Smart Meters, Useless Electricity Suppliers and Responsibilities (England)

Hi,

Not good at writing and getting my words across, I tend to waffle..... I'm trying to ask the question in the most basic way I can because to explain it all would be writing a novel...

Low income family of 4 currently on benefits due to disability and the caring there of. 3 vulnerable people where electricity is concerned as 2 use medical equipment overnight and one is partially sighted and needs lights.

We moved into our current home in december 2020 and have had issues with our electricity supplier from the outset. (SSE, who then became OVO) we have had issues such as

• "No one is trained to make those changes atm (tariffs), can we call you back in 2 months when we've had the training?"
• Sporadic Bills (sometimes monthly sometimes quarterly.
• Vastly over estimated usage.
• Payment plans that were not set up as they had been agreed upon.
• 4x Engineer appointments where no one showed.

and much more...

At some point we were forced onto a smart meter and PAYG setup which of course we then started paying for, but this only lasted for about 6 months when the meter stopped communicating with the company and it locked up but in an "always on" mode. It didn't need to be topped up but we still tried using our payment card at the local shops to keep paying for our electricity usage.. after a few weeks the card stopped working also.

We have made numerous calls to the company(s) over the last 5 years 90% of which we could not speak to anyone because any phone menu option we selected would put you on hold for about 20 minutes then just abruptly drop the call. We had a meter reader / engineer come once to ask to read the meter and we discussed with him the problems we had faced. His advice was that we could claim something back for all the appointments that were missed, get someone to come out and fix the meter properly and sort payment methods for the increasing debt. We put this all in emails to OVO but have heard nothing back so for the last 24+ months we haven't bothered with it since the meter was stuck on...

This morning our power went off.

Amazingly our defective meter started communicating again and so they re-programmed it. We still could not top it up with the card or website so eventually we found realised they have online chat and contacted them. Apparently our debt is near the £10,000 area they said we could continue with PAYG but that the meter would take a large amount per day for the debt payments. We could also use pay monthly via direct debit but they would need to set the monthly direct debit at £2332 which is more then we get a month...

We've told them that we intend to complain about all the past issues we've had and how most of this is not our fault, So we have been wondering from a legal point of view who's responsibility is it or was it to get things like this sorted? if the company can't sort out taking payments or repairing equipment is it on us the consumer to chase them into doing it? in any related debt collection case or official action would we have been expected to be calling on a daily basis or sit back and wait for them? I'm very much thinking that aside from good financial sense or moral obligation, it isn't my job to be chasing up a company that should have all the correct procedures and organisation skills in place to avoid all of these issues.

Thank you for any advice...