My autistic son has been bombarded for years by letters to his home from OVO Energy addressed to “The Occupier”, with demands for money and threats of debt collectors. He is supplied by Scottish Gas.
He was required to let an OVO agent into his flat to “prove” he didn’t have an OVO meter. Neither this, nor countless phone calls, has stopped the demands.
Call centre agents confirm that he doesn’t have an account but seem powerless to update the system. He lives in fear that bailiffs will break his door down.
LO, Edinburgh
OVO swiftly decided that the bombardment was triggered by address error on the national database. In short, it says, the gas and electricity meters supplying another property had been registered to your son’s address. It corrected the address for the gas, but tells me another supplier owned the electricity meter and had “rejected multiple requests” by OVO to update the database.
In response to my queries, OVO agreed to suspend demands and issued a letter of deadlock to enable your son to complain to the Energy Ombudsman.
The letter, which enables access to the database, discovered that the electricity meter was correctly registered to a neighbouring address and supplied by OVO, but OVO had somehow got your son’s address on its billing system. It was ordered to pay £150 compensation and the bills have now ceased.
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