My mother is a Women’s Royal Naval Service veteran and for 24 years she lived in sheltered accommodation in Gosport, where Ovo supplied her electricity. She is now 98. In January 2023 she had a serious fall and after several weeks in hospital, it was clear that she needed to move into a care home. I moved her nearer to me in Leicestershire and contacted all the utility suppliers. With the exception of Ovo they all closed her account and refunded any money she was owed.
Since March last year I have been trying to get Ovo to refund more than £1,000, which it had allowed to build up in her account. I have sent emails and phoned many times and, while the customer care staff are pleasant, nothing has been resolved. I have lasting power of attorney and sent copies of it twice and was promised that it all would be sorted out by last Christmas. Then Ovo decided that her bill had not been finalised, which meant more delays. I made a formal complaint and was told it would take up to eight weeks for Ovo to answer it. Three weeks ago I was told it would be chased up, but still nothing has happened.
We need the money to help to pay for my mother’s care. I have never experienced such appalling customer service from any organisation. I do hope you can help end this saga.
Jill replies
Ovo, often in collaboration with British Gas, has taken over from Barclays in dominating the complaints coming in to Question of Money.
The problem you have been trying to resolve for your mother stems from a faulty smart meter which stopped sending information to Ovo early in 2022. Ovo last billed your mother in September 2022.
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In March this year, after I intervened and a whole year after your mother moved out of her flat into a care home, Ovo told you that there had been a 289-day gap in billing charges on your mum’s account due to a “communication issue” with her Economy 7 smart meter. Until this was resolved, the fault would stop any attempt to refund the credit balance (£919 rather than the £1,000-plus you expected) on her account.
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You had provided a meter reading by phone when your mother moved out in March 2023, and I don’t understand why Ovo could not base its final bill on this. Ovo told me that the meter was still collecting information about your mother’s electricity usage even if it wasn’t able to send it to Ovo, and your reading would have been accurate.
Ovo said it had “opened a case in January to have the gap in billing charges resolved which, sadly, due to a backlog, had not yet been worked”.
Because of Ovo’s two-year delay in sorting out the meter and issuing a final bill, it has long since exceeded the 12 months by which energy suppliers are allowed to backdate charges. Ovo said the back-billing rule does not apply in this case but it has refunded the full £919 without deducting any more charges, and has paid £100 in compensation. We both think this is inadequate given the delay your mother has suffered, but it is time to move on.
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BT wiped out our inbox and we lost our £150 White Company voucher
My wife had an email address with Talk21, which then became Yahoo and finally BT. She pays BT £7.50 a month for a “premium” service. She accessed her emails through Microsoft Outlook but at the end of February this year all 3,000-plus emails in her inbox vanished. They had not moved to anywhere else in the mailbox, and I am sure they weren’t accidentally deleted, and then removed from the deleted folder. I spoke at length to BT, which said it was unable to recover them — and was I sure they weren’t deleted accidentally?
I was able to restore 90 per cent of the emails from a three-month-old back-up. But among those that were missing was a £150 White Company voucher that our daughter had given her mother for her birthday. White Company can do nothing without the voucher reference, which of course we don’t have. I raised a complaint with BT, which said it couldn’t help and wouldn’t compensate.
We’re losing the will to live here.
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Jill replies
Without knowing what caused the loss of emails, I didn’t think there was much point in chasing BT about this. However, I did think the White Company could try a bit harder.
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I asked your daughter, who lives in Australia, for a copy of her bank statement showing the purchase of the voucher. She told me that your wife had been going through a hard time with cancer, having chemotherapy and suffering terrible side effects. Your daughter said: “I thought instead of buying her a gift like normal I would buy her a voucher so that when she felt up to it she could go and buy something nice for herself. The money was taken out of my account straight away and I sent this to my dad to show the White Company. However, they are unable or unwilling to reissue the voucher.”
I asked the White Company to rethink its decision, and the next day your wife got a new voucher for £150. She had missed the sales, but the White Company has thought of a solution for that too. It issued her with a code giving her a 20 per cent discount, which I believe she has used to buy a cashmere robe. Lush.
Barclays closed my accounts, then it stopped my credit card
I am writing to you about yet another problem with Barclays Bank. I have already endured the experience of having the accounts of a limited company, which I had with this bank for nearly 36 years, closed without notice and without acceptable reason. Now I have had the Barclays credit card associated with the same business closed, again without notice and without reason.
I won’t go into the details of the turmoil when the accounts were closed, as it is just too stressful to recall, but the credit card story is a bit simpler. I had a letter from Barclaycard in October with the heading: “Urgent: we may close your account unless you provide some information”. The letter included a form to fill out and post back in a prepaid envelope. I completed the form and posted it on October 20, well within the two weeks requested.
On November 22 I had another letter with the heading: “Urgent reminder: please provide some information about your business, otherwise we may have to close your account”. I filled out the form again and posted it to the bank on November 30.
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On December 29 I had yet another letter with the heading: ‘We’ll soon be ending your commercial card agreement with us, unless we hear from you”. On January 2, I again sent Barclays a copy of the form I had already filled out and posted to it twice before, along with a letter explaining this.
There were no more letters. I got my Barclaycard statement dated January 20, with a credit of £16.69. I had no idea what this could be and looked at old statements to find that the last transaction was an annual fee of £32 in August 2023. The following day, a cheque arrived in the name of the business for £16.69. The bank had closed my account and was refunding the remainder of the annual fee.
I found this outrageous. To top it off, I had letters to tell me that the complaints I made asking for compensation when the company accounts were closed “have been resolved and closed”. Neither had, as far as I was concerned.
I have moved the company accounts to Metro Bank, which has a branch nearby (open more hours than Barclays ever was) and a bank manager whom I have met and can reach by telephone and email. But I would like to continue to have the Barclaycard, which I have had for the past 36 years.
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I hope that you can help.
Jill replies
I had hoped that Barclays had stopped asking business account customers to send repeated copies of the same “know your customer” forms and then closing the accounts anyway. I am dismayed to hear that the practice has spread to Barclaycard.
Barclays wanted confirmation of your trading address, either a bank statement (of which Barclays should have 36 years’ worth), a utility bill (there are none in your company’s name as you work from home) or a letter certified by an accountant or solicitor. You chose the last option and a month after you brought your complaint to me Barclays told you that your Barclaycard account had been reopened and offered you £200 in compensation. You said: “I just used the Barclaycard to pay for lunch today and it worked!”
Barclays told me that you missed out a couple of answers on the form, but instead of asking you for that information, the bank sent you the whole form to complete again. You missed the required answers again — and so it continued until you contacted me and Barclays decided to talk you through what it needed.
Barclays acknowledged that it could have done more to contact you for the information. Your experience may help other readers who are in the same situation with Barclays. If the bank is repeatedly sending you the same form to fill in, call it and ask what you have missed out previously. This action may save your bank account from closure.
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