Altering the customer name on an energy account is a change with major implications, both commercial and legal. The more complex a situation, the greater the scope for something to go wrong, so I’d guess that the two things are indeed related. This is hardly a life-or-death situation, though, so it may be best to wait until after the weekend when support teams will be more able to investigate the problem. 

This looks like a textbook case of Sod’s Law (slightly modified): Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, especially just before knocking-off time on a Friday.

"Firedog", not a helpful response. Doesn't address issues I raised as to why I'm getting the message 'we're working on a new website for you' and whether it's just me or others are being similarly affected. Also the problem started on Thurs not Fri and I don't see what difference the day makes, the staff get paid the same everyday don't they? And finally I don't appreciate the comment about it not being a life or death situation when the change to account holder name was because of my mother's death!

I’m sorry for your loss, but I think I need to step in here for a moment.

Are you logging in with an email address as the username, or a My OVO ID (a string of numbers)?

If it’s the latter, I’m afraid you won’t be getting into that online account anytime soon. It would mean the account in question is one of the few remaining accounts that still reside on the legacy billing system, for which the online portal was terminated a couple of years ago. It was done as a proactive measure to resolve security concerns - but the system was not hacked. I’m a cybersecurity professional myself so I’d know about it if that had happened.

The real reason is that OVO has a new billing platform because the legacy one ended up being terrible in general, and something like 99% of accounts have already been migrated - online services have been re-enabled for all of those. This has been a long project for OVO spanning nearly a decade and it’s close to being fully completed.

It’s possible the account you’re trying to access is one of the few remaining ones that haven’t moved yet. I cannot tell you the reason for this as I don’t work for OVO myself, but you will still receive bills and have a way to pay them provided valid contact details and payment details are available. If you set up a replacement DD with OVO, that will be used to pay bills automatically. Otherwise, the bills will give you the details you need.

Please be patient with the Support Team - while I appreciate this may be a difficult time, constantly emailing in will actually slow down responses because you may get pushed down the queue as someone has to read it again. Please wait for a response before emailing again.

Thank you for a helpful reply, from which I assume only I am affected and the screen I get telling me ovo are working on a new website suggests there is a system issue that needs to be addressed. I will wait and see who gets back to me first with an explanation and resolution but will escalate to CEO if nothing heard by 31/7.

In answer to your question, I am logging in (as I have always done) with email address as username plus password. Worked fine on morning of 24th before I spoke to Bereavement and Val changed account into my name from my mother's so whatever has happened seems to be traceable to either something Val did (or didn't do) or an inherent fault/issue with system causing display of meaningless/unhelpful message.

FYI this should have been a simple, easy change, nothing complicated. Val confirmed Account number would remain unchanged as would email and phone numbers (as I have always dealt with account, albeit account was in my mother's name). Also I have always paid account by DD from my bank account but apparently Val had to cancel Old DD in order to change name on account (profile page) but a new one was then set up with exact same details. 

Once I get to the bottom of what has happened and how I go about regaining access to my online account I will post update in hope it will help others in the future.

UPDATE: Matter finally dealt with satisfactorily by Olivia in Complaints team. Concluded that problem was as a result of bereavement team keeping same account number and just changing account holder name. Action taken was to close old account, open new account and transfer credit. Yes I've lost access to all history on old account but can at least access online account and app going forward.

​@Norman I hope you’re well and holding up ok.

I’m happy to hear that this is finally resolved - what’s now been done with the account is the way it should have been done in the first place - my apologies for the error in service here. I hope the new account all runs smoothly going forwards.

Thanks for letting us know this is now fixed, and best wishes to you and your family.