Can I manage another person's energy account for them?

You can only use the Ovo email address if you’re mail  is linked to the account. If you do try and use that address you get an automated message saying you can’t use it . You say the address is in Bristol but the address you gave is a London one ! 

Hey ​@Glasgow56,

To get started with your Power of Attorney registration, please use the email address provided. Don’t worry if you receive an automated email at first, this just means your email hasn’t been registered with the account yet. Once everything is set up, you won’t receive this message anymore. 

Thanks for letting me know about the address we’ve just recently changed to our London address and i’ve now updated the text above to match the address. 

Hi can you give me the Bristol address as we have 3 power of attorney’s who want to register 

The London one is the one you’re after - it’ll be forwarded on if needed.

Hi I wish to update you to the email had from OVO energy on Saturday regarding my enquiry regarding adding a legal power of attorney to my relatives account 

It states 

If you’re getting in touch on behalf of one of our customers…

You’ll need to ask them to add you to their OVO account. 

“To be able to discuss billing, payments, anything financial, or any sensitive account information, you’ll need to be named as ‘financially liable’ on the customer’s account. To be added to the account in this way, we need to speak to both you and the account holder, to get joint permission. “

despite your assurances not to worry that the account is not linked to the email address the message says 

“Please email us from your registered email address”. We had changed the email account on the 28th of August but you still have failed to update your system.You also sent a statement to the old email address on Saturday as well . 

Even though my question was regarding power of attorney the email on Saturday makes no mention of it but refers again to making someone financially viable on the account before they can make any decisions. This is not correct as named attorney who have LPA which are registered with the office of public guardian can make all financial decisions on behalf of the account holder 
 

I sent my access code on the 28 th of August for you to view the document  . The company have 30 days in which to view the power of attorney document 
 

If the company continues to fail to recognise my LPA and does not add it to the account so I can make decisions on behalf of the account holder, I will have no option but to report the company to the office of public guardian . They will investigate why staff answering queries regarding LPA’s clearly do not understand what a LPA is and keep referring to making someone financially viable on the account in order to make financial decisions. 

For anyone else who having problems getting OVO to give you information on how to add a LPA to account or recognising you as a named attorney, go to the office of the public  guardian website and it will give you all the contact details on how to make a complaint. 
 

. 

Hey ​@Glasgow56,

I’m really sorry to hear about the challenges you’ve run into while trying to register for Power of Attorney. I’ve shared your feedback with our internal team because we want to make sure everything works smoothly for you. 

I’ll keep you in the loop as we find out more, and please know that we’re here to help and are actively working on this. Thank you for your honest feedback!

​@Glasgow56 the best thing will be if we get an email from the account holder, from the email registered to their account, sent to hello@ovoenergy.com.

In the email, include attachments of all POA documentation or the access codes. Also in the email, list all to-be POA full names. Our Support Team will then raise a case to our Admin team to get the POA added. If the email is sent from the email address registered to the account then it will bypass security. This will be quicker than doing things by post.

Let us know how you get on.

Hi the issue with that suggestion would have been I would have done a 80 mile round trip to the account holders home to use the email address which was originally linked to the account, as I don’t have access to their email remotely . 
I rang OVO again and an agent did help me and they registered the code . 
 

I would recommend anyone who are having difficulties to make it clear to the company you will report them to the office of the public guardian. You will find all the details on the Government website. You don’t have to wait 8 weeks to report a company just keep all email communications, web chats and any dates and times you contacted the company by phone . 
 

hopefully the company will review their practices, and improve training of staff so that other attorneys do not experience the problems I did . 

Hi ​@Glasgow56,

I’m really happy to hear this is sorted now. I can only apologise for the experience you’ve had - this is a very simple process for us internally, and shouldn’t have been made this difficult for you at all. Just to give you an idea of how everything will look on our end - all POA’s will be named on the account with ‘POA’ next to your names. If you speak to an agent in future they will be able to see this, and will be able to speak to you about any aspect of the account in question. You’ll still have to answer three data protection questions as usual.

All the best,

Ben

Trying to get access to my mums account as I have POA and no idea about the state of her account, over 50% of her state pension is paying a DD for her electricity.

She has no internet conection and has many health issues and in her late 90s.

I have used several methods to contact OVO, latest was phoning and was disconected after a period of time without talking to a person, tried the AI message service, said it would conect me to someone who could help, never did.

I have started a complaint now, I just want someone to comunicate with me to resolve the issue. 

Thank you

Hey ​@1745,

I have sent you a private message to gather details so we can assist you in resolving this issue.

Hi all

The issue has been resolved. Got to thank Chris_OVO for making this happen.

Hey ​@1745 

I’m glad to here this has now been resolved with a massive thanks to our amazing ​@Chris_OVO!

Thanks for coming back to us with that update, I’ll make sure to pass on your thanks to Chris.😊