Letters with wrong names coming to this address, what can I do?

Hi,

For the letters, please Return To Sender them as “Not at this address”. Do not open them - it’s illegal to open post addressed to someone else.

OVO does list a number, it’s at https://ovoenergy.com/help . However, Live Chat is faster if you use the Live Chat system on the same page.

Hey @kgr,

Sorry to hear this,

Do you know who your supplier is? I’m wondering if it account has now been moved to OVO Pay As You Go. Very odd that letters for a different address are being posted to you.

When you contact customer support it might be worth making a note of your meter serial numbers which can be found by the barcode on your meters or letters from your current supplier. As this may be something to do with a mix up of addresses on the national database. 

Keep us posted with how you get on. 

This was a hand delivered letter with no return address on the outside of the envelope, so I wouldn’t have known who to return it to without opening it first. Additionally it was already unsealed, so I didn’t actually need to open it. I didn’t scrutinise the outside of the envelope until after I’d already read the letter, and only then did I realise it was delivered to the wrong address.

In any case, this is all completely besides the point. A letter demanding payment was delivered to my property, and I believed the proper thing to do was contact OVO to sort it out, as I do not want a procession of debt collectors at my house demanding payment for something I do not owe.

But given my experiences so far, I’m disinclined  to pursue the matter any further, as I’m concerned that if I provide my real details to OVO then they will wrongly associate this debt with my actual account.

Clearly the best thing to do is ignore them. I don’t really have much choice in the matter anyway, as they are impossible to contact by any means, including phone or web chat (yes I tried the latter, and gave up after several hours of waiting).

Thanks for your input.

Hey @kgr,

That’s understandable, 

If the address on the letter is your neighbors, I’d advise delivering to them. The hand delivered letter wasn’t intended to go to your address in the first place. Maybe the person who delivered it did so as your neighbors weren’t in?

The name on the letter is also wrong. We’ve both lived here for 10+ years, and no one by that name has ever lived in either house during that time.

My neighbours are in their 90s. He has cancer and his wife has dementia. I’m not going to burden them with a final demand letter hand delivered to the wrong house, addressed to someone who doesn’t even live there.

This is OVO’s problem. If they turn up on my doorstep again, when I’m actually at home, I’m simply going to call the police and let them deal with it.

What do you want ovo to do? 

Hello My bill came on a wrong name 

Hi ​@Elenasurugiu477 ,

Please talk to OVO directly about this. Contact details are at https://ovoenergy.com/help .

Thanks

Hey ​@Elenasurugiu477 

Sorry to hear this, I’m glad one of our volunteers has already stopped by with some great advice as contacting the Support Team will be the next best step here.

Based on what you’ve said it’s hard to know the reason, and without access to accounts we won’t be able to know for sure. We’ve got a couple of different topics which may also be helpful:

Let us know how you get on.

I emailed richburns in December after receiving a letter and thought the problem was sorted as I was told richburns would email ovo about it. I was told Ovo has given richburns my address instead of the (similar) address of the person named on the letter - a few streets away, different post code. I don’t have an Ovo account.

Yet today I received a very rude visitor from richburns who deliberately trespassed over a 'no access' boundary with attitude and I had to order him off the property.

Is there anyone at Ovo who can sort this out? Apparently richburns will only take instruction from Ovo so Ovo needs to contact them directly to give them the correct address.

Unfortunately in situations such as yours you will need to deal with the debt collectors yourself if you want to stop them.

There are particular ways that you need to follow if you want to be sucessful at doing that.

For the way to be sucessful read, digest, and follow the advice here:

Hi, Nukecad. This doesn’t apply here as I already emailed richburns in December but they will only take an address correction directly from ovo. They appear to be acting on ovo’s behalf, rather than taking over the debt. So ovo needs to contact them and correct this to make the harassment stop.

​@emma123 Please read that article, it is written from years of experience of dealing with debt collectors and the advice works if you follow it.

In particular take note of the first part where it emphasises not to make the mistake of assuming that the supplier and the Debt Collector are working together. They are not and each is doing their own thing.

It's all well and good saying that the supplier should sort it out with the debt collectors and call them off - but from years of experience in real life that is not what happens (except rarely).

YOU need to threaten the DC that ypu will lodge a complaint of “Harassment” against them, that's the best way to get them to back off. That article linked above tells you how to do that in various circumstances.

Your complaint to the supplier about having the address wrong must be dealt with as the main complaint; but that is seperate to getting the DC to back off and stop harassing you.

YOU need to do both those things, and YOU need to do them seperately.

​@emma123 thanks for your post, and welcome to the OVO Forum. Welcome also ​@mafler13.

​@emma123 are the communications from the debt collector addressed to you personally, to ‘The Occupier’, or to someone else entirely?

ok Nukecad Thanks.I’ll wait for the complaints dept to reply first - should be within 2 days and that should be enough to sort it. Then I’ll follow the guidance in the article and make a complaint about richburns. 

Hi, Ben_OVO. They are looking for a specific person that I can’t mention here so I hope you can understand how I express this. I think the letter was addressed to ‘The Occupier or (the specific name of person)’ but with my address and postcode. I returned it with ‘not at this address’ and the correct address for the person . I also emailed a complaint to richburns that they had the wrong address in December. My address is very similar and nearby but I have zero connection with this person or with Ovo. I only know the name because of previous mix-ups due to similar address.

Hey ​@emma123 

Sorry to hear about all of this, sounds like you’ve also had similar situations with this, that definitely doesn’t sound good at all.

Do let us know the outcomes of the complaints and how this goes. Nukecad has made some really good points and left some really helpful advice, I hope you’ve found all of that useful. 

Do also let us know if you have any other questions at all.

Hi, ​@Abby_OVO

I contacted the Police and was advised to press Ovo to correct the address with the debt agency.

No response from complaints yet.

Just to quickly mention…

This sounds like it’s a civil matter so the police can’t get involved as they can only touch criminal matters. That’s the most likely reason your call was rejected.

We’re still watching this thread and will let you know if/when we have advice for you. Please bear with us while we catch up.