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Privacy Policy

At Ovo Energy, we’re committed to our customers. As well as providing you with unbeatable value and an excellent service, we believe it’s important to protect your privacy. We’ll obtain certain pieces of personal information (also called “personal data”) throughout the transfer process and it’s our job to make sure we take every step to protect your personal details. By using Ovo Energy, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Ovo. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we’ll post those changes on this page so that you’re always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we disclose it.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, specific obligations are placed on us in the way we handle this type of information. The aim of this privacy policy is to let you know what personal information we collect from you when you purchase products and services from us, when you use our website and when you contact us, how we store and use it, and how you can access and manage this information.

Our Privacy Policy explains how and why we collect information from you, how we store it and use it, and how you can access and manage this information. It will also explain the security measures we take to protect your privacy, and will outline things we’ll never do to compromise the protection of your personal information.

Here is a list of things we’ll always do:

  • We agree to ensure that all personal data is collected in a fair and lawful manner and used only for specified purposes.
  • We agree to ensure that personal data sought is adequate, relevant and not excessive for the purpose.
  • We aim to ensure that the personal data we keep is accurate and up-to-date. To achieve this we do need individuals to tell us of changes to their personal data.
  • We agree to keep personal data secure at all times.
  • We agree to keep personal data no longer than is necessary and to dispose of it appropriately when it is no longer required.
  • We take appropriate technical and organisational measures against unauthorised and unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage to personal data.
  • We will only pass your personal data onto another organisation if we need to for the purposes of providing our products and services, or are required to by law or regulation. Before transferring any such data, we will check that the organisation has appropriate data protection policies.

1. Using your personal information

1.1 We and our agents may use your information to:
  • Provide you with the services you have asked for, which may include incentive and loyalty schemes
  • Contact you for suggestions on how we can improve the way we operate, or about how we can improve any services and products we have provided before, now or in the future.
  • Create statistics, run reports, analyse customer information, create profiles and create marketing opportunities.
  • Help detect and prevent fraud, debt and loss.
  • Help train our staff. We may use your calls and emails as a part of our quality monitoring and training and development processes. This allows us to provide our employees with constructive feedback which is a part of our continuous training and development scheme. This ensures our employees, our Customer Service Advisors in particular, can provide you with the best customer service possible.
  • Contact you in any way (including email, phone, text or multimedia message or other forms of electronic communications) about products and services we and our selected partners may be offering. If you communicate with us through the internet, we may occasionally contact you by e-mail you about our services and products. When you first sign up to Ovo, we will give you the opportunity to say whether you would be happy for us to contact you with marketing information. However, you can always contact us (at the address set out below) at any time if you change your mind. If you have selected paperless billing, we will always contact you by email.
  • If you have a meter installed at your property that can be connected to the Wide Area Network (a ‘smart’ meter), the gas or electricity meter (or both) will record half-hourly consumption data and this can be remotely transferred in real time or on a daily basis (the equipment will automatically communicate with Ovo). We may use this information for the purposes set out above.
  • We may have to pass information about you to our agents and service providers. This may involve passing your information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) to countries that do not have the same data protection standards as we do in the UK. If we, or our agents and service providers, do this, we will make sure that it happens with the relevant legal protection in place and we’ll always take reasonable steps to ensure that these organisations will secure the customers data.
  • If we are asked, we may pass your information on to Ofgem for legal or regulatory purposes.
1.2 We may also monitor and record any communications we have with you, including phone conversations and emails, to make sure we are providing an excellent service to our customers.

2. Sources of Information

When we contact you, we may use any information we hold about you to do so. We may contact you by email, phone, text or multimedia message or other forms of electronic communications) or by visiting you. If we are contacting you to tell you about any new offers or initiatives, we will do so in line with how you have told us you would prefer to receive marketing information. If you would prefer not to receive any marketing information, you can let us know at any time by contacting us at the address given below.

