I left Ovo on the 30th March and I still haven't received my credit on my account. It will not allow this online and now the balance is oddly going down every few days even though I've now switched providers.

I've sent several emails but due to the current issues I've had no reply and it's been longer than 6 weeks since leaving.

Any help/ideas?

Hello @Luketommo 

I would give the office a call to see if you can get an immediate answer. 

The best number to get in touch will be: 0330 303 5063

Let us know how you get on

This is quite normal @Luketommo And the timescales are not unusual either.

Have a look at this other Topic. The link will take you to a similar discussion about a month ago.

You have no recourse to OVO. It is your New Supplier who handles all aspects of the switching process.

Thank you, spoke to someone at OVO and they managed to fix it

Good to hear this was sorted, @Jintysbhoys 

Can I ask what the delay was in your case? Also I’ve made @Transparent’s comment the ‘best answer’ to help others who are in your position 

Who did you switch to btw? 

No idea, can only think it’s something to do with the two companies sharing information. Sorted now though, just didn’t want to keep on paying two lots of energy companies

It’s impossible to sort online, much easier calling them 

Avro  took over my energy supply from 30 th October. My account has since been debited at the end of October by Avro and in November by OVO. Why am I still being charged by OVO? How on earth do I sort this out when I can’t get hold of anyone at OVO? There seems no way to email directly or god forbid actually speak to a real live person!

Hi there @SussiB ,

I’m sorry to hear you’re struggling. I’ll try to offer some advice and help out as best I can. As a volunteer on this forum, I can’t access your old account however, so I’m unable to see exactly what’s going on.

I’d like to ask a few questions if that’s OK. These help us to get a better idea of where you’re at, which makes it easier to help. Please withhold any personal info however.

• Was your OVO account in credit when you switched?
• Did you have Dual Fuel with OVO, or Electricity only?
• Did you receive a Final Bill from OVO after you switched?

It sounds possible that you might have had a Final Bill from OVO to pay off any remaining charges. If that is the case, you shouldn’t receive any further bills from OVO after that one, but please don’t make any changes to your Direct Debit just yet.

In terms of getting in touch with OVO, you can find all the options over here. Live Chat tends to be the fastest and most reliable one and tends to be easier than phoning in. It should reopen on Monday morning. I’m going to also call in @Tim_OVO just in case.

When you get in touch, please let the agent know that you asked for help on the forums and provide a link to the thread. They’ll be able to pick up on what’s been said here and it often speeds things up.

Please do keep us posted here too and we’ll do our best to help you out.

Nice one, @Blastoise186 

@SussiB I’m going to make an assumption that the issue is what’s described in this topic thread. We’ve advised:

When you switch away, your new energy supplier sends us your final meter readings so we can send your final statements. If your OVO account is in credit, we’ll send a refund straight to the bank account your Direct Debit used to come from within 7 working days of receiving your final bills. This process usually takes up to 6 weeks which is an industry time-frame. See our guide on switching suppliers for more info. 

You can cancel that Direct Debit, either way hopefully everything's billed and refunded before the next one!

I left OVO on October 8th 2020. I have waited 2 months for confirmation of this and a refund from OVO. 
OVO have taken two further payments totalling £240 and I am now in credit to the tune of over £350. 
After the 2nd payment was taken I rang OVO. The advisor cancelled my DD and said no further payments would be taken. He said he would submit my claim for a refund as a priority. That was December 8th but I’ve still not heard anything from OVO. I wonder if they would wait as long if I owed them money?

Come on OVO your own website states that accounts will be settled within 6 weeks. Getting impatient now!

Good morning @DK1083 ,

It sounds as if your new supplier hadn’t completed the switch process properly, meaning OVO might not have had the closing readings on time. This is one of the more likely reasons for the delay.

Since the Direct Debit has now been cancelled, you shouldn’t see any further payments taken from your bank account by OVO. However, this does also mean you can’t receive the final refund via the fast route.

OVO should be sending you a cheque in the post soon for the full amount of leftover credit, please keep an eye out for it. But it might take a while because Royal Mail gets swamped with a lot more post than usual over the Christmas period.

Just one correction to @Blastoise186 - that refund should be to your bank account, @DK1083 

Have a look at this topic (I moved your post over to it) as it’s very similar. The ‘best answer’ has more info. 

I am having the same issue with OVO and have had to resort to writing to the Chief Executive this evening to resolve.

Hi there @Tan ,

I’m afraid writing to Stephen is unlikely to help much there. If you’ve switched away from OVO, it’s up to your new supplier to handle complaints like this for the most part - and it’s also up to them to complete the entire switch process so that OVO can release a final refund.

