Storage Heater trying to charge outside offpeak time with change to Smart Meter

Hi

This unfortunately became the least of my concerns as OVO installed a pre payment smart meter that would not accept top ups. After 4 days of constant phone calls, extremely poor service and losing power an emergency engineer came. He replaced the smart meter back to an old style prepayment meter which I had before. He stated a smart meter should have never been installed and what was installed by the OVO engineer was done incorrectly. He theorised the storage heater was not being sent the right information because it couldn’t hold a signal.

Back to the old style meter and the storage heater is back working as it should. Now I’m facing a customer service wall of trying to get back my missing top ups, my previous meter balance, and all the compensation that was promised over and over. They refuse to transfer me and promised callbacks are never made. 
 

It has been a deeply stressful experience and continues to be so, but I’m persistent with daily emails to their complains department imploring them to take ownership to resolve this.

The alarming thing is the meter was originally changed due to a complaint about a faulty meter that was never dealt with that I had to contact the ombudsman about. I’m now back to square one with OVO owning me money and refusing to talk to me. It’s been one bit hellish circle to end up back to where I was in December.

I’m really sorry to hear this @JamieTall. Are you with OVO PAYG or Boost?

If you’re with OVO PAYG I’ll ask Forum_Support to reach out via private message to take a look into this for you. 

If you’re with Boost, you can find out more about their complaint procedure and contact channels on the website. 

Hi

I’d appreciate that I’ve grown exhausted with their advance resolutions department and their lack of ownership.

I am with OVO PAYG. I have an account number, a complaint reference number, and an OVO ombudsman complaint number. I’ve also kept a full record of every time I’ve contacted OVO, what they’ve promised and what happened.

I’m now at a point where I’m sending an email every 48hours asking the same questions over and over and no one is replying. When I call up I am told my complaint is at ‘Tier 2’ and I can’t be transferred and I will be called back. These callbacks do not happen.

As it stands at the moment. OVO have not returned the balance that was on my previous meter that they told me would be transferred over. OVO are holding money that I topped up that never got credited to my meter. I was promised compensation for loss of earnings over two days as I had to sit in the house with no power waiting for callbacks and then for an engineer. This hasn’t been honoured. And finally the new meter has a standing charge over 3 times what I had before and no one will tell me why and each day I’m giving OVO more money that could be in error.

That sounds really stressful, I’m sorry to hear this, If your issue has been escalated to the Ombudsman, my advice would be to let them sort it out and contact OVO directly @JamieTall.

OVO will need to accept the resolution they provide. You can contact the Ombudsman on:

Here’s how to get in touch with them:

• Phone: 0330 440 1624 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm, and Saturday, 9am to 1pm)
• Email: enquiry@energyombudsman.org
• Website: www.energyombudsman.org
• Post: Energy Ombudsman, PO Box 966, Warrington WA4 9DF

The ombudsman have said since the original remedial actions have been completed (eventual installation of new working meter) any issues that have arisen from this would need to be a new case in which I have to wait 8 weeks before I can raise it.

So it’s 8 weeks of resending the same complaint and hoping someone eventually responds.