“More outrageous 'service' from OVO! I had booked a replacement meter to be installed, over the telephone for 28th August: A BANK HOILIDAY, but we'll gloss over that. I then get an email saying they can't book this appointment because they need more information: I.E. is my meter wall-mounted or concealed. They didn't question what colour it was but that can be their next excuse for a mess up. I emailed 'Jonny' who emailed me to give a photo of the meter and asked for confirmation that the appointment on 28th August would be met? That was on the 13th July: STILL NO REPLY!!! I'm sure I'll get a response to this negative review in a couple of hours!!! Now I have just had a text telling me that I haven't given a meter reading for 9 months: i'VE BEEN TRYING FOR NINE MONTHS to get these utter buffoons to come and install a new meter. Totally useless company and should be closed down by the regulator. I can't possibly be the only poor soul who is having such a run around by these morons. AVOID, AVOID, AVOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Meter is faulty cannot top up going on holiday. Meter will run out while I am away ovo will not send out engineer till £1 or less in credit cannot access meter while on holiday. So will come home to no electric and freezer defrosted”
“Alison in resolutions team is useless, infact everyone I have dealt with at OVO is. With holding £467 of my money that's in credit after 2 months and always gives some excuse to why they cant refund. They have already agreed to compensation via email (documented) but that turns out to be another OVO lie. I have now instructed my bank to not pay OVO the direct debits due until this is sorted. Alison's response on a recorded call is "I dont know" to every question I had. She refused to send me confirmation of escalating this complaint and wasted 48 minutes of my time. Small claims court to recover my money and time wasted seems like the only option. I will be invoicing OVO 4% on my monies daily. It's not just Alison, everyone at OVO does not care. I have taken it to email Stephen Fitzpatrick with the recorded calls and email traffic. If anyone needs his email address its easy to find online. I will be seeking further compensation & moving energy supplier as soon as this is rectified. Stay well clear from OVO is my best advice.”
“All I can say us that I'm glad I read the reviews. A lucky escape. Will inform my family and friends never to use OVO Energy and stick to British Gas. Everyone needs to leave thus company to go bust. They sound like they take people's money unnecessary. Very dodgy and should be reported and look into.”
“Still attempting to have a replacement 'Smart' meter installed, saga has been going on over 6 months. Current meter isn't functioning, no readings on the meter but OVO keep asking for readings! They suddenly say they can't book an engineer to call over email when they'd done it before. Rang them yesterday and got a date (28th August, WHICH IS BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY!!) Now they email and say they can't book me in for the reader to be replaced because they need to know if it's wall mounted or concealed!!! They didn't ask this when they installed the faulty meter. Just endless incompetence. Got a text within 30 minutes of my call yesterday asking me to give them a review of my experience!!!!!!!!!!!! Funnily enough I did receive a bill from today: THEY CAN MANAGE TO DO THAT WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS!!!!!!
TRULY TERRIBLE COMPANY. AVOID, AVOID, AVOID”
“Although I pay monthly by standing order and make extra payments also, that is not good enough for OVO. 3 THREATENING Emails every week, but told to ignore them as the computer sends them as I dont have a Direct Debit. Sick of this company with their foreign call centers.”
“Absolute disgusting customer service. No out of hours numbers for emergencies, the emergency line closes at 5pm so what is the point in that. Constantly on hold, being passed to wrong departments. Will definitely be changing my supplier as I was transferred by sse”
“Further to my previous review, after numerous phone calls from my wife to OVO representatives, the matter has eventually been resolved with the agreement that our account was indeed in credit, not as was repeatedly asserted by OVO, £37877.47p in the red. No apology: what a complete shower……”
“My bill date is on 11th every month. Ovo team started to call me EVERY day 6 days before the bill date, to collect the money,,
They asking me to pay the bill, before I even now ,what the bill is !!!!!”
