UPDATE 07 MAY 2020
Background
Eddie Williams, Jon Roden and Stuart Preston were appointed joint administrators of Economy Energy Trading Limited on 14 January 2019 and were subsequently appointed joint liquidators on 13 January 2020.
What have the liquidators been doing since January 2019?
The liquidators have been working through customer accounts to reconcile accounts and produce final bills, where possible. This process has required close collaboration with OVO (the Supplier of Last Resort), Economy Energy staff and outsource providers.
The process has taken a significant length of time to complete due to the complexity of the systems and the level of manual intervention required across c120,000 accounts. In addition to the preparation of final bills, the liquidators and their agents have been dealing with a high volume of queries from customers both in credit and debt positions.
Have all accounts now been final billed?
In short, yes.
The billing process has been completed and all accounts are finalised.
Some accounts cannot be final billed due to issues with the account data such as missing or incorrect meter reads, serial numbers and industry data, amongst other reasons.
What will the liquidators be doing now?
As previously advised, the Economy Energy Customer Liaison Team closed on 30 April 2020.
Shakespeare Martineau LLP (SHMA) is a firm of solicitors who will continue to assist the joint liquidators with the collection of customer debts and will initiate legal action on unpaid accounts. SHMA is authorised by the joint liquidators to contact Economy Energy customers.
Please note that customers will have received multiple rounds of correspondence over a period of time prior to their account being passed to SHMA, during which the CLT would have been available to answer any account queries. Please note that the joint liquidators no longer have the ability to deal with any customer queries going forward.
The role of Allied International Credit Ltd (AIC) will reduce over the course of the next few weeks with SHMA handling the debt collection activity.
I have an outstanding debt on my account and have been contacted by SHMA; who do I contact to raise a query?
Please contact SHMA on 01789 416 471 or by email at EE@shma.co.uk
I have an outstanding credit on my account; who do I contact to raise a query?
The joint liquidators have finalised all credit balances and are unable to work any queries.
Customers with a credit balance should contact OVO Energy on 0330 102 7517 from a landline or 01179 303 100 from a mobile to discuss any queries and how to obtain a refund. Please note that it can take four-five weeks for OVO to action a refund and for those customers who are still with OVO, and this should be automatically applied to your account.
If you have any other questions, please email economy.energy@uk.gt.com and a member of the liquidation team will aim to respond to you within 7-10 working days.
Kind regards
For and on behalf of
Economy Energy Trading Limited – in liquidation
Eddie Williams and Jon Roden are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales to act as an insolvency practitioners and Stuart Preston is authorised by the Insolvency Practitioners Association to act as insolvency practitioner.
INFORMATION PROVIDED PREVIOUSLY
The Economy Energy Customer Liaison Team will be closed at the end of April 2020 and staffing levels significantly reduced after 31 March 2020.
Therefore customers must ensure that their queries are raised by 25 March 2020 as there will be no ability to raise new queries after this point.
Eddie Williams, Jon Roden and Stuart Preston were appointed joint administrators of Economy Energy Trading Limited on 14 January 2019.
Please note that we have engaged Allied International Credit (UK) Ltd (“AIC”) as our debt collection agents and they are therefore authorised to contact Economy Energy customers who have unpaid accounts.
A short series of FAQs are below.
What is the role of the administrators in dealing with customer accounts?
Since the administrators were appointed, the team has been working very closely with employees at Economy Energy and OVO (the Supplier of Last Resort “SOLR”) to work towards reconciling customer accounts and producing final bills for all customers.
This has been a complex process which was driven by agreeing customer meter readings with OVO and processing that information through the Economy Energy systems. Despite the difficult circumstances, we felt it was important that we approach this in an orderly manner and agree the position with OVO so that meter readings for both your old bills and your new bills match, and that you are paying the right amount for your gas and/or electricity both on your final Economy Energy account and going forward with OVO.
As part of the SOLR process, OVO took on responsibility for the ongoing supply of your fuel from 12 January 2019.
Whilst the billing process is ongoing, we have now produced a large number of customer bills which we are starting to send out to customers as they are ready.
What has happened since the administrators were appointed?
Immediately after appointment, the administrators began to work closely with OVO in sharing customer meter read information. The process for agreeing opening/closing meter reads involved OVO requesting meter readings from customers as part of their onboarding process and providing this to Economy Energy. Where customer reads were not available, an estimated read was used, based on industry data.
Due to the number of customers that needed to be transferred, this process took some time and meter readings were received by Economy Energy in March 2019. Verification work was then undertaken to confirm that we agreed with the basis of the estimates, and where accounts fell outside an agreed tolerance, further work was undertaken between OVO and Economy Energy to agree a final meter read position.
From March/April 2019, work was then undertaken to produce final bills using the company’s billing system. We have now reached a stage where all billing that can be done through the company’s billing system has been completed, and all remaining accounts now require manual intervention.
