Three days have passed since my email to OVO, complaining about the sudden loss of £567 credit on my new gas account, with no acknowledgement yet. The remedy is really simple - substituting one meter reading for another, which will correct it all.
It's a bad beginning with OVO.
I have worked out what the correct opening meter reading must have been, and have now handed the solution to this very worrying error to OVO on a plate, so to speak, in another email. Plus attachments - screenshots from their own records - in support of what I say. They won't have to think.
I have also warned them that inaction will lead to escalation and a higher claim to compensation. Starting with my December bill, due within a week. If that shows that the £567 hasn't been restored, then I will up the stakes.
I am quite sure that, bad as this is, there are cases that are much, much worse. But £567 is still large enough to make a great fuss over.
This is my second email, three days in:
COMPLAINT ABOUT A GROSSLY INCORRECT (AND IMPOSSIBLE) OPENING GAS METER READING - Account XXXX0149 - Miss Lucy Melford
Dear OVO Energy
Three days ago on 6th December I sent you an email complaining about your using a wrong opening gas meter reading for 15th November, when my gas account migrated from SSE to yourselves. I haven't had an acknowledgement yet. That's not good. I am a vulnerable customer - I live alone, and I'm aged 70 years. Your mistake has worried me considerably, and I have raised the matter of compensation for the distress. But first I want you to correct the error.
SSE's final smart meter reading on 14th November (copy attached) was 11930. Your own smart meter reading on 16th November was 11961. So the meter reading on 15th November MUST have fallen between 11930 and 11961. I think it was 11955 (see below). But you are presently using a strange (and obviously impossible) reading of 11428. The effect of this is to drastically reduce the credit balance I'd carefully built up on my gas account by about £567. I want that restored.
The simple remedy is for you to substitute 11955 for 11428 for 15th November. That will correct my gas consumption record, and increase my credit balance to between £800 and £900 - and then back over £1,000, once tomorrow's £186 monthly direct debit payment has gone through.
How do I arrive at 11955? Well, your own smart meter readings for 15th November - taken every half an hour (screenshots attached) - show a total gas consumption for the day of 66.64 kWh, which equates to 6 meter units. The meter reading for the next day, 16th November, was 11961. It follows that the reading for 15th November would have been 11961 less 6 = 11955.
As I said, I was very upset by the sudden loss of £567 credit, and in my email three days ago I claimed a small amount of compensation for the immediate distress, and of course there is now the ongoing worry. I claimed £56, which is 10% of £567. Not in cash - I am happy if you merely credit it to my account. But I do now ask that you put matters right quickly. If you have not done so before my December bill is sent, I will ask for more. And if matters drag on, and the worry about that missing credit continues, then I will feel justified in increasing my claim. And indeed escalating this.
This is not a happy beginning. Please do the right thing.
Lucy Melford
Still no response twelve hours later, to either this or the original email three days ago. The weekend is now upon us, so presumably I'll have to wait until Monday 12th at the earliest for some action. Sigh.