3. Disclosing Information

3.1 We may allow other organisations and people to use information we hold about you:
  • to provide any services you have asked for. This may include providing information to members of your family or household and anyone acting on your behalf or other people who may be interested (for example, landlords or letting agents);
  • if we sell one or more of our businesses;
  • to help to prevent and detect debt, fraud, or loss. We may give this information to a credit-reference or a debt collection agency;
  • if you have an outstanding balance, we may transfer your debt to another organisation and give them details about you and that debt;
  • if we have been asked (for example, by Ofgem) to provide information for legal or regulatory purposes;
  • as part of current or future legal action;
  • to help manage any reward or loyalty schemes
3.2 From time to time these other people or organisations maybe outside the European Economic Area (EEA), and as a result we may pass your information to countries that do not have the same standards or protection for personal information as the UK. If we, our agents or our service providers, do this, we will make sure that it happens with the relevant legal protection in place and we’ll always take reasonable steps to ensure that these organisations will secure the customers data.

 

3.3 You agree that we can ask your previous supplier for information that will allow us to take over your supply, such as information regarding meter readings, meter technical details etc. Similarly, you agree that we can provide information we hold about you (such as information about meter readings and meter technical details) to your new supplier so they can begin supplying your gas and electricity.

 

3.4 Priority Service Register/Special Needs Conditions: If we believe that you (or a member of your household) need extra care (for example, because of your age, health, disability or financial circumstances), we may record and share this information. We will use this information so that we do not disrupt your supply. We may share your information with:
  • other energy suppliers if we believe you are considering changing supplier;
  • an outsourced service company that manages a wide range of energy industry data interactions on our behalf;
  • the electricity distributor; and
  • the relevant gas transporter, metering agents or network operator

4. Protecting information

We follow strict security procedures to protect personal information. This includes following certain guidelines (for example, checking your identity when you phone us)

We strongly recommend that you do not disclose your My Ovo login details to anyone. Please always remember to log out of your account when you have finished using My Ovo.

From time to time Ovo Energy include hypertext links to sites which are created by individuals and companies outside of Ovo Energy. We do this when there is a particular relevance to the topic you’re reading about and the site we take you to. Whilst we endeavour to check that the content of these sites is suitable, we cannot take any responsibility for the practices of the companies who publish the sites that we link to, nor the integrity of the content contained within them.

5. The Internet

We may use ‘cookies’ to monitor how you use our site. This helps us to understand how our customers and potential customers use our website so we can develop and improve the layout, design, and functionality of the site. A ‘cookie’ is a piece of information that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and records how you have used a website. When you go back to that website, it can give you certain, tailored options based on the information it has stored about your last visit. You can normally alter the settings of your browser to prevent it from accepting cookies.

If you do not want us to use cookies in your browser, you can set your browser to reject cookies or to tell you when a website tries to put a cookie on your computer, but, you may not be able to use some of the products or services on our website without cookies.

This site uses ClickTale web analytics service. ClickTale may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, scrolling activity as well as text you type in this website. This site does not use ClickTale to collect any personally identifiable information entered in this website. ClickTale does not track your browsing habits across websites which do not use ClickTale services. For more information see Privacy Policy for Information Collected by the ClickTale Web Analytics Service. We are using the information collected by ClickTale service to improve the customer experience during the sign up process. You can choose to disable the Service at http://www.clicktale.net/disable.html.

Please remember that communications over the Internet, such as e-mails and webmails are not secure unless they have been encrypted. We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.

How can you find out what personal information we hold about you?

Just ask us! You are entitled to see the personal information that we hold about you at any time. (If you write to, email or phone us and ask to see this information, it is known as a ‘subject access request’ or ‘SAR’ for short) You can do so by:

  • telephoning us on 0800 5999 440
  • emailing feedback@ovoenergy.com
  • writing to The Data Protection Officer at Wellington House, Kemble Enterprise Park, Kemble, Cirencester, Gloucestershire.  GL7 6BQ

When we receive your request we will send you a form to fill in and there will be a £10 administration fee which can be paid by cheque or card. Unfortunately, if you do not return the form or pay the £10 fee, we will not be able to deal with your request. We then have 40 days to respond to your query.

Even if you don’t want a copy of your personal information, you can still contact us to check that the personal information that we hold is accurate, or to let us know of any changes to your personal information. We always try to ensure that the information that we hold is accurate, up to date and relevant. We’ll be more than happy to make changes or to correct any inaccuracies.

Updated January 2012