Pay As You Go Final Bill claiming I owe £1000 and OVO refuse to let me complain

​@pitchris 

you have to make the complaint, get the complaint reference number.. then allow 8 weeks for OVO to resolve it or attempt to before you can go to the Ombudsman.

I think if they refuse to let you make a complaint, you can still go to Ombudsman after 8 weeks.. but it’s proving you have tried to make a complaint since OVO won’t let PAYG customers do it via e-mail.

Just insist they log a complaint and give you a complaint reference number.

Ah, it just so happens that a device on my phone records every single conversation… I’m a journalist.

Just listened to the call from when I told them I’d moved out and the woman at the other end couldn’t understand my address, consequently the resulting statement was ludicrous. Seemingly I live in the quaint old Essex town of “taxini”.

​@pitchris ,

ah, sounds like your sorted then if it comes to that, but I’ll hope it doesn’t need to come to that for you.

It’s well documented, and as far as I can see no-one is barred from entering a complaint.
Want to make a complaint? | Our complaints procedure | OVO Energy
  
[Print-friendlier PDF:]
ovo-complaints-procedure-2023.pdf

Rang (twice) this morning. It is clearly an overseas service - Stephen Fitzpatrick no doubt still seeking to recoup the cash from his disastrous attempt in F1.

The first time, after giving the  basic details, the woman said that my account was closed and she would hand me to the collections team. She transferred me, I got a message about the line being open from Monday to Friday and then the line went dead.

The second time the woman kept disappearing to check things. Once again she said my account was closed and therefore she couldn’t access it. However, she said her supervisor would contact the relevant team on Monday and would call me back. Having persisted I was at least given an 8 digit complaint number.

Whilst waiting for her, and tired of the classical music playing down the line, I checked Ovo on Wikipedia and the company has a long history of overcharging and poor customer service.

We shall see.

​@pitchris ,

I forgot about all this part.

I was still with OVO when I was going through the start of my process, and this is what they did at the start of my process, said I had to deal with collections, they put me through to collections and I spent 2 days back and forth, collections saying they only deal with Pay Monthly Direct Debit customers, putting me back through to the PAYG team.. explaining it again to them, to them go back to “collections” to be told they only deal with direct debit.

Perhaps it is different if you have already have a closed account, perhaps collections do deal with it..

It was well over a year ago now so I’ve forgotten about the whole shambles of getting them to eventually let me make a complaint.

It sounds like your journey could take me on a trip down memory lane though!

But, it sounds like you’re starting to embark on much of the same journey I did. 
 

​@Firedog , you would think that no one is barred from making a complaint about anything, but after losing the will to live with calling them, I tried a web chat.. This is a screenshot of their response to me wanting to make a complaint about me disputing the debt and how they were treating me, despite me being on their PSR for various reasons. I’ve cropped it to protect personal information.

The conversation was ended by OVO, that being their last message to me on that web chat.

​@RW1987 

Clearly they have history.

I have no intention of letting this go.

Thanks. I understand your frustration.

Of course you can enter a complaint about anything a supplier does or fails to do. Their first line of defence is Support, who (statistics show) manage to resolve the majority of cases without them having to go further. This of course applies to the simple, known problems with solutions known to support staff. Yours wasn’t one of these, so the agent you were chatting with brushed you off. That Is a bit surprising, because being on the PSR means that any call to support should be fielded by an agent specially trained to help vulnerable customers whatever their problem.

A few years ago, OVO used to have an online complaint form with labelled fields for the information needed. I can’t find it now, so you have to try and guess what they need. I would email complaints@ovoenergy.com using the email address registered on my account. Emails from any other address will probably get lost. I would give the subject as COMPLAINT: A/c no. nnnnnnn and start the text with a list of every conceivable bit of pertinent personal information: name, a/c no., DOB, supply address, billing address, email address, phone number, MPAN, MSN …, then a chronology of what has happened so far. That shouldn’t be ignored.

​@Firedog ,

I did exactly that. 
 

This was the response, to give you a bit of background, because I was going around in circles with their call centre, refused by web chat..  and I was so worn down by this point, when I emailed them to complain on that e-mail address you gave (and according to their complaints web page, you call different telephone numbers for pay monthly to complain, but emailing, it doesn’t state it’s for pay monthly customers only) I asked for e-mail contact only as I was so fed up with being passed around their cell centre departments I realised I needed to build some kind of paper trail as evidence I had tried everything I could to make a complaint.. and this was the response from that exact e-mail address…

Again, I’ve cropped it to protect the agents personal info and mine..

Apologies for the highlighted OVO, the only way to find it amongst my screenshots was to search “OVO” and it highlights the word you have searched on the photo.

It’s all done to wear you down, to do exactly what you describe, feel like you are going around in circles, in order that you eventually give up.