Taking over OVO account from tenants - letting company have transferred account to another company

Hi @Matt B ,

Getting advice on this one - please bear with us! I do know it can take 12 weeks to fix this however.

Hey!

If a previous tenant or estate agent has asked a different supplier to take over supply its not an ‘erroneous transfer’ unless the other supplier has captured the incorrect meter information or address. 

Your friend can just provide the new supplier with the correct dates or tenancy agreement, pay what they owe to the new supplier, if anything, and then call Ovo to switch the supply back over. 

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Just to re-iterate - my friend is unable to call Ovo, otherwise we’d have done that.  The latest is that Rebel have acknowledge the error in the transfer (they got the date wrong, as well ) and the electric has been switched back to Ovo, but the gas has not yet.

Assuming the gas does get transferred back, all I need is an email address (not the generic one), where my friend can explain the situation, tell OVO the meter readings from when she moved in and set up the drect debit. etc. Anyone?

Cheers

There’s a faster way. Use the Live Chat via https://ovoenergy.com/help and the keyword “Agent” (without the quotes) to bypass the bot.

I though you said that she was abroad and that is why she can’t phone OVO herself?

It’s also unclear why the supplier was switched in the first place, you do say ‘on the incorrect date’ which implies that the landlord had instructed the agency to switch supplier on a certain date?

However that’s by the by.

Tenants can change suppliers if the accounts are in their name, legally they don’t need a landlords permission to do so. (And any clause in a tenancy agreement forbidding switching is an invalid clause).

The letting agency is ‘acting on behalf of the landlord’ so can also change supplier - if/when the account is in the agency or the landlords name.
Whilst that might be an error of understanding what the landlord intended, it is not an ‘erronous transfer’ which has a particular meaning.

It would have been easier all round for the agent to simply switch back to OVO if that is what the landlord wanted.
Or for the landlord to take on the account (if it wasn’t already in her name) and simply switch it herself.

PS. How is she going to manage this rental property from abroad without an agent?

That’s probably because the phone company blocks calls to funny UK numbers, like those starting with 0330. Others in the same situation have found that they can use VOIP (e.g. Skype) to call numbers like that: it’s independent of phone companies and in fact rings up from a UK number.

One problem with that is that OVO’s phone system apparently links phone numbers to accounts. It may be possible to get Skype to pretend to be calling from the number registered with OVO (the Skype feature known as Caller ID).

No need to do that. In cases where the number ISN’T known, the system will use the backup method of checking your details via IVR. DO NOT use Skype to impersonate a number - it’s unreliable.