My father passed away recently, and the account was in his name. Contacted support and asked for the account to be switched into my Mum’s name. It appears that this is done.
I have Power of Attorney for her, so I’ve provided my LPA letter and that seems fine too. Changed the registered email address to mine. Problem was that I had a dormant OVO account as I used to be a customer until about 3-4 years ago. So when I logged in it automatically selected my home address, and not my Mum’s.
Support tell me that they’ve now deleted the old account, and I now have a working OVO id and password - the problem is whenever I log in, whether from my laptop or my phone, I get a message “We're working on a new website for you”.
Phoned support 2 weeks ago and was told it was a problem linking my email to the account. They said they’d raise a ticket for software support to fix this, but I never received any notifications.
Phoned support again last week and got exactly the same reply, and still no notifications. Told me that software support was ‘still working hard’ to resolve it, but I’m not sure I believe it.
Still getting the same message now. I hesitate to spend another 40 minutes waiting to be told the same thing again. Can anyone here help?
Best answer by Ben_OVO
Updated on 29/08/25 by Emmanuelle_OVO:
Morning @billw and welcome to the OVO Forum.
My condolences to you and your family, I hope you’re all holding up ok. From personal experience I know how frustrating it can be getting all accounts for energy etc in order following a bereavement, and I hope on the OVO side this is resolved quickly for you.
From the sounds of things, the bereavement process has been carried out internally if the account has been swapped into your Mum’s name now. I’m sorry to hear about the login issues. My recommendation would be to log a complaint about this. You’ll then have one dedicated Complaints Handler who will see everything through until it’s resolved.
It sounds like your email address may still be linked to an old account somewhere, but I can’t be sure. From my own experience working in customer-facing for OVO in the past, I know that there are a multitude of different login issues, some of which can be solved by an Advisor, some of which need to go to our Tech team to fix. They can be quite complicated, and hopefully if you raise a complaint this will be looked at by someone with the experience to get it fixed. If they can’t fix it themselves, it’ll need to be dealt with by our Tech team, and for this there wouldn’t be an exact timescale. if there’s already a case with our Tech team, then your Complaints Handler would be able to tell you the reference (it will normally be a ‘CCSD’ reference number).
My condolences to you and your family, I hope you’re all holding up ok. From personal experience I know how frustrating it can be getting all accounts for energy etc in order following a bereavement, and I hope on the OVO side this is resolved quickly for you.
From the sounds of things, the bereavement process has been carried out internally if the account has been swapped into your Mum’s name now. I’m sorry to hear about the login issues. My recommendation would be to log a complaint about this. You’ll then have one dedicated Complaints Handler who will see everything through until it’s resolved.
It sounds like your email address may still be linked to an old account somewhere, but I can’t be sure. From my own experience working in customer-facing for OVO in the past, I know that there are a multitude of different login issues, some of which can be solved by an Advisor, some of which need to go to our Tech team to fix. They can be quite complicated, and hopefully if you raise a complaint this will be looked at by someone with the experience to get it fixed. If they can’t fix it themselves, it’ll need to be dealt with by our Tech team, and for this there wouldn’t be an exact timescale. if there’s already a case with our Tech team, then your Complaints Handler would be able to tell you the reference (it will normally be a ‘CCSD’ reference number).
Well, sending in a complaint got me a phone call within minutes!! I was very impressed with the fast reponse and the promise of an escalation, and I mistakenly thought someone would fix the problem. Unfortunately we’re 4.5 days on and I have heard absolutely nothing more. I’d quite like someone to tell me how long it’ll take, or why this is so serious an error that has taken several weeks and might still take a few more. Surely they could give me a new account in a lot less time?
I’m glad you received a call, but I’m sorry to hear that it’s all gone quiet since. Were you given a complaints reference number? And did they give you any info as to what the issue was / what was being done to fix it?
I do have a reference number, so I’ve emailed them again for more news. There’s no information on what the issue is.
To be fair, the complaints handler did say it might take a few weeks, and things might go a bit quiet. In my email I mentioned that this may make it more difficult to set up a new direct debit (They cancelled the last one when I informed them of my father’s passing, even though I told them not to!)
@billw it sounds like this has been raised to our Tech (IT) department, which does mean it could take a few weeks.
In the meantime, you should be able to set up a Direct Debit over the phone by calling our Support Team. If you receive a bill you’ll know because you’ll get an email telling you your bill is available to view. If you don’t have any online access to view the bill, then you can ask Support to email you a pdf copy.
I hope this helps, and I hope this gets resolved soon for you! 🤞
I do have a reference number, so I’ve emailed them again for more news. There’s no information on what the issue is.
To be fair, the complaints handler did say it might take a few weeks, and things might go a bit quiet. In my email I mentioned that this may make it more difficult to set up a new direct debit (They cancelled the last one when I informed them of my father’s passing, even though I told them not to!)
Thanks for your continued interest!
@billw
I'm sorry to hear about your loss but I thought I would pass on a bit of information on cancelled direct debits which has happened to me recently for the same reason.
If the account was in your father's name then if you apply for Grant of Probate then that triggers the freezing of the account and all direct debits, standing orders and other payments are automatically cancelled by the application.
I'n my case I set up another account to continue the DD for the time that this will be needed and I assumed control of the account.
Well, 4 weeks on there is still no resolution to this. I’ve just emailed the Complaints team again which will hopefully get a fairly fast response as it did last time (even though it didn’t resolve the problem.)
@Peter E we’re still some way off getting grant of probate. All I did was ask OVO to change the name on the account to my mother’s, and to NOT stop the direct debit as that would continue coming from the same bank account. Maybe they just forgot to read the word NOT.
Firstly, I just want to say I’m really sorry to hear that these issues are still going on at such a difficult time for you.
Secondly, if the Direct Debit was left set up, but the name was changed on the account, this can cause issues with the Direct Debit. It’s actually better to have the name changed, and the Direct Debit cancelled and reinstated (which would normally be done on the same call). If the Direct Debit has now been stopped it might be worth you calling into the complaints department and asking to speak to your Complaints Handler to get this all sorted, and get a further update on the online account issue.
@billw Sorry to hear of you ongoing issues at this time.
You only have to APPLY for Grant of Probate for the account to be frozen. Probate can take quite a few weeks. When we applied we had three letters in the first week to say the DD had been cancelled. There was no conversation with any of those companies. One of those was OVO. I called the companies in turn to make alternative arrangements which they were happy to accept. We were advised to set up a separate account from which ongoing payments could be made but actually we just used our own account and kept a record of payments which would be reconciled later on from the Estate.
The other two accounts were the phone line, now cancelled and the credit returned to us and the Council Tax. The rules say they are able to suspend the payments for an empty property (with or without furnishings) for six months after Probate has been granted which happened a few days ago. You send a copy of the Probate to the Council. I believe Grant of Probate can take up to nine weeks after the application.
I hope that helps at this difficult time but it does get better.
Peter
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