EXCLUSIVE: Ovo staff whose customers can't afford bills have party

2022-08-20

Staff at energy firm toast their success with free-flowing wine at party after telling Brits to ‘cuddle pets’ and ‘eat porridge’ to stay warm while unveiling massive price hikes

Sarah Ball, who works for UK energy supplier Ovo, posted the pictures
Images showed tables crammed with bottles and glasses of wine and cupcakes
There was also a specially made celebration cake saying ‘1,000,000 Customers’
But infuriated customers told Ovo to ‘read the room’ amid record energy prices

A senior executive at a leading energy company has infuriated customers reeling from massive price hikes by posting pictures of her team partying with free-flowing wine and cake.

Sarah Ball who works in a managerial role for Ovo – one of the country’s biggest energy suppliers – posted pictures earlier this month of her and over 30 colleagues holding a celebratory event.

Images showed a table crammed with multiple bottles and glasses of wine, another table covered in cupcakes, a specially made cake to mark ‘1,000,000 Customers’ – thought to be celebrating passing that landmark – and an image of the group smiling and waving.

But the post comes amid record energy bill price rises while customers stress about how they will afford their winter fuel bills and one furious reader told MailOnline: ‘Read the room! This is completely inappropriate to share during this crisis. It gives every impression that they don’t care.’

Sarah Ball, a senior executive at a leading energy company, has infuriated customers reeling from massive price hikes by posting pictures of her team partying with free-flowing wine and cake

Ball posted pictures earlier this month of her and over 30 colleagues holding a celebratory event, showing a table crammed with multiple bottles and glasses of wine, another table covered in cupcakes and a specially made cake to mark ‘1,000,000 Customers’

Ball, who describes herself as ‘head of Ovo care at OVO’ – thought to be a senior sales and customer services position – posted: ‘Could not be prouder of what we have achieved in our amazing Account Management team these past few days.’

Her jargon-heavy self-praising post continued: ‘Outside looking in, I’m sure folk would think we were crazy running a 70+ strong PI planning with 13 brand new scrum teams and all led by brand new POs and scrum masters that didn’t even know what the roles were until last week!’

Ball, who has worked for the company for nearly seven years, went on: ‘The result was an awesome plan for our next increment and the beginnings of our ever evolving and maturing operating model. This is the magic you can achieve if you embrace and trust in the processI’

The post comes amid record energy bill price rises while customers stress about how they will afford their winter fuel bills and one furious reader told MailOnline: ‘Read the room! This is completely inappropriate to share during this crisis’

But the post has infuriated some. A reader who flagged the post to MaliOnlne said: ‘In the middle of an energy affordability crisis, record high prices and increasing fuel poverty, we have OVO Energy – one of GB’s biggest energy suppliers – throwing WINE parties for staff and then boasting about it on LinkedIn

‘Ovo is an awful company with an outstanding ability to never read the room. This is embarrassing.’

Ovo customer Patricia Roberts from Powys was also unimpressed that the company has been throwing parties – as she has struggled to get any help from them.

Grandmother Mrs Roberts said: ‘I first contacted them a month ago to complain that a promised loyalty discount I had been promised for remaining with them hadn’t been properly applied.

‘A contract should be honoured, a quoted interest award at a fixed rate has not been applied to my account and maybe, probably to many other customers.

‘It was only a few pounds but there’s the principle of it and I suspect they’ve been doing it to other customers too – and it could really add up if it’s widespread.

‘But I’ve had contact with them five times now by phone or email and people have promised to look into it and then nothing. So to hear that their own customer department is apparently throwing parties to celebrate their performance is really quite jarring frankly.’

Another unhappy OVO customer is Paul Clark, 78, from Southend, Essex.

He told MailOnline: ‘I’ve been really frustrated with them. The source of our problem is that we have solar panels and get credits for what they produce. We were with SSE and it worked fine – we’d enter our readings and get our credits within eight days. But now SSE customers are being transported to OVO and suddenly I’m going to have to wait 8 weeks for the same thing.

‘That doesn’t seem reasonable so I’ve attempted to contact them but had absolutely no response – and it’s been so frustrating I’ve also complained to the regulator.

But a reader who flagged the post to MaliOnlne said: ‘In the middle of an energy affordability crisis, record high prices and increasing fuel poverty, we have OVO Energy – one of GB’s biggest energy suppliers – throwing WINE parties for staff and then boasting about it on LinkedIn’

‘After that experience and with everything else that’s going on it doesn’t seem the time for them to be throwing self-congratulatory parties at all.’

The firm didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.

OVO sparked furious reaction earlier this year when a subsidiary issued advice to customers that they could ‘cuddle pets’ and ‘eat porridge’ to stay warm.

The company later apologised and said it was ’embarrassed’ after a link to a blog ‘containing energy-saving tips’ was sent to its SSE Energy Services customers.

Ovo Energy acquired SSE Energy Services in 2020 but the brands are still separate.

In a statement to the BBC, Ovo Energy said it recognised the content of the blog was ‘poorly judged and unhelpful’.

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