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Joke of an energy company!

  • May 27, 2026
  • 16 replies
  • 156 views

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Anyone else fed up with OVO? Serious question. Had my car charger installed on 13th April, worked a breeze for 1 week. Would plug my car in and it would instantly start charging. Ever since 22nd April nothing but problems. Had myenergi look into it and the issue is completely with OVO. I currently have a huge complaint with them which has been ongoing for weeks. The app is not telling my charger to charge when plugged in. Which is just fantastic considering I’m paying them for ovocharge anytime at £27.50 a month with an allowance which ironically I’ve barely been able to use thanks to their diabolical system. 
oh and to make matters even better had to fork out £30 to charge my car at an OVO compatible charger at the weekend because shocker, the charge card with credit on it wouldn’t even work. 
so far I’m £27.50 out of pocket a month for a contract I can’t even make use of the allowance for, up to £18 in urgent charges that I’ve had to force at my charger just to charge my car up and £30 for a charge I shouldn’t have even had to pay for!!

would not recommend ovocharge to anyone right now. It’s beyond an actual joke. 

16 replies

Nukecad
Super User
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  • Super User
  • May 28, 2026

….. Would plug my car in and it would instantly start charging. Ever since 22nd April nothing but problems…..
…. The app is not telling my charger to charge when plugged in…...

 

Apologies if I’m wrong, but from what you say there you seem to have possibly misunderstood how Charge Anytime works.

It will not always start charging as soon as you plug in but may/will wait until it can utilise the greenest (cheapest) electricity that will be available during your charging period.

Are you setting a “Ready-by” time?

As long as you have set a “Ready-by” time then it should deliver the charge you want by that time.
If you don’t set a Ready-by time, or set the wrong time, then you may need to do an urgent charge.
 

I assume that you have read the “Getting started” guidance:

https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/article/charge-anytime


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  • Author
  • Rank 2
  • May 28, 2026

Hi ​@Nukecad 

i didn’t have to at the start when i first had it set up. It would charge instantly when I plugged it in. No need to put a ready by time. Even though I put last night I wanted it done by 4am…still wasn’t charging and didn’t have a scheduled start time either at 10:40pm. Despite earlier saying will start charging at 10:30pm. 

it’s well known to OVO that something isn’t right in the background their end as they have had to do full resets and reconfiguration twice now because even the “urgent charge” function wouldn’t communicate with my charger either. 
 

 


Nukecad
Super User
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  • Super User
  • May 28, 2026

Hi ​@Nukecad 

…. Even though I put last night I wanted it done by 4am…still wasn’t charging and didn’t have a scheduled start time either at 10:40pm. Despite earlier saying will start charging at 10:30pm. 

Did you leave it? (Even though it hadn’t started by 10.30, it may have decided that it didn’t need to start charging until later).
Was it charged by 4 this morning?

Maybe there’s another user here with a zappi GLO  who might be able to give more advice?


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  • Author
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  • May 28, 2026

Hi ​@Nukecad 

it still wasn’t charging at midnight and had no start time either. 
I had to go out and disconnect it and reconnect it again before it would actually start charging. 
had I not I know it wouldn’t have charged. It’s fine this to me multiple times now. 


juliamc
Rank 20
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  • Rank 20
  • May 28, 2026

What car is it ​@Suze_b18 ?


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  • May 28, 2026

@juliamc  it’s a VW iD4. 


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  • Rank 4
  • May 28, 2026

Have you tried not getting CA to talk to the charger but talk directly to the car? I have an Audi so from same family as VW but also have an Ohme (Audi-supplied) charger which is not compatible at all with CA. However, I have connected CA directly to the car and just use the Ohme charger as a dumb device (basically, I treat it as a box with a cable and plug on it) and it all works fine. You must absolutely not have CA know about a charger and a car at the same time but connecting CA to the car might be worth trying. Just a thought.


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This may be related to the VW ID4 issues discussed at the link below.  The car goes into a ‘deep sleep’ mode when left for more than a couple of hours, and doesn’t then wake up when charging is scheduled.

 

First make sure you don’t have any charging times or sessions scheduled in the car itself.  If you do, these can cause issues.  Then I would suggest trying to plug your car in late in the evening and setting an early ‘leave by’ time to see if the charging works when there isn’t enough time for the car to go into deep sleep. 

You’ll need to make sure the battery is low enough (and set to charge high enough) that the charge has to initiate relatively quickly. With a 52 kWh capacity, a charge from 20% to 80% would take ~4 hours on a home charger (7 kW).  So if you’re charging from 20% to 80%, plugging in at 10pm and setting a leave by time of around 3am should do the trick.

