Refused access to meters, and OVO unable to contact the building management
Hello,
I wondered if someone could help me out. Excluding University, this is the first time I have lived away from home and it’s been around 5 months, so please excuse my naivety around this topic.
When we moved into our building, we were unsure of how to access our meter, eventually we were told the readings were taken every month and placed on a communal notice bored - we do not have the code to access this ourselves. It is worth noting our full flat is powered by electricity, there is no gas. We have also been told we’re unable to have a smart meter by the estate agents.
This is partly our fault for not chasing this up, but for 3 months the meter readings were not posted, so OVO charged us an estimate. When a meter reading for November was finally put up, we uploaded this and our bill and past bills went up by a lot (November would make sense that it went up, as we began using the heating as it was getting too cold to not use it). We asked OVO why our past bills were effected and this is when they told us the past months were estimated off this meter reading as we hadn’t updated the other months (mistake by us as again, we weren’t sure the importance of this as we are still learning.)
However, after posting a meter reading recently, it went up by an extortionate amount, working out in one week we’d spent around £12 a day - which is impossible as me and my flatmate are out 8 hours a day Monday-Friday at work. This is further impossible as during this time we were being extra careful with our electricity. This means we are quite a bit in debt in our OVO account.
Today, a contractor from OVO is going to come to check if our meter reading is faulty as the individual my flatmate spoke to on the phone agreed these figures didn't seem right. However, after talking to the management of the building they told me they are not allowed to give the code to the meters to tenants. The man on the phone suggested I asked OVO to get in contact with them so they could pass it on that way. I rang OVO, but was told this wasn’t possible as the contractors are third party.
So basically, its a dead end. Does anyone have any suggestions? We’re really stuck here, and again I apologise if I've gotten anything wrong - I’ve only been out for the past few months and I’m still learning.
Any help would be massively appreciated. :)
