Meet the new Charge Anytime!

This is just madness from OVO, I travel across Scotland for my work which is EV installs so these subscriptions are pointless for me and as for the pay as you go well that’s just a shambles.

Yep wife does about 2000miles a month and as a company car owner the "perks" are completely pointless, actually fairly pointless to most but certainly are to company car users

For those with multiple EVs:

Octopus offers something called the Intelligent Drive Pack, providing unlimited, scheduled smart EV charging at home for £30 per month.

Will the last person leaving OVO please turn out the lights?

Last month I done over 1800miles just with my work, I can’t get my head round how they have actually come to this and think people are going to be happy with it.

All those cravats in one room 😂. Typical marketing BS, spinning it to make it sounds like they're doing us a favour 🤬

Funny enough the wife clocked this too. We'll be taking a look

Imagine the uproar if petrol price was doubled in price! Yet OVO can do this without any come back.

The monthly plans are a cynical way to increase the price even more since people will choose a plan that offers more than their typical usage since anything over the plan allowance is charged at full price so the price per kwh is even higher.

The cheapest monthly plan at £27.50/month offers 175kwh - 15.7p per kwh, but if you only use, say, 150kwh then it works out at over 18p/kwh! Why would anyone sign up to a monthly plan? Usually if you sign up to a set monthly payment there is some benefit such as a reduced price - you don’t get penalised with a more expensive one!

And all of this under the headline that says “get more with OVO”…...

The marketing people probably failed gcse maths 😂

The marketing people probably failed gcse maths 😂

looked at this, it states you must set your ready time for between 4am and 11am.  so yes I can plug in a car at 10am in the morning, but cannot have a ready time of say 5pm that day.  it needs to be next day.  so the car will charge still over night.

it specifies 

If you need a quick charge during unscheduled hours, you can also use the boost function on your app. Just remember that any charging we haven’t scheduled is charged at your normal home energy rate – not included in your £30 monthly payment.

so with 3 cars, i often charge 1 through the night to 8am

then car 2, if not used during the day, I charge from 10am to 5pm.  by setting a ready time on ovo to 5pm

then 3rd car, if needs a top up will charge from 6pm to 10pm

seem Octopus does not allow this.  Need to hear from someone who is using Octopus, with 2 or more cars, and see how it works for them 

It might work for us so I will take a look. I've taken the view that it's going to be finding the least *removed by mod* option, as nothing will be as good as current charge anytime. 

That doesnt make sense, surely? In November the rate will be changed at Ovo’s end to 14p per kWh, pushed out from their servers to our apps and chargers which will register the change to 14p per kWh and charge at that rate, during Smart Charging.

Quite how AI can suggest you can avoid the price increase by continuing to charge your EV in exactly the same way as you did previous to the price increase in November, is beyond me!!!

Having looked at the monthly plans I can’t see any that will fit my usage. NONE of the monthly plans make sense as every single one works out as more expensive than staying on PAYG - which I’ll be doing (for now…...but will be watching other providers carefully for options). The added ‘extras’ are of no interest to me as I rarely public charge and apart from that the chargers you will be able to use the voucher with are few and far between, certainly where I am in Scotland at least. 

None of this makes business sense, unless Ovo are taking a gamble and hoping that most people will stay where they are and suck it up, because they can’t be bothered changing providers? 

Spot on analysis 

The op from  ​@Abby_OVO 

Best of luck on your EV journey! And if you need any help, we’re always here.😊🔌

Would anyone from ovo like to explain who they are expecting to take up this offer of monthly subscriptions?

: as monthly plans appear to workout more expensive than pay as you go Charge Anytime rates of 14p

: doubling CA rates to 14p per kWh benefits who exactly 

Tom…

Benefits ovo obviously 😂

Benefits ovo obviously 😂

Very few suppliers options are great for EV charging, especially lack of 24/7.

This is what OVO are banking on. They know full well the fury this will have caused. Not just an acceptable rise but 100%+ increase. But they are clearly playing the odds.

I’ve looked at most and its going to be Octopus for me. Once I switch I’ll move over to the IOG rates. Daytime will be more, and its still not 24/7 EV charging.