However, in terms of shutting down the old Direct Debit with OVO, that is something OVO can help with - especially if it kept taking payments when it should have stopped (you can also get these refunded of course). If you haven't already, please reach out to the Support Team and they can look into the matter. If you’ve tried that and had no luck, I’d suggest pinging the Complaints process to get this sorted. Writing to Stephen will cause the complaint to reach OVO, but Stephen is required to simply forward them to the complaints team as they’re more capable of handling these. It’s faster to go directly to the right places.

If that still fails after eight weeks and reaches Deadlock, the Energy Ombudsman can then step in. It’s unlikely that you’d need to go this far however.

Hi 

I somewhat don’t agree with you response.

my new supplier has confirmed that you my old supplier have accepted my readings and the transfer happened on 22 February they are not responsible for refunds unless it happens in their company but it is ovo who took my money not my new supplier! So you have had more than enough time to calculate my closing balance which has been done where I was £8.65 in debit but somehow you increased my direct debit and took £140 on 3 March.  I have a right to contact your chief executive and I would hope his team would do what most chief executive’s office do and follow up on the complaint. I have worked for many chief executives in my time.  I know my rights. I will continue to chase through the correct channels until this is sorted.

PS I will not be shutting down the direct debit until I am refunded as I will not give you the further excuse you have to send a cheque giving a further delay,but also I would not be expecting you to collect anything further from my bank account when you are not entitled.

PS reading your reply again I have already contacted your support team in the first instance via email, the reply I got was useless and took no action by them.

Hi @Tan .

I’m sorry things aren’t working out, but please bear in mind that this forum is volunteer led and I’m only a Forum Volunteer rather than an OVO Employee. You may also wish to review the House Rules quickly.

One thing I do know however, is that @Tim_OVO has experience in OVO’s complaints team before he joined the forum, and he’s previously confirmed that complaints sent to Stephen Fitzpatrick are generally forwarded to the Support Team and Complaints Team, as they’re better placed to handle these. While contacting Stephen anyway would most likely trigger some kind of response from OVO, it’s more likely to slow things down because Stephen would have to manually forward your complaint over to the right team before it can be acted on. It’s generally a lot faster to contact the right person or team first time, rather than someone who can’t help.

This is the same position that many CEO’s of a lot of companies take these days, because it would otherwise result in the CEO being constantly bogged down with too much of a workload. There might be some cases where a CEO may decide to personally intervene and resolve something themselves, but it’s more of an exception.

If you’ve already exhausted OVO’s complaints process and hit Deadlock, the Office of the Energy Ombudsman would be your best bet. OVO does a great job of resolving complaints before it gets to this stage, but if needed the Ombudsman can step in. I believe OVO is also pretty quick to resolve the outcomes from that process as well.

Yep some really good advice from @Blastoise186. Still, what a rubbish situation you’re in, @Tan - I’m sorry to hear this. 

I have one really quick thing to add to the advice above: if you cancel the Direct Debit, this won’t prevent a bank refund. All this will do is prevent any further (over) payments. That said, hopefully whatever the reason for this delay will be sorted before next month’s payment! It goes without saying that any penny not gone to your usage will also be refunded. 

I have every faith our Complaints team will be on it like a scotch bonnet and you’ll be fully up to speed with what’s gone wrong and what we’re going to do about it! 

At my previous address, I was set up with OVO for both Gas and Electric, there was a smart meter though the Gas had stopped reporting for some reason. Anyway, almost 3 months ago I moved into a new address and signed up to OVO there too, as I had no issues with them. The old address and the new address are both on my account and I can switch between them.

The thing is, I don’t want to, the old account should be closed as I’m no longer living there and it’s been over 6 weeks. The account is showing in credit, but I can’t make a refund request as it keeps saying there’s an error.

I tried to go through the online chat but they didn’t seem too smart when it came to fixing problems, the best response I had was ‘it can take up to 6 weeks after moving’. Well, it’s been over 6 weeks. 

Can the credit be moved into the new account and the old one closed?

Hi @GazH71 ,

If the old account is being closed, the only way to get money out is via the Final Refund back to your bank. There’s no method to transfer a balance from one account to another.

Have you definitely used the Moving Home tool in MyOVO while looking at the old account? That’s the fastest way to terminate the account.

I definitely used the Moving Home option, it looked like it was going to close and everything was going to be fine, but I checked in to see what was taking so long and was in credit. Whenever I try to do anything with the account now I get the message, "A problem has occurred. We’ll take a look at this shortly, in the meantime please try refreshing the page.".

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Ok, in that case try calling 0330 303 5063. Someone should be able to fix this.