Hi @DesHarcus ,

You might find it easier to use Live Chat in this situation. Try it via https://ovoenergy.com/feedback .

Just a heads up - you can’t go direct to the Ombudsman. I’ll drop a link to the details of what you might want to try first though as you might find a faster solution: https://ovoenergy.com/feedback .

After a lot of messing around, I got through on the phone and sorted it. Here's my review. Just to add. They request details of my account over another platform, despite confirming in a reply that they know who I am. It's ludicrous. OVO website and app needs serious attention because despite feedback for years, nothing changes so their promises are empty ones.

https://uk.trustpilot.com/users/56423ec40000ff0001e9b6e3

Perusing the posts on refunds here, it seems smart meters only exacerbate the problems getting refunds. Ovo need to seriously smarten themselves up here because I see a massive exodus of unhappy customers.

Huge bills and dissatisfaction with smart meters.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

OVO compared to Octopus. It's a no brainer. Enough is enough now.

https://www.energy-review.co.uk/guides/octopus-vs-ovo/

You know, posting your Trustpilot profile makes it incredibly easy to review your activities over there. It seems most of your reviews are negative which paints an… Interesting… Picture. In particular, I noticed several cases where it seems you didn’t read the rules before trying to initiate a transaction - for those I’m afraid you only have yourself to blame.

In actual fact, even moaning about a shop that just ran out of stock or going mad at a bank because you triggered Anti-Fraud mechanisms designed to protect you from scammers seems a bit harsh to me…

I should mention a couple of things about that:

• Threads like this one perform VERY poorly on the OVO Forum - they just sink and get buried forever
• You appear to be a serial complainer to tons of places over the last eight years, so I’m not sure if you even want to be helped?
• Trustpilot is no longer the powerful source it once was - basically every business rating on there gets tanked eventually so it becomes a game of “Who hasn’t been obliterated by review bombers yet”
• Just because you’re a “Verified User” on Trustpilot, doesn’t mean a business on there knows who you are - Trustpilot doesn’t keep the ID Verification stuff for very long (it gets deleted after seven days) and doesn’t let businesses other than itself access that data at all so you will still be asked to verify yourself to each business individually
• ID Verification/Verified User stuff on Trustpilot ultimately just says that you’re not a spambot. That’s basically all it does - it does NOT give you some special privileges over everyone else
• OVO has every right to ask Trustpilot to investigate rulebreaking reviews - including potentially fake ones - and Trustpilot in turn has every right to challenge you to prove your experience was genuine. Per their Terms of Service, if you fail to respond to their team, Trustpilot is allowed to knock your review offline until you get back to them - by using the platform, you agreed to those rules
• You can choose to ignore requests from Trustpilot to fix your reviews get them knocked offline as a result, or you can choose to fix them and get them reinstated. It’s totally your choice - but rulebreaking reviews will not be reinstated if you don’t fix them

As for that other review site? I smell a rat - it seems excessively biased towards just one supplier… Very convenient that…

Perhaps it’d be more balanced if it… Ooohhh… I dunno… Did comparisons for other suppliers against each other on the main menu (all others are buried away which is just deceptive and stupid) and didn’t spam Octopus referral links all over the place?

If you want help, then please by all means ask for it. But if you’re just here to rant, then this thread isn’t a Question and can’t be answered.

IIRC I seem to recall you mentioned about getting your own meter earlier, which has since been deleted. Let’s just say that while doing so is technically allowed… It really isn’t worth it. You’re talking several hundred pounds upfront - possibly £1,000+ - just to source and install the thing, then 5,000 years of red tape getting it approved so that you can get bills from it.

Why do that when suppliers offer one for free?