“OVO Fit payments are delayed by 3 months. SSE payments always arrived in a couple of weeks. WHY??? OVO says they have to wait for verification from OFGEM but SSE didn’t. WHY??? Company policy says OVO!!!
I don’t understand!!
OVO needs to get its act together….,,,Now”
“When i was switched from Southern to ovo i was assured whatever my deal was with southern would be what i had with ovo. I was quarterly bill paid on receipt of bill.And southern (in writing) had agreed they would read my gas meter quarterly as its outside and difficult for me (i'm disabled) to reach Well it took many many months of ovo billing monthly and me sending letters and e mails ect before i got quarterly billing. And no meter reading- i had to get neibours to do it it for me!
And found out many ,many months after they finally seemed to get it right that ,as ovo is set up for monthly , they dont seem to have any way to bill quarterly. What they did was bill me every 3 months but just for that months usage-so for example for the quarter of oct/nov/dec 2022 the bill was issued end dec and i got told via email what the amount was -but that was just for december !
So i did what i always did with southern who would tell me in an email what my gas and electric costs were -i'd log into my account and go straight to bill pay and pay what the email said i owed and thats me done for another 3 months. So when i though i'd paid off my quarterly ovo bill i still had 2 months of the quarter unpaid! . So once but several times and i was congratulating myself on how careful i had been to cut back on my usage.
Found out in march 2023 when i went to pay j/f/m bill
and it pooped up i might want to pay more! Which i thought odd as i had been (i thought) paying my bill in full so why would i want to pay extra. Found out to my horror i had an outstanding bill for over£1000 that had built up my time with them .
When i asked ovo why no one told me i wasnt fully paying my bill -that southern wouldnt let me get away with not paying all my bill and when did they plan on telling me -they said their policy states they contact 'none-payers' who dont pay ior dont pay n full within 14 days of the bill being issued and have no idea how i 'slipped through ' for so many,many months! But if i had checked my account regularly i would have seen the deficit.
True i suppose but doesn't excuse them from not following their own policy!! And i had to come up with a grand to pay them off. And the only way i could was use the money i had been putting aside to pay my taxes(foreign pension not taxed so i am year self assessed not PAYE) So my taxes havent been paid!
So june 19th i moved -the past tenet of my new property was ovo and i wanted to switch. So (as required) i set up a temporary account with ovo which closed on the 21st when i went to octopus That went fine and i was billed and paid ovo for the 2 days i was with them-so am no longer their customer. .
Only now i am bombard with bills from them for payment of gas and electric from before i moved in! Ovo CS says ignore anything addressed to 'the occupier' but the last one -july 3rd is getting a bit nasty. And i am worried they will go after my credit rating which is excellent . I have talked to them so many times -finally e mailed them saying stop!! That trying to get money i dont owe them from me is harassment and ,given i'm elderly and both
physically and mentally disabled(bi-polar) , this is bordering on bullying . If they dont i will go after them
So Ovo is the bad smell that just doesnt go away”
“Why is it so difficult to register a house move with OVO?
I have called 4 times to register the property into a different name and been told that "this has ben done"
Each time I have called back with a query or to ensure that the account has been registered to the required address I am told that "the property is still in the name of the previous tenant". I have sent everything as requested via email, numerous and I have also called numerous times.
This is most frustrating, unprofessional, unhelpful and very time consuming organisation that I have dealt with. I can only hope that things do improve very shortly.
Why did OVO take over SSE customers and not provide the relevant training to their staff? Why was I given an account number when the property in question was not even registered as I was told?”
