Energy bills alert: Man 'shocked' after being slapped with £8k electricity bill due to mistaken identity

According to Smith, he had been living with friends for the period covered by the energy bill and has never lived in the address cited by the firm.

This error appeared to be due to his name with the credit report referring to an "Ian Smith", a different spelling to his own name.

Furthermore, the credit report listed a different bank account to his own which led Smith to take action.

After the energy bill rose to £8569.21, Smith reached out to OVO Energy but was unable to get the issue resolved.

This led to him contacting the Energy Ombudsman, which is a free and impartial service used to mitigate disagreements between suppliers and customers in the sector.

According to the ombudsman, Smith was not liable to pay the growing energy bill; a decision which was upheld after OVO Energy sought to appeal it.

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As a result, the energy firm has been called to scrap the charge but the security guard from Leicester claims this has yet to be implemented with the bill continuing to rise.

The 35-year old shared: "It has been very distressing - to get an email that saying I owed nearly £8,000 was a bit of a shock.

"It's affected my work - I need to have a clear head for my job. To have this all on top of it, they're treating me like scum, really.

"To me, they are thieves, trying to steal money from me. I have no connection to this address whatsoever. I didn't have my own property until January this year."

Due to not having a set address at the time, Smith found it difficult to prove he was not living in the address cited by OVO Energy.

Despite the supplier losing its appeal, OVO was told to remove Smith's name from the account, write a letter of apology and pay £200 in compensation.

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This was meant to have been completed within a 28 day period but allegedly the energy firm has not carried out the above actions in full.

Smith noted the OVO were relentless in pursuing him over the £8,000 bill, but have "now gone silent".

Due to this, Smith is urging the ombudsman to move his case forward to the UK's energy regulator Ofgem

An OVO spokesperson said: "We can confirm Mr Smith has been removed from the account and have sent a goodwill gesture to apologise for the experience."