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.
When I try to log into my oneline account, I get the following :
We're working on a new website for you
We're very sorry that you can't log in to your account at the moment. We're working on fixing things and will be back in touch in the near future with an update.
In the meantime, you'll continue to get your bill every month by email or post as usual.
This is not a problem that I have seen posted anywhere for some months and I have no idea how or if it was sorted for those who did report it on the FB pages I belong to.
Have you ever been able to log into your online account?
Was your account previously transferred from SSE to OVO?
It's been a while since someone reported that particular message but I believe that most/all of the previous instances we have seen were account transfers from SSE that hit a snag.
Moved to my new place last August and the account was moved too (been OVO customer for years, and when SSE existed), although the details ended up being incorrect (PAYG instead of paying monthly).
Whilst the correct billing type has been fixed, online access hasn't and it's It's been like this since.
I’m sorry to hear about this issues you’ve had, have you reached out to the Support Team about this?
Unfortunately we don’t have access to accounts here at the Forum so we can’t be entirely sure what the root cause for this will be. We have seen similar previously while we transferred our older customers over to our newer system so I wouldn’t have expected to see this if you only joined in August.
I would recommend reaching out to the Support Team so they can take a look and see why this is happening and if they can then help move a fix forward.
Hi, sorry for not posting how this was eventually resolved. It was a long time ago now, so I don't remember the specifics, except that it was some anomaly in how my account had been set up to manage two homes at once: My own (though I had moved to another supplier so the OVO account was dormant), and my mother's (because I'm managing hers for her under power of attorney). There was something amiss in the settings and it took a very patient complaint handler about 40 minutes to solve, going backwards and forwards between different departments. With all kinds of security checking, passwords, authorisations to resolve, I remember being very impressed with this person's knowledge of how the system worked and their patience to resolve it. The account has worked fine ever since.
...However I should add that this original message about 'We're working on a new website for you and we'll be back in touch with an update' - was very confusing and unhelpful. Chiefly because there was no new website and no-one got back in touch with me. Initially I waited weeks while this message persisted, occasionally calling in but getting responses that may have been well meaning, but either gave incorrect advice or suggested I hang on for a bit longer. Possibly because the 'new website' message confused the call handler too. I'm a bit surprised to see that it still appears. A message which reads 'We have a problem with the setup of your account, please call our registrations helpline' - might be more helpful.
I think you’re seeing that because there really was an old billing system back in the day that ran under the paym.ovoenergy.com domain. It was codenamed Apollo by OVO’s team (the underlying platform was Gentrack if memory serves) and it was basically the system OVO initially chose in the early days to run the show with.
However, it didn’t work and OVO eventually dumped Apollo to build their own system in house - the one that’s known as Orion is the custom built billing platform which is maintained by OVO’s sister company Kaluza and runs under the account.ovoenergy.com domain (formerly under the smartpaym.ovoenergy.com domain). The codename is officially Orion, but it’s sometimes called Kaluza Orion or the New Billing Platform depending on who you ask.
Pretty much all of the above is easy to verify - it’s well documented in the OVO Forum history if you were interested in digging through the archives.
It’s likely your old (now closed) account was hosted on the legacy Apollo billing system which would have sent you to that domain - which now just shows a holding page which is what you were seeing. The online portal for it was shut down a few years ago due to security concerns (apologies, but I don’t have the exact reason as OVO needed to keep it secret) and the system was basically left running in “headless mode” while the transition away carried on behind the scenes. From my understanding, Apollo has now either basically been switched off completely, or OVO is pretty close to doing so. If you left OVO before your account migrated to Orion, you wouldn’t have had an online account on the new system and that’s probably where the issue came from - especially if you are managing another account on the same email address that is running on Orion.
The most likely fix was that whoever you spoke to was able to get your email address disconnected from the old (closed) account which usually forces the system to fix the redirect logic to force it to do what you expect - actually let you in to the active account. OVO usually has no problem with this when the old account is closed and settled (and has been for some time) since there’s no real need to keep it linked anymore.
Not an excuse to not have had this resolved sooner, but I hope this at least helps to explain what (probably) happened.
Thanks Blastoise, all that seems to fit very well with what happened with me. I did wonder why they didn't simply delete my old account and just let me set up a new one, especially since it was dormant. Much appreciated.
No worries. It may sound strange, but OVO has to keep the old account around for roughly six years after you close it, mostly for various legal reasons like Statute of Limitations in case you sued them (six years is the limit in England and Wales or five years in Scotland), regulatory reasons (Ofgem is pretty serious about it), record keeping and some other financial/tax stuff. After that, they can purge it outright so I suspect this problem will eventually get fixed.
It’s just something they’re stuck with right now - they even have the archives of all the old SSE accounts that existed when OVO finally pulled the plug on those systems. That stuff is all backed up but no-one looks at it unless they need to, such as to fix any historical billing issues or complaints, you probably get the idea there. It’ll eventually get purged but for now it’s just one of those things they can’t fully get rid of.
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