Manual billing is a time consuming but necessary process, and we anticipate that there will be a greater degree of accuracy as a result.
Why is it taking so long to produce final bills?
The process is complex due to the availability of accurate information and inherent issues in the billing system.
Whilst producing batches of bills, problems within the billing system were identified which has required fixes to the billing system. This has been an ongoing process.
All bills that can be prepared through the billing system have been completed and communications sent out to customers in batches. The administrators have not necessarily been able to release bills in one batch due to limited resource and capacity to deal with customer queries and correspondence as a result.
The administrators are continuing to release final bills and communications to customers. There are also a number of accounts still to be final billed in a manual process which will be undertaken over the next few months.
If you have received a final bill and have a query about an outstanding credit balance due to you:
For customers that are still with OVO, please note that OVO will automatically apply a credit to your account within four-five weeks of you receiving your final bill. If you are still within that timeframe, please take no further action.
If you are no longer an OVO customer, please contact OVO directly to request payment of the refund on 0330 102 7517 from a landline or 01179 303 100 from a mobile.
If you received your final bill over five weeks’ ago but have not had a credit applied to your OVO account, then please contact the Economy Energy Customer Liaison Team on 0333 1030 104 to discuss further.
If you have a query about a final bill you have received or a debt owed to Economy Energy:
Please contact the Economy Energy Customer Liaison Team on 0333 1030 104.
Amounts owed for compensation awarded pre-appointment:
Please note that any amounts relating to compensation awarded for complaints lodged prior to the administration, the administrators are unable to progress these matters further and OVO are not responsible for honouring compensation payments.
For compensation claims awarded by the Ombudsman etc, please send an email to the following email address requesting a Proof of Debt Form to enable you to submit your claim in the administration. This claim will rank as an unsecured creditor in the estate.
economy.energy@uk.gt.com
Contact details for the administrators
Please email all queries to economy.energy@uk.gt.com
INFORMATION PROVIDED PREVIOUSLY
I am a Pre-Payment customer – what should I do?
All Pre-Payment customers who were supplied by Economy Energy up to 12 January 2019 have been transferred to Boost Power (part of OVO).
For all queries, please contact the Boost Customer Service helpline on 0330 102 7517 (if calling from a Landline) or 0117 332 3728 (if calling from a mobile).
I haven’t received my final bill yet, will I receive one from the administrators?
This depends on whether you have paid for all of the gas and/or electricity that you used during the period you were supplied by Economy Energy.
If you have paid more money via your direct debit payments than the amount of gas and/or electricity that you have consumed up to 12 January 2019, then you will have a credit position on your account and all credit amounts owed to you will be repaid by OVO as agreed between Ofgem and OVO in the SOLR process. Once available, a copy of your final bill will be uploaded to My Account via the Economy Energy website where you will be able to view your final bill. This information will also be shared with OVO, once available.
If you have not paid enough money via your direct debit payments for the gas and/or electricity consumed up to 12 January 2019, then we will be in touch to let you know that a payment is due to Economy Energy. Once available, a copy of your final bill will be added to My Account via the Economy Energy website and we will be in touch to advise you on how you can pay any monies owed.
Economy Energy continued to collect my direct debit payments after I transferred to OVO. What has happened to these?
As agreed between Ofgem, OVO and the administrators, customer direct debits continued to be collected in the administration. In the background, OVO arranged for all direct debits to be switched to OVO and this completed on 18 March 2019.
If you owe money to Economy Energy, then the direct debit payments collected up to 18 March 2019 will be allocated against your debt balance.
If the direct debit payments have increased (or created) a credit balance on your account, then the credit will be added to your new OVO account.
Whilst work is still on-going to produce final bills, please wait for your bill to be uploaded to your My Account section of the website before contacting OVO for a refund.
What should I do next?
If you have received your final bill, please make payment of this, so your account can be finalised. If you have any queries in relation to your final bill, please contact the Customer Liaison Team using the details provided with your final bill. If you have received a final bill and you believe this has been received in error, or dispute the final bill, please contact the Customer Liaison Team discuss this, to avoid you being chased for outstanding balances.
If you have not yet received your final bill, no further action is required from you at the moment. Please wait for us to get in touch with further details.
Thank you for your continued patience.
Kind regards
For and on behalf of
Economy Energy Trading Limited – in administration
The affairs, business and property of Economy Energy Trading Limited are being managed by Eddie Williams, Jon Roden and Stuart Preston, appointed as joint administrators on 14 January 2019. The joint administrators act as agents of the Company and without personal liability. Eddie Williams and Jon Roden are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales to act as an insolvency practitioners and Stuart Preston is authorised by the Insolvency Practitioners Association to act as insolvency practitioner.