If that works, then the deep sleep issue is more of a VW issue than an Ovo one, but there are a few solutions on the thread that may be worth trying:

https://www.speakev.com/threads/post-3-2-update-issues-anybody-else.182722/#replies


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  • May 28, 2026

@Nealeb I’ll try removing my car and re adding it see if it works. Won’t be due to charge again until next week now though. 
 

@woodstok2000 no not got any charging times set on my car. It worked absolutely fine before but OVO have even said to me in email technical have had to do resets in the background for my account because there is an issue with the OVOCharge app communicating with my charger and telling it to charge my car 


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@Nealeb I’ll try removing my car and re adding it see if it works. Won’t be due to charge again until next week now though. 
 

@woodstok2000 no not got any charging times set on my car. It worked absolutely fine before but OVO have even said to me in email technical have had to do resets in the background for my account because there is an issue with the OVOCharge app communicating with my charger and telling it to charge my car 

The OVO technical team will have access to more data and know much more than me, but on the face of it, it would seem strange that a communication issue with the app would be resolved by unplugging your car and plugging it back in so I do wonder if there’s something else going on.

When you say you’re going to remove and re-add your car, does that mean you currently have the OVO app linked to both your charger and your car?  That might be causing issues too as I think it should only be linked to one or the other, not both at the same time.


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  • May 28, 2026

@woodstok2000 

ive had them both on separately but been using it with the ev charger connected but it’s been doing it since 22nd April off and on with them doing resets in the background when it occurs. My charger app was saying waiting for surplus for weeks which is great but I don’t have solar panels. But it was ovos end causing that fault. Recently it’s just been saying charging stopped and the OVOCharge app saying ready to smart charge but not charging. 
I’ve switched it to ev only to see if that works better instead of the charger if the issue is the connection between ovo and the zappi glo. 


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@woodstok2000 

ive had them both on separately but been using it with the ev charger connected but it’s been doing it since 22nd April off and on with them doing resets in the background when it occurs. My charger app was saying waiting for surplus for weeks which is great but I don’t have solar panels. But it was ovos end causing that fault. Recently it’s just been saying charging stopped and the OVOCharge app saying ready to smart charge but not charging. 
I’ve switched it to ev only to see if that works better instead of the charger if the issue is the connection between ovo and the zappi glo. 

I had something similar when I first started using Ovo - my charger isn’t supported so I connected with the car only, but it still caused problems because the charger and the ovo app didn’t play nicely together. In the end I switched my charger to ‘dumb’ mode so it doesn’t communicate at all, and I haven’t had any problems since then.  I don’t know about the myenergi chargers, but if you have an option to disable all functionality except charging and just use the car linked to the ovo app hopefully that might help...


juliamc
Rank 20
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  • Rank 20
  • May 28, 2026

I’ve previously been in a similar frustrating situation although we have a different car and different suppliers, also we have a Zappi 2 not a Glo !! However there are similarities, all to do with the communication between the three elements.

Have you tried rebooting the Zappi Glo ?

https://support.myenergi.com/hc/en-gb/articles/40997136692113-How-to-Reboot-zappi-GLO


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  • May 28, 2026

@woodstok2000 I’ve redone my app completely now to ev again instead of charger. Will see if it will play nicely but it is definitely ovos end causing the issues. Myenergi found the charger to be functioning as it should be. 
 

@juliamc the zappi glo was rebooted and checked by myenergi, they found zero issues with the hardware and software in the background. It’s down to OVO not telling the charger to charge my car when it’s plugged in. Guess I will see when I go to charge it next if reconfiguring the app a third time back to ev only works


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This is unfortunately a confusing/frustrating element of implementing smart charging at home, especially so when not all the involved parties are necessarily designing their part of the chain to properly implement smart charging.

The key is to try and simplify as much as possible - i.e. minimise potential for conflict and as others have said above, potentially knocking back the functionality of the charger so it’s little more than an expensive ‘plug’ may help to resolve things, as some car manufacturers don’t integrate well with a charger being in control of start/stop style smart charging.

It’s probably worth remembering though, as frustrating as this is, it’s likely you’ll encounter the same or similar frustrations with any electricity supplier implementing a smart charging system, so if you can’t get it to function correctly and are looking to move, you may want to consider prioritising suppliers that are purely time-of-use when it comes to their EV tariffs, so you just set schedules to match those times and be done with it - not as flexible, usually not as cheap but less potential for things to get confused or go wrong.


juliamc
Rank 20
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  • Rank 20
  • May 29, 2026

Sorry if you’ve already tried this but…


I’ve just looked through the speakev thread referred to previously and I wonder if you could try:

1. set OVO to control the Zappi and

  1. (from speakev thread) - in the car press the "charge at preferred times" on the Goodbye screen, otherwise it starts charging straight away.