Ombudsman complaint upheld 5 years ago, still waiting on agreed solutions to be completed.

​@DBClark good morning, and a warm welcome to the OVO Forum community.

It’s a real shame to hear you’ve had a complaint running for so long, spanning two companies. I can only imagine how frustrating this has been for you. As for whether you have the longest running complaint, I can’t be sure, but for sure it must be one of the longest.

I hope this can all be resolved for you very soon. Have you been given a date for this assessment? OVO should also be able to re-estimate your previous usage based upon the readings provided from your new meter as well. Just to warn you - I’d be careful about refusing to pay. If you’ve been advised not to by the Ombudsman then it’s different, but I can’t imagine this would have been the case. I’d recommend setting up a payment plan as soon as you can. This will avoid falling further into the Collections cycle.

Keep us updated as to how you get on. We’ll help where we can on the Forum, however we don’t have any access to your account, so we don't have full visibility of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Thanks for reply, but unfortunately the only way I could get SSE or OVO to take notice was by refusing to pay. OVO won't take me to court as I have an Ombudsman case that was in my favour and they have failed to complete the three parts of the resolution. I have considered sueing OVO for financial losses via the small claims court in Scotland as that is where the account address is. Has anyone on the forum ever went down this route?

Dave

Morning again ​@DBClark,

I’d recommend speaking to our Collections team if they’re trying to contact you, as they’ll be able to set up a payment plan which will stop the Collections communications coming through. You’ve mentioned that you have been refusing to pay estimated bills, however if you now have a smart meter in place then your bills should be accurate now to meter readings since the installation was completed.

When the meter was exchanged, the engineer would have had to (if possible) take a final reading from the old meter. I assume this may not have been possible if the meter had failed. However, the engineer may have been able to retrieve the final reading from the internal memory of the meter once it was removed, even if the reading wasn’t displayed on the screen. Have you checked the statement that covers the date the meter was removed, to see if the removal reading was an actual reading? If it was, then the bill will stand. I’d really recommend checking whether this is the case or not.

Regarding legal advice - we’d recommend that you seek proper legal counsel.

We can answer questions on the Forum as best we can, however, when it’s relating to a complaint like this that relies on someone actually checking your energy account and bills, then this needs to be directed through our Complaints team. I’d recommend getting back in touch with your Complaints handler for an update.

I hope this is all sorted for you ASAP.​​​​​