My mum died in February and her energy supplier Ovo is refusing to return the £2,000 credit on her account. Ovo has admitted errors on her account, which date back to 2019, when a four-digit meter reading was substituted for the five-digit actual reading and used as a basis for subsequent bills. We provided meter readings and photographs, and an agent read the meter in 2021. We were assured that the account would be rectified, but that never happened and the issue is delaying probate. I’ve been told it may take up to 12 weeks to resolve. That £2,000 could have been used for mum’s funeral to give her a better send-off. The issue is causing great distress.
ZW, London
This makes painful reading. You have had to chase while coping with an inquest into your mother’s death, and ploughing through four years of energy bills. Notes scribbled on the bills by your mother suggest that she spent the last 14 months of her life, if not more, struggling to get her account recalibrated using correct meter readings. Her memos show that during repeated calls she was sometimes kept on hold for more than half an hour, and was passed fruitlessly between departments. At one point she records her distress at receiving a letter in intimidating red ink from Ovo demanding readings that she had already submitted.
Initially, Ovo told you the credit would be refunded. Then it declared that, due to the underestimated reading errors your mother had spent her last year pointing out, her account was actually in debit. In vain have you submitted correspondence from Ovo in 2021 confirming receipt of the correct readings and promising the account would be amended. You need to know if the £2,000 is due to declare it for probate. You also want assurances that Ovo was not harassing her about the account before her death.
Under back-billing rules, energy companies cannot send retrospective demands for unbilled energy used more than 12 months previously. Ovo tells me that a “technical error” caused your mother’s meter readings to be recorded incorrectly, and “human error” prevented them being adjusted. This meant the account has been under-billed since 2019 and is now in debit to the tune of £2149.03. Ovo, which acted within a week as a headline loomed, has cancelled the sum and paid a sum as a gesture of goodwill.
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