Corgi Complaint: No heating or hot water?

Hi Emanuelle, Many thanks for getting back to me , all I need now is confirmation that an engineer will be visiting tomorrow December 7th, and the time . Thank You. is that correct that a customer can be left without heating and hot Water for 8 Weeks, and you have no obligation to fix within this time space.

Hey @russcolesmith,

Sorry for the issues you’ve had, this sounds really frustrating. 

We partnered with Corgi, so that our customers could receive discounted products and services. These are separate contracts. Your insurance cover will remain in place even if you cancel your energy contract with OVO. Your insurance is provided by Corgi, and any engineers that attend your property would be Corgi engineers. So for any specific queries relating to your Corgi insurance, it’s best to contact their customer services. 

If you’re unhappy with the service you were provided your best option would be to raise a complaint. 

Hope this helps. 

Hi Emmanuel I have already raised a complaint an engineer is due today , as of yet I have had no call regarding timings or any contact from OVO or Corgi, as per usual. My MP and OFGEM are now involved. 

Have you been in touch with Corgi about this engineer visit, @russcolesmith ? 0800 032 0657

Hi Corgi have contacted myself today. Thank You, its just the compensation to myself [the customer that needs resolving] Thank You for replying

The point of paying for cover is so that, if something happens, you get a prompt repair which you don’t have to pay more than the excess for. Right?

They left us without running water in a house with a baby in it for three days before we finally threw in the towel and called a private plumber, who was out within a few hours. Ovo did send an engineer out at one point, presumably so that they could rinse us for the excess, who did nothing. He told me he would have to hire a colleague to help him, which he would do that day, I mean that evening, I mean tomorrow morning, I mean tomorrow evening, etc. As for Ovo themselves, they sent multiple contradictory texts about what time they were going to attend, stringing us out and making us spend all day calling them to clarify when that would be. Apparently they couldn’t get an engineer out, which is odd given that once we just decided to do it ourselves, it was sorted within hours. 

I’m sure someone from Ovo is going to reply to this message sounding conciliatory and offering some kind of customer service. Well, I’ve been through your complaints department, who said they would be in investigate in a week and have finally got in touch after a month. They’ve given me lots of “sorry”s and “we’ll feed back to our communications team”s, and that’s it. Only after wasting more of our time on the phone expressing how little this does for us did they offer £30, which is half the excess charge which we had to pay for their useless engineer to take a look at it and walk away. 

The thing I want to come back to is: why are you supposed to pay for cover? It’s for quick repairs and for lower cost, right? Having this cover actively slowed down our repair and actively made us pay more, before you even get to the monthly payments.

Having Ovo cover is genuinely a lot worse than not having cover at all. Don’t touch them with a barge pole.

There can be many different experiences of insurance cover. For most it is a positive outcome but on ocassions sometimes things can go wrong which appears to have happened here. It seems there was some kind of communications breakdown that led to your repair not being handled quickly and correctly. I do hope the insurer puts this matter right for you and they will no doubt learn from the mistakes made to better serve customers in the future. 

For a less fatalistic reply than ​@DavidWSR offers, you might consider home emergency and or boiler cover as an add-on to your home building and contents cover? We have a great cheap deal with ours; no excess and on the three occasions we’ve needed ‘em (me driving a nail through a hot pipe - you only do that once! And the kids blocking the outside sewer with loo paper or worse- twice - grr!) they were fast and competent.  All the more so as they took ten minutes to find and fix the inspection hatch full of yucky slurry, whereas two vanloads of no doubt expensive sub-contractors from Thames Water took two hours to fail to even diagnose it before declaring- “not our problem guv”.    I can’t tell you my insurer’s name or OVO would have to kill me, but it starts with A and the rest means “Alive” in Latin…. Good luck (PS- let’s see how long this constructive, well-intentioned post last before it gets “moderated” out?)

Sorry to hear about your bad experience, I personally have never taken out breakdown insurance for my household device, Heating, TV, Washing Machine etc in the 30 years I`ve been married, we are bombarded with adverts that try to entice us into parting with are money. I have a Valiant ASHP that is 4 years old and of course you can pay to have it maintained and honour its warrantee but why when the only moving parts are the fans, compressor and the Central heating pump, I personally would wait for it to fail then get the pro`s in and save up my money.

I would like to think that OVO as a goodwill gesture will refund your excess and release you from your disappointing contract.

As Alexmac I also put a nail though my heating pipe 20 years ago and fixed it with a 2 pence piece, solder and a gas torch, I'm quite good with my hands and hate paying for anything that I can sort of fix,

I am glad your up and running 🙂 

Hey ​@morgan0704 

I’m sorry to hear about this, I reached out to the team about this who’d like to try and help.

I’ve sent you a private message, which you can view here. 

​@johnr64 I would like to think they would do that too, but they flatly refused. I asked them multiple times.

Sorry to hear this ​@morgan0704 - very frustrating. Is the complaint still ongoing, or have you accepted an offer of resolution now?

I accepted a bare minimum resolution offer for the sake of not spending any more time on this scam of a company, even if I’m going to be forced to spend more money on them until my contract comes up for renewal. I’m sure you and your colleagues will keep posting polite apologies on here which do absolutely nothing for me, as has been the way with everyone at OVO I’ve spoken to so far. If you’d like to actually help, please cancel my contract and reimburse me properly.

Sorry ​@morgan0704 but there’s nothing we can do to fix this further on the Forum, we don’t have access to customer accounts, and all complaints need to go through the correct channels.

Me: I have had a terrible experience with OVO customer service.
OVO Community Manager: I’m sorry, that sounds frustrating.
Me: can you help?
OVO Community Manager: no, go back to customer service, they were so helpful the first time.

Some more incredible evidence of why YOU SHOULD NEVER, EVER TAKE OUT COVER WITH THIS COMPANY.