Ovo to pay £2.4m over customer complaint failures

The energy regulator said that following its intervention, Ovo had given more resources to complaint handling, and improved its complaints management system.

“Energy is an essential service. When things go wrong, it can cause consumers a lot of distress, ” said Jacqui Gehrmann, deputy director of retail compliance at Ofgem.

“In this case Ovo failed to adequately protect and respond to their customers when it was needed most. This is not acceptable.

“Consumers deserve a clear and timely response when they make a complaint, and that’s why we stepped in quickly when we identified that Ovo’s performance was falling below acceptable standards.”

In a statement, Ovo said: “We recognise that a particular group of our customers in 2023 waited longer than we’d like for a resolution and were overdue a response from us, so we’ve sent them a letter of apology and compensation to help.”