Scam Facebook Page OVO Customer Services

  • 3 September 2023
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I was contacted by this fake OVO Facebook page yesterday purporting to be OVO Customer Services.  They obviously trawl the internet looking for OVO customers who have been posting about problems with billing etc.  They pose as an OVO advisor who is there to sort out your problem and begin by telling you that they need to verify your account using your bank details, name, telephone numbers, email address etc.  They then try to lure you into a system they tell you that is designed to test your identity using all of your card details.  I did not follow this but instead contacted my bank and advised them of the situation.  I think it’s important that OVO are made aware of this as with so many elderly and vulnerable people there is huge potential for fraud here.  Hopefully someone on here will know how to pass this to the right place within the OVO organisation.

 

 

21 replies

Blastoise186
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Hey @stacer !

Just so you know, I’m one of the forum volunteers here.

Thanks for the report. Can you grab us the URL for the profile in question and post it here please? Normally, we don’t allow such links here, but I’ll authorise it this time (and I’ll take responsibility for this one) to help get this escalated. The Profile URL will make it easier for OVO to locate the exact profile you came across.

Once we’ve got the URL for the profile, getting this flagged to the right place is a piece of cake.

If you’d rather not share openly, feel free to fire off an email to forum@ovoenergy.com and the forum moderators can help you out.

Thank you!!!

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way!
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There is no URL that I can see but you can find it by going into Facebook and searching Facebook using OVO Customer Services:

You will see that they have photoshopped OVO advertising material into the page to give it a look of authenticity.

Blastoise186
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Gotcha, works for me.

I’ll let the forum moderators know immediately.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way!
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Since you are on here, if you look at my previous post, you will see that my previously resolved problem over SSE/OVO transfer which you offered me advice on, having been resolved has now reared its head again!

Blastoise186
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I did see that, but Jeffus got there first. The moderators will probably respond to it when they can, but I think we can both agree that this particular scammer is likely to be a somewhat higher priority to shut down.

Thanks for flagging this up though. Leave it with us and we’ll make sure this gets sent to the right team at OVO. I think I already know which one it’ll be...

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BPLightlog
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Hi @stacer hopefully you’ve already reported this via Facebook as they also have a duty to close down false/scam pages. 

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I will do that but thought it was important to draw OVO’s attention to it first

Blastoise186
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OVO can probably also hit them for Trademark/IP Infringements - which is a pretty much 100% guaranteed takedown under Facebook policy.

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BPLightlog
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It looks to me like there are several of these pages 

You can usually tell by looking at number of followers and start date for the page. 
Another reason why I tend not to use social media these days and something which is very difficult for companies to keep on top of

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Blastoise186
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Well, they won’t last much longer. :P

I think it’d be worth the Social Media Team doing a regular sweep going forwards and having a “nuke-on-sight” policy to immediately get fake pages taken down as soon as they’re discovered.

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Now I have received this from Twitter (X) in fairness to the customers when the response to customers complaints is not good, particularly when the sums of money are large people are desperate to find a solution providing an easy target for scammers like these.  When I speak to customer services again tomorrow, I shall be raising this, in writing and if the complaint ends up with the Ombudsman, they will get to know as well.  Not a good advert at all.

BPLightlog
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Hi @stacer , with Twitter it is more difficult to distinguish as their blue tick doesn’t necessarily indicate a verified account (it used to). 
The authentic OVO channels do ask for those details via DM to validate your account if you’re enquiring about anything to do with that

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Unfortunately, OVO do not allow DMs so it’s difficult to say in this case.

BPLightlog
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Unfortunately, OVO do not allow DMs so it’s difficult to say in this case.

Their official channels are listed on the website 

Twitter  -  https://twitter.com/OVOEnergy

Facebook  -  https://www.facebook.com/ovoenergy

and you can dm to either of those 

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I have tried to send messages as you can see but it just locks up my account and doesn’t send 

 

S
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I think I have found the problem, it only accepts DMs from followers so I have followed and this time sent successfully.

BPLightlog
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You might want to edit that earlier post @stacer , this being a public (open ) forum

Use the three dots below the message (rhs)

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Thanks, I didn’t think of that

Emmanuelle_OVO
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Thanks @stacer,

 

I’ve raised this internally to our social media team. 

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That’s good, for people like myself in my 70s and not ver social media savvy, the potential for us to be scammed and robbed of our savings is a very real threat.  These criminals latch on to postings from people desperate for help with their billing problems and lure them in with promises that people want to hear.

Blastoise186
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Yes, I’ve heard far too many horror stories about those scams. It’s one of the reasons I’m very on the ball with detecting ANY attempt to pull off such tricks on this forum - and they all get shut down rapidly as well.

I’m highly confident that the Social Media Team will fix this. I actually met them some time ago as they used to also be forum moderators for a while.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way!

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