I moved house and closed my OVO account but my details have been found through 'trace and search' - how can I stop the debt collectors contacting me?

Hey @gbuteler,

Sorry for the issues you’re having it sounds like a very stressful situation

It sounds like OVO believe there to still be an amount owed on the account.  You can use this online tool to double check your gas supplier. To find out who supplies your electricity will depend on who is your Distribution Network Operator (DNO). 

And then find out your supplier using the online tool provided by your local DNO below:

Western Power

SP Energy Networks

Electricity North West

Northern Power Grid

UK Power Networks

OVO will be able to confirm exactly what date your supply switched away from us using the national database & re-send you your final bill. It sounds like there may have been confusion arising from the meter exchange as we’d need to have obtained the removal readings of the old meter from the new suppliers engineer report & then the final & opening meter readings need to be agreed by a third party data collector. The new meter details then need to be updated on the national database by your current supplier. So it may be during this process something has been missed or gone wrong. I’d advise double checking the meter serial numbers on the meters against the ones on your statements.  

A final bill can take up to six weeks following a switch & this is an industry process, there are also factors as mentioned above that can delay a final bill being produced. 

It sounds like OVO believes there to be an outstanding balance on the account but the account in your name was closed & an ‘occupier’ account was created. When no one took liability for this period & outstanding amount & the occupier letters weren’t responded to it was escalated to a debt collection agency who found your sons name via trace & search. In order to remove his name he can show that for that period on the bill he was liable to pay bills elsewhere or you can advise you are responsible for the bills at that property. 

This similar topics may have some helpful advice:

forum_support will reach out for your account details & we can raise a complaint on your behalf, please keep an eye on your private messages. 

Sorry for the wait by the way @Nukecad , I was out on Volunteer duties all day and only just got back.

As far as I can tell, I think you were right. A Logical Disconnection might help, but it’d probably have to be the final step in the process of fixing everything up - do it too soon and it might fail.

Hi. I just received a letter saying that I am defaulting on my bills. I am a tenant at this house and I dont know who put my name on the bills. I used to send my share to the other tenant but he has moved out and he said he didnt put my name on the bills.

I can not login to OVO to see the details of the bill because i dont know what username and password was used to set it up in my name, or who did it. If i try to setup a new account, it says “Oops, we’ve encountered a problem” 

I live in a shared house and all the tenants have to pay their share of the bills, and since only my name is on the letters, i feel like my credit history is being ruined for no reason when I never even setup an account and now that the letters are in my name, I cant login to see the details and split the shares accordingly. 

Hi @ahmedm ,

These ones can be complicated and since @Nukecad is our expert on these matters, I’ll ask him to stop by.

In the meantime, I’d strongly recommend you try 0800 069 9831 to see what you can figure out with OVO.

Hi @ahmedm 

The utility bills in shared houses and HMO’s can be tricky to deal with.

Someone has to pay the bills, and somehow everyone has to come to an arrangement of who pays what, which of course can then cause arguments.
(She takes more baths/showers than I do, he leaves his TV on all night, etc, etc).

Been there, done that, the bills were in my name with my agreement.
I shared with 2 others, when I got the bills each quarter I added them up and simply split by 3, we were all content with that despite knowing that we actually used different amounts each.

However your issue is a different one if you did not agree to have the accounts/bills in your name in the first place.

What you describe can and does happen,
Someone has to be responsible for paying the bills at a property, and if nobody has created a new account after the previous bill-payer has left and closed their account then the company can reasonably (legally) associate a known ‘new’ tenants/owners name to the account and bills in such circumstances.

It looks like what has happened here is that a ‘Trace & Collect’ search has found your name associated with the property - and so they have used it for an account/billing.

See this post by Tim_OVO, it’s 2-years old but things haven’t changed:

To quote the relevant bit from that post:

Is it legal? Yes for change of tenancy scenarios, utility companies like energy and water sometimes have to create accounts based on information provided by people other than those actually responsible for the address’s utilities. It should be the landlord/lettings agent, and then the new tenants or owners, that reach out and give dates and readings. Sometimes the old tenant may give details of the new tenant, or the lettings agent does, or ‘ track and trace’. Sometimes a company may just address the bills to ‘the occupier. It’s a bit of guesswork in the absence of concrete information. 

