regarding the different scenarios depending on to whom the letters are addressed. 

​The only thing I would add is that if you haven’t called and spoken with our Collections Care team yet, I recommend doing this. If you’ve only emailed us so far, the system won’t know which account to allocate the emails as you won’t have an active account. The Collections Care department can search using your email address and ensure this is updated. You can reach them by calling 0800 069 9831. They’re open Monday to Friday, 8am-6pm, and Saturday, 9am-2pm. 

I hope this helps you! 

Thank you kindly for the above responses. I have phoned on several occasions and emailed, plus emailing the complaints department. My husband I are just going around the same cycle. I note from other comments that I read on this site that others have had the same issues. I keep being told the issue will be resolved on receiving proof and then a few weeks later another bill arrives with my name on it. If anyone has any direct way of breaking this cycle, happy to follow advice. Thanks 

Unfortunately until they have done all that is required to able them to proceed to court and chase the actual debtor then they will have to keep doing it.

The process must be completed before they can apply to the court for a debt enforcement order..

At least if you know just why it is happening then you can stop stressing about it, and simply send the letters back to them.

~~~~~~~~~

It is actually a consumer protection measure -it is meant to ensure that a company can’t simply take someone to court for a debt without their knowledge.
They have to first give the debtor a chance to pay, and then warn them that they are actually going to court.

Even when the creditor knows that the debtor is no longer living where they are sending the letters to, and so is never going to reply, they have to go through that consumer protection process to be able to start court proceedings.

Even if they know that the the property is stood empty they still have to go through it all in order to be able to chase the debtor in court.

Even if you can prove that you are not the debtor they still have to go through it all in order to be able to chase the debtor in court.

So there is really nothing that you can do to stop that process, it will only stop when they have done what they need to do to be able to then take the debt/debtor to court for an enforcement order.
(Or if they find/get a new address for the debtor in the meantine, in which case they will have to start again, sending the required letters there).

.

Hey @Rosita,

I’d recommend calling the number for Collections Care I mentioned above and letting them know you’ve taken ownership of the property. You’ve emailed in the documentation needed, but you still receive letters from them. Once they have enough evidence that the debt isn’t yours, they can stop the letters from being sent to that address. If the letters come from a debt collection agency, it would be the same process and isn’t something you should worry about. I went through this when I bought my house a couple of years ago with an outstanding debt that was owed. It took a bit of time, but once they’re satisfied that person doesn’t live in the property anymore, they’ll look at other avenues or trace them. 
 
@Nukecad is correct, though. When it comes to debt, there are processes in place to ensure that debtors have a sufficient chance to address the balance before further action is taken.

…and possibly check with Experian or any of the big three credit reference agencies that your address isn’t associated with any other bad debts from its previous lives? 

Experian: https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html

TransUnion: https://www.transunionstatreport.co.uk/CreditReport/AboutYou

Equifax: https://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report.html

Please use these EXACT links to ensure you don’t get charged for something that’s free.

Hi, Here are the details of my issue:

I Moved In: 01 July 2024

Previous Tenant Moved Out: 30 June 2024

I successfully set up my OVO Account with a meter reading early July and have been paying ever since. I also told OVO in July about the letters for the previous tenant

Also Since then I have continued to receive OVO letters addressed to the occupier regarding the final bill for the OVO Account of the previous tenant that is completely different to mine. Now I see that it is being sent to Debt Collectors.

What do I do? Will this affect me? Will the debt collectors charge me? I am so confused and I have no Idea why OVO arne’t addressing this.

It isn’t that much of an unusual situation following a house move to get bills for a previous tenant/owner, usually just addressed to ‘The Occupier’.

There are legal reasons why it happens.

See this thread from a week ago where I explain why it happens and how to deal with it:

Hey @Ironwarrior887, 

I can see @Nukecad has already linked you to a helpful article where they explained this in more detail. It isn’t something that you need to worry about as you’re only financially liable from when you get the keys to the property. If you like I can merge this thread with the existing one so we can keep this all under the same area and try and offer as much advice as we can? 

Hi All, just after some advice from those of you in the know. My Mother is actually a British Gas customer and has been at her current address for more than 8 Years using BG for the whole time, recently ion the 1st November she received a letter addressed to the occupier with her House number but a completely unrelated Post code, the letter stated she owed £34, she immediately contacted them to say that there must be an error as she wasn't an OVO customer and the details on the letter with regards to address were wrong, it took some time to get through to the Customer Service Agent what the issue was but eventually it was left as “i will raise a complaint” and get the matter resolved, fast forward to today and another letter appears dated 12th November this time advising the debt had doubled and her details has been passed to Debt Recovery, now my mum is a 73 Year old widow and this has upset her a great deal so i have stepped in to try and resolve, so today i have spent over an hour on the phone to OVO which in the politest way i can needs an overhaul on their CS department as it was shocking to say the least, i once again reiterated the address was incorrect and that there was no link to OVO energy at this house, they looked at the account details and advised “Yes that's incorrect the account is actually linked to a different House Number at a different Postal code”, great that should be problem solved but no they then tell me that is should contact the debt recovery to resolve the matter which i then obviously replied why do i need to fix your problem? Its your error, you have admitted the details are incorrect so it should be easily fixable from your side, demanded to speak to a Manager twice and on both occasions got put on hold for 10 Minutes and the agent responded with the “Manager said” to which i advised i didn't ask you to speak to your manager i asked to speak to the manager myself, after a lot of back & forth i have now been told the manager will call me before 5:00 today to resolve, if I'm honest i don’t hold out much hope of that so was wondering if anybody had any advice? I have emailed a formal complaint with OVO and started a case with Citizens Advice but really this is such simple mistake on their part which should be foxed very quickly i cannot understand the issue.