“Ovo Energy operate on a deliberately dishonest business model that is intent on cheating customers. For example, every year they will offer you an energy forecast that will be far greater than what your home actually consumes. In my own experience, this will be anything from several hundred to even over £1000 of extra credit they will take forcibly from your bank account (often without any permission whatsoever). Indeed even if you put in writing to the CEO office not to increase your direct debit, they will do it anyway and start taking extra money from your account that is not due, fair or earned (which is basic theft and nothing else). When attempting to get a refund for this wrongfully attained money from your bank account, will then incur an even greater level of personal loss dealing with Ovo’s deliberately evasive customer services team. Again, they are trained to ignore customers in a bid to sit on that stolen cash for as long as possible (gaining as much interest to their own bank account at the greater cost to your own). So not only will you lose money, but a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of wasted correspondence that is otherwise ignored and disrespected by these people along with finally being offered a deadlock letter (which is the worst form of cowardly escape and mark of incompetence to any company looking to this as a resolution for a customer). Because it should be noted that the ombudsman are actually paid by people like Ovo to investigate themselves, hence why it is not a very fair system and even if you are ruled in favour with a complaint, this will only result in a £50 goodwill gesture at most. The ombudsman is a very cheap and easy way for Ovo to avoid any accountability, litigation and any genuine exposure for conducting such an openly fraudulent business model. Indeed most troublingly, the ombudsman actually rely on people like OVO who dishonour contracts to keep in a job themselves. Hardly in the interest of the public is it? So after a huge amount of pain and even greater loss of energy than anything this company has actually supplied, you will finally get a refund -but no other compensation to the other very real losses you will suffer just to get money that was stolen from you returned. Then the following year, this self-licensed gang of thieves will do exactly the same thing with falsely inflating your energy forecast, hiking up your direct debit’s and taking your money without any permission or right, ignoring you all the way before they get back into bed with the ombudsman and offer you a deadlock letter. This is just with energy forecast usage. Yet I am reading reviews of other people who are promised £50 cashback for joining, who had to complain relentlessly only to get £25 and nothing else. If you try calling this company, they will charge you at a premium rate too. And if there is any need for a meter reading, it will only be under the auspices that you could be going into debt (but never going into extra credit which should be refunded to you as another point of note). Do you see the consistent trend that is only out to cheat customers of money, instead of offering any real honourable and trustworthy service of value? I have never witnessed such a comprehensive and corporate level of scam to the public than what Ovo offer so shamelessly. As another interesting observation, I find it odd that trustpilot uniquely is claiming something that averages a four star review for Ovo, compared to other review networks that are more like one star for this terrible energy provider. Perhaps the ombudsman are not the only bedfellows going on here?”
“First day with them. I find my SSE app which gave usage and various other information in s simple manner. The OVO app is rubbish and of no help for the consumers. It’s merely telling us if we owe them money or not.”
“Total nightmare to deal with. Incompetent, need investigating as well as naming & shaming. Have been trying to sort out a credit owed on my fathers property since before Christmas 2022. Have spoken several times to foreign call centers, where the staff are either not trained properly / don't listen / don't understand??? Have been referred twice, supposedly as "urgent" to a "high resolutions team" to sort things out, they haven't. Have had an account opened for me that was not required. Have spent hours on the phone, have been promised phone calls that don't transpire. Wrote to them in March, detailing everything as they requested, they never replied although I did confirm they had received my letter. Latest situation is receiving a so called final statement saying a debit balance is owed to them. Checking it all, the final balance is a CREDIT balance with them owing me money, but they have sent a reminder threatening credit ref agency action if payment isn't made to them. Phoned again 16/6, after nearly 2 hrs now being referred to a case manager, urgent again but 12 days on still awaiting contact. 1* given as there is no minus rating available, but AVOID IF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE. Have never dealt with a more incompetent company.”
“Isn’t there any minus star marks? Worst place to be. This company is wasting time … They don’t understand what we are saying and we don’t understand what they are saying. Please recruit people who can speak and understand English. Almost 3 days were wasted with 3 long telephone conversations but still I didn’t get what I wanted. Finally today I chat with them and told my issue. Again the person asked for my number and called me. At last she promised will send you all the details in an email ryt now and even said sorry for inconvenience happened all these days. But still the same. She also didn’t send😂😂😂😂 why???? How is this even possible?”