I’d suggest that your course of action here is an official complaint to OVO that you have never agreed to be responsible for the bills for what is a shared/HMO property, and that it should be the Landlord, or their Letting Agent, who are responsible and who’s name should be on the account and billing.

You can find OVO’s complaints procedure here: Want to make a complaint?
 

Some general advice about making any complaint to anyone:
I suggest that you always use email (or letters) for a complaint so that you have a written record of everything that is said and agreed.
(When I’m complaining, etc. to anyone I ususally tell them that I will not discuss or agree anything over the phone it must be in writing, then if they do phone me I repeat that and refuse to talk to them).

You are understandably annoyed at whatever has happened, that’s why you are complaining, however:

Don’t rush things, type a draft but don’t send it, leave it at least a few hours before reading it again and correcting it and/or adding things you have thought  of now you have calmed down a bit.

Don’t indulge in ‘getting it off your chest’, name calling, or even abusive language.
Just state the facts of what has happened, and what you now want them to do about it to put things right.
Don’t go rambling off at tangents that might confuse things, stick to the facts of your current complaint.

Keep things calm, polite, and to the point, and you will get further, faster, than having a rant does.
(Also remember that sometimes complaints can escalate to the Ombudsman, or even all the way to a court, and anything that you have said and/or written may become evidence).

Hey @ahmedm 

Sorry to hear about this but I’m really glad a couple of our volunteers have already stopped by with some perfect advice here. Contacting our Support Team and raising a complaint will help in this case.

We have another topic similar to this which may also be helpful, but please do follow Nukecad’s advice here as they’re always spot on with these:

Keep us updated with how you get on.

i moved house as of 5 April 2023. Ovo is sending multiple debt collectors after me for bills from after 6 April 2023 for which I am not liable. I was no longer a tenant at the property. i had gone through a stressful and tedious process with the previous collector and after sending all the documents they requested to prove I had moved out including a final bill from Ovo made up to 5 April 2023, they confirmed the case was closed. recently ovo started has sent a separate debt collector after me. what to do? should i report this? Is this not a fraudulent and frivolous claim?

Hi ​@JL1001 

I made a post about how to sucessfully deal with debt collectors in such a situation, and without arguing or ‘proving’ anything to them.

It’s no use proving anything to them anyway, they can’t actually do anything about the alleged debt other than stop chasing you for it themselves. (until/unless they get instructed again).

As you have found, once you have seen off one collector another may be along who has been told nothing about the previous one(s).

If you want the supplier to stop instructing debt collectors then it’s the supplier that you have to convince that the debt doesn’t exist, and that may take the help of the Ombudsman.

Have you actually complained to OVO?
You need to do that before you can escalate things to the Ombudsman.
See: https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

You can find my advice post about seeing off collectors here -

Thank you so much @Nudecad, that’s really helpful information. I’ll try it out and see how it goes.

i sent an email complaint to Ovo but have not heard back and in the meantime am getting multiple calls from the second debt collector, so am very frustrated with how it is going (especially given that I had responded to and dealt with the previous one sincerely ie sent them all the proof they asked for).

It’s disturbing that debt collectors can legally operate like this, i.e. once the owner of the debt has given up and instructed them to try and collect, they approach anyone they can trace with a connection to the premises and demand payment.

[I’m minded of a story (presumably apocryphal) told me by a lovely French girl. She was a student in London, and got a holiday job as a shop assistant at Harrods. She was alone in the furs department at lunchtime one day when a rich-looking woman waltzed in and asked to see some coats. She eventually picked out a £10,000 mink (this was in the 1970s), asked for the labels to be removed so she could wear it and for the one she had been wearing to be packed up for her chauffeur to carry out. Simone obliged, looking forward to her boss’s praise as she bade the customer goodbye. 

It wasn’t until the others came back from lunch that she realized the customer hadn’t paid. She tearfully sought out the departmental manager and confessed what had happened. His reply: “Oh, don’t worry, my dear, there are only a dozen women in the world who would behave like that. We’ll send the bill to all of them.” She later discovered that five of them had paid.

​@JL1001 - don’t be one of the five!]