Ovo customer services: Waterlooville couple are hassled by energy company despite paying their bills on time

The Waterlooville couple had been Southern Electric pay-as-you-go customers for more than 20 years without problems, settling their power bills by return cheque.

But out of the blue Ovo, who acquired South East Energy in 2020, started repeatedly sending them wildly threatening and intimidating default letters.

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Jane, 64 said: ‘The first threatening letter was in August. They then kept sending letters to me month after month without explanation claiming I was in debt to them, and it could mess with my credit score.

‘They were sending the bill to my husband Dave who was paying it, but they were also sending separate bills to me claiming I owed them the money despite it being the same bill, account, and the same address.

‘We paid the bills in full the following day, but within a week I’d receive a letter saying the bill hadn’t been paid. I think the problem was they seemed to have us down as two separate customers.

‘When I phoned them I was told not told not worry about it, so I wrote to them and also sent emails, all of which were ignored.

‘Phoning them was frustrating and stressful. I kept getting a message saying my wait would be less than 10 minutes, but after 30 minutes I gave up.

‘When I finally got through to somebody he just kept fobbing me off saying don’t worry about it. I said I was worried because despite never owing anyone a penny you are threating my credit score.

‘Regardless of my complaint they still kept claiming I was in debt to them which most certainly I was not.’

Relations finally broke down when Dave tried making contact via live chat online and managed to extract a promise of a call back. The return call was aborted when the respondent claimed they couldn’t hear him and promptly cut him off.

With month after month slipping away, no end to the regular bullying letters and at her wits’ end, former care worker Jane wrote to the company to give them a piece of her mind.

She made it crystal clear she was furious and frustrated at the time being taken to resolve the issue and her concerns consistently ignored.

‘The letter was posted first class, but we never had any response so my husband emailed it to them but that was ignored as well.

‘At this point I was literally awake at night worrying myself sick. I know I can’t deal with stress like I used to, and I become very depressed.

‘As a woman in her mid-60s who has never owed money to anybody it was seriously upsetting me. I felt like taking it to court.

After months of feeling she was going around in ever decreasing circles, Jane emailed Streetwise for help and advice.

We noted Ovo’s website promise to try to resolve customer issues straight away whenever possible, say sorry if they made a mistake, explain what went wrong, and fix it.

We got onto the company and asked them to investigate and comment on the couple’s complaint as it appeared they’d conspicuously heaped shame on their claims.

They’d failed to treat their customer responsibly, wrongly accused them of defaulting on their bills, kept them waiting stressful months without resolving the situation, and failed to put things right.

The good news is that the following day Jane received a call from the company’s specialist resolution team who offered a full apology for all the unpleasant letters they’d received.

The underlying cause of the problem was their inability to process cheque payments promptly due to postal delays. The late payments had subsequently triggered the string of default letters.

It was agreed to provide them with a written apology and to explore the options of alternative online banking and the transfer payment process.

An Ovo spokesperson said: ‘We called Mrs Lawty and advised there were other options to ensure their payments were received on time.

‘We’ve offered a goodwill gesture of £100 for the inconvenience.’

A distraught but relieved Jane just couldn’t understand why it took the Streetwise intervention to get the wrangle sorted.

‘Although a cheque is perfectly legitimate method of payment, these days it seems we’re all being forced to go online for everything. It should have been sorted months ago.’ she said.

‘I’m pretty certain we’d never have had a call from them if you hadn’t got involved. ‘We can’t just thank you enough for stepping in on our behalf in this matter as it was really stressful.’