The formal complaint that you have raised is the right way to go to get this wrong address issue resolved.

Although see also below about Royal Mail*

Did you email it to the complaints address given here?
https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

(Unfortunately that isn’t something that telephone support can do, they are limited to what the computer allows them to access, but I agree that they should have a channel to escalate such issues to someone who can put them right).

It does seem a bit odd that the support agent can see that different address on their side, but the letters appear to be being wrongly addressed, with the wrong house number.

*There again, as you say that the letters have a different postcode then is it Royal Mail who are at fault here by delivering them to the wrong address?
Maybe you should be complaining to Royal Mail?
(In the past I have had letters (not bills) where the number and street name were the same as mine, but the postcode was an entirely different town).

I would tell your mother that if she gets any more letters with that wrong postcode to simply write on the front:
RTS - Delivered to wrong postcode.
(RTS= Return to Sender).
Then get someone to put them in any postbox, or hand it to the postman/woman if she sees them.
(I’m aware that with the elderly simple seeming instructions may not always be that simple).

Just a few further comments, nothing really to do with the wrong address/delivery issue;
As these letters are addressed to ‘Occupier’ and not by name then that indicates to me that OVO do not know who us responsible for that bill, but it certainly isn’t your mother.
The amount being so low also suggest to me that the correct property is probably empty and it’s only a number of months standing charges that are being billed for.
So it looks to me that someone has moved out of somewhere and closed their account,OVO have opened a new ‘Occupier’ account to charge whoever is now responsible for the standing charge there, but don’t know who that is.
Again though, nothing at all to do with your mother.

Hi, Thank you very much for your reply that's really helpful, i will raise a complaint with Royal Mail too as you are right they should not be delivered with the wrong postcode. Its just a bit of a nightmare as it seems with everything at the moment you cant get to speak to the right people to get thing sorted. again thank you very much your help is much appreciated.

Just to note that when I was getting that mail with the wrong postcode I did some further checking myself.

I simply entered that postcode into Google and then looked at the Streetview for that postcode.
That showed me that the property there which would have had the same number had been demolished and was now just waste ground.
The letters had no return address on them, so I’m guessing that RM were just trying their best and thought that perhaps someone had used the wrong postcode so tried a street somewhere else with the same name?

Good idea, thank you i will try that too.

Hi ​@TracyJJ,

I’m really sorry to hear about your experience. It seems that one of our forum volunteers has already stopped by to offer some great advice here.

Hope you’re able to get this resolved asap. Please keep us updated with how you get on. 

Hi, we have had a phonecall this morning to advise all resolved they had this linked to the incorrect address,  fingers crossed thats the end of it.

Although i had received an email saturday trying to tell me that the electricity was linked to the wrong address but they did supply our gas! Again incorrect but hopefully this phonecall no means this all sorted.

Thanks all for your help.

You’re welcome, glad we could help!

Just one more thing. OVO will attempt to fix the records with the Credit Reference Agencies - namely Experian, Equifax and TransUnion - to set things straight and permanently remove any black marks that shouldn’t be there. However, they only do it once a month so you may need to wait a while. This usually results in stuff like credit scores being recalculated to put you back into the position you would have been in had this not happened.

Would you like me to tell you how to access the Statutory Reports for all three? There’s no charge for that and it doesn’t make you sign up for stuff you don’t want as it’s a one-shot thing.

Hi, thanks for your reply.

That would be great if you dont mind.

Thanks

Sure thing. I’d recommend you wait until after the 1st December before you do these so you get more accurate results, or possibly after 1st January 2025.

I will not earn commission or kickbacks* if you use these exact links and they won’t know where you found them from so it can’t be traced back to me either. You ONLY want the Statutory Report - nothing else.

Experian: https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html

Equifax: https://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report

TransUnion: https://www.transunionstatreport.co.uk/CreditReport/AboutYou

*Thanks to some outsourced sales reps from Scottish Power that I ran into a few weeks ago, I’ve chosen to be even more crystal clear about that because apparently that’s a thing I have to worry about now.

brilliant thank you.

No worries.

If there ARE problems on there as a result of this and you’ve already waited until after the 1st January, you can get those fixed. In the first instance, going via OVO’s Collections Team will always be best. They keep good records and if they know the black marks relate to something they already cancelled, they can force the fixes through again.

Failing that, you can raise a Dispute with the CRA(s) that is showing the issue and have them look into it. This option does take longer though, but can help if you have trouble talking to OVO about it. Definitely try OVO first whenever possible!