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OVO have lost my FIT account!?

  • 12 October 2023
  • 61 replies
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61 replies

Emmanuelle_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 7

Hey @mshealey,

 

I’m sorry to hear this, 

 

I’m not sure what the next steps are if a supplier isn’t able to deliver the Ombudsman remedy. It seems you have now been passed to a team that deal exactly with that.

 

I hope this gets sorted for you. 

Renewable Energy? Big Fan.
Jeffus
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +2

A quick update to say that OVO have mailed us to say they will not have set up our FIT account or paid us within the time frame set by the ombudsman. They have refused to give us any information about why there is a problem, what they are doing about it or a time plan for when we might get paid. 
On Wednesday our case will be passed to a new department which handles complaints which are outside the ombudsman date. 
 

Hi @mshealey have you let the Ombudsman know?

They can follow up with a supplier on your behalf.

The 28 days suppliers have is legally enforceable. I wouldn't recommend it apart from extreme cases but you can take ovo to court to enforce the ruling and the court will undoubtedly find in your favour. I would personally not do that in this case and ask the Ombudsman to follow up.

M
Rank
Userlevel 2

So 1st February and no payments yet received from OVO. They haven’t even paid us the £75 compensation agreed with the ombudsman. They manually calculated some of our payments on January 5th and said they would send out cheques. Now they say the cheques will arrive in mid February. (Our ombudsman agreed date was January 10th).   Have we got more chance of winning the lottery than getting paid by OVO?
 

Emmanuelle_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 7

Hey @mshealey,

 

I’m sorry to hear this,

 

We have to accept the Ombudsman decision, I advise getting in touch with them:

 

 

Were you assigned a specific complaints handler? If so, it might be worth emailing them as well advising the Ombudsman remedy hasn’t been applied. 

Renewable Energy? Big Fan.
M
Rank

Update on our missing FITS payment: I received a statement from OVO stating they owe us around £1300, which agrees with my calculations. They say they will pay us in four weeks. This does represent an improvement, but they have owed us this money since October. If I were a supply customer, I wonder how they'd react if I told them I would pay for my electricity in five months' time?

Emmanuelle_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 7

I’m glad to hear there is some improvement, please keep us posted @MLOwen.

Renewable Energy? Big Fan.
M
Rank
Userlevel 2

Hi all. Just to reply to Emanuelle

No progress to report whatsoever. The ombudsman is useless. Our representative does not answer his phone, doesnt expect OVO to do anything and when we press him, contacts OVO and reports back things like “OVO say your account fix is imminent”

Within OVO itself, we have a contact person, but she has no power to get anybody to do anything or to provide us with information.  She has assured us that we will get paid some payments in mid-February ( Valentine’s Day was yesterday lol) but she can’t  say how much  She also doesn’t answer her phone or emails.  Another member of her department told us we wouldn’t get paid anything until our account was set up 

 

We have asked several times about interest on the money they owe us from October but have not had a reply

 

OVO have still not sent us our “goodwill” payment of £75 awarded by the ombudsman in December.


So in short, OVO have not paid us any money whatsoever, they have not set up our account, they will not provide any information about what they are doing  

We have been trying to get this sorted since September (5 months)

The ombudsman is not doing anything to enforce their ruling  

We are very stressed 

Help anybody 

 

 

 

 

 

M
Rank

It's jawdropping,  isn't it. 

Have you thought about writing to the Money columns of The Times or Daily Telegraph? They are often good at sorting these things out. 

Emmanuelle_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 7

Hey @mshealey,

 

I’m really sorry to hear this,

 

I’ll get Forum_Support to reach out, please keep an eye on your private messages.

Renewable Energy? Big Fan.
D
Rank
Userlevel 1

Hi again,

I had a response from the FIT team on 15th November that read:-

“Hello,

Thank you for your email. I can confirm that your account has now been updated to reflect the correct meter details. I've used your photograph to verify the meter and you will not be due another meter inspection until (2025).

Unfortunately our read submission window is closed so we cannot add your reading. We accept readings in March, June, September and

December. You can submit your reading/s to us between the first and last days of those months.

Thank you for your help in getting this resolved.

Kind regards

The FIT Team”

Whilst this sounded more hopeful, it still did not answer the original questions I had asked and for all I knew, could just have been confirmation of setting up a new account without any reference to previous readings. I have therefore waited until December when new readings were due before making further contact, which I have done today.

Once I got through, I explained all the issues to a very patient and helpful lady who took my December generation reading, re-took my export reading from September and confirmed that it was the final export reading, confirmed all the meter ID numbers, confirmed that they required no further information on our new installation to continue making generation payments, sent me details to allow me to set up my bank account to receive payments and confirmed they have details of the previous set of readings submitted in July. This now appears to confirm that the transfer from SSE has been completed successfully and that all my outstanding queries have now been resolved! I now await payment in February as final confirmation that all my issues have really been resolved.

Whilst it is good to report that the issues appear to have been resolved, it really should not have taken so long or been so trying. Apart from the email quoted above, I have had no other response to my formal complaint - I would have thought that I would at least have had a follow up to see if all my issues had been resolved.

 

Just as a further follow-up, this morning we received 2 cheques from OVO (in 2 separate envelopes!), one for the export element and one for the generation element of the readings submitted las t September. There was no statement or other explanation with them, but they did match exactly with what was due from those readings. Perhaps the statement will arrive shortly - it always arrived a couple of days after the cheque when we were still with SSE.

We were not expecting payment for the September readings till February, having previously been told that the submission window had closed, so it’s nice that payment has come through earlier. It seems to confirm that our issures have really been resolved. Thank you for all the advice we have received on this forum.

I should not have assumed that with the receipt of these payments that OVO knew what they were doing and had sorted the issues! On 4/3/24 I again spoke to OVO, chasing the payments for the generation reading submitted on 4/12/23, I was told that a payment of about £525 would be made within 2 weeks which would include the payment for the readings submitted on 19/9/23 (which we had already been paid by cheque). I told OVO this and that our payment should only be £176.90 for the December generation readings.

Having heard nothing by 19/3/24, I phoned again to chase payment, only to be told that the support agent had tried to phone back after the call on the 4th. The call had not been answered, but no message left or any other furthe action taken. Apparently, before payment could be made, a meter inspection was required. Upon seeking confirmation that this was for the generation meter, I was told it was for the export meter - I had opted out of export payments on 19/9/23! OVO admitted they had the email I had sent confirming this, but had not actioned it. The agent raised a complaint on our behalf.

On 22/3/24 I received a statement from OVO for a payment of £653.88, comprising the generation payment of abot £350 for the readings submitted 19/9/23 (already paid once!) plus an export payment of just over £300 for readings off our export meter (correct serial number on the statement) for export from 1/7/2016 to 31/3/2017 - the current import/export meter with the serial no. as quoted was only installed in mid 2023! This payment duly arrived in our bank account on 26/3/24. I spoke to OVO on both the 22/3/24 and again today. On neither occasion have I been able to get any sensible answers as to what is going on. 

I am currently transferring my FIT registration to Octopus, having totally lost patience with OVO. I reckon I am due about £307 for the generation readings submitted in December plus the geneation up to the reading submitted for Octopus to take it over. Whilst at least we have been paid more than we are due, it is not good having cash sitting in our account that does not belong to us. I just want to get it sorted and get OVO out of my hair.

M
Rank

Sorry to hear you are still having so much trouble. We were finally paid what we were owed, just before the four weeks were up. For what it's worth, Eon are paying us within a week of us submitting our readings! 

This is goodbye and good luck from me!

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