However as we have solar and home battery, we can charge the home battery up also overnight using the 7p rate, then make use of that in the day to reduce usage on the higher daytime rates. If I need to charge the EV in the day, then fine, I’ll keep it to the minimum, and overall we should be better off based on my calculations.

November ties in quite well for us as that’s when our fixed rate plan expires.

Been with OVO over 10 years, but its bye bye from us once the rate goes up. 

We’ve also given OVO a big thumbs down on trustpilot. The more people that do that, the bigger impact on them. Express your anger.

Er - OVO, obviously!  

I’ve now had time to analyse the options available to me, and have realised that they are digging themselves out of the hole they created for themselves when they structured Charge Anytime as a bolt-on to existing tariffs. By doing this, we the customers were in the happy position of getting cheap EV charging without any penalty on our basic tariff prices.

By comparison, pretty much every other energy supplier has specific “EV Tariffs”, in which the cheap EV charging rate is offset by an increased unit rate for general electricity. Octopus are the worst offenders in this game, but all are guilty.

Our problem is that by doubling (and more) the cost of EV charging in Charge Anytime, OVO have over-cooked their solution, and moved themselves from the cheapest-in-market to pretty much the most expensive. 

I wonder whether their bean-counters will realise this and moderate the charge somewhat in due course. I think they should have gone for 10p, if their aim was to improve their finances without destroying their business. Unfortunately for them, 14p is demonstratively too greedy and will do exactly that.

It did use to be 10p they dropped it to 7p inline with other providers. I think 10p most would stomach but not 14p. Depending on how good of a company ovo are they will either, reduce the 14p to 10p or back to 7p, OR double down on the whole fiasco as they can't admit they fecked up! 

You'll generally get quite a bit of charging scheduled in the evenings as IOG attempts to balance the grid. This also gives you cheap rate for the whole household, so I definitely think you'll be better off when you take this into account.

I expected when reading the email from OVO, this has gone down like a lead-balloon.

Based on our (short term as new to an EV) monthly usage we’d likely exceed the limit on their lower tier subscription (the £27.50 p/m), but not need so much as is offered in the higher (£37.50 p/m) tier. I suspect these where carefully arrived at as to make the lower tier unattractive.

Assuming I stay with OVO and take up tier2 I can see myself not bothering to operate the EV in a ‘green’ way anymore. Since having an EV I find I drive and operate it with an aim to maximize the use of the charge, however if I’m going to be moving to a use-it-or-lose-it (cant roll it over) monthly KW number then … what the hell, why bother to think about being green and efficient (which I am aware is not very environmentally friendly)

And of course … once they get customers used to a flat monthly fee, there will be the annual ‘ our costs have gone up, so sorry … next years rate is now £% more ‘.

I would have to join the comments here in condemning this as being very poor from OVO. The whole point of CAnytime is that OVO get to sell excess generated energy which they have to produce but have no means to store, e.g. sell it to customers with batteries and let them store it. This change can only be around maximizing profits, which I appreciate is a companies ‘res on detra’, however keeping customers (both happy and literally keeping) is surely a corporate goal also?

"Existing OVO customers are first in line to try it out."    ...... No thanks.

I currently do approx 25,000 miles at 2.4 miles per kwh....... none of your 'monthly plans' are suitable so you are basically doubling my rate from 7p to 14 per kwh. How do you justify such rubbish and then try and sell it as a positive ?   

I've been with Ovo for less than a year and have sent all my bills increase over 200%.

Time to go.

This is why I am considering dropping my company EV when the lease breaks even early next year. Then privately go back to a diesel. 

My fear is that where one supplier goes, they all follow. If the others see OVO benefiting from their greed, it will be like a domino effect.

If that happens, this will severely hit the UK EV sales market, which is already beleaguered from the hype. The ONLY offset financially to the massive cost of a new EV is the cheap home charging. Remove that and you lose the EV incentive. Yeah I get the 14p is still cheaper than ICE fuel (which OVO have gone to great lengths to highlight) but the price of very good 2nd hand ICE cars far outweighs any savings in the EV running costs when charging is not cheap.

You couldn’t make it up. Hasn’t anyone at Ovo noticed that they HAD a growing customer base of people who were clearly satisfied with the Charge Anytime plan, and were clearly so LOYAL that they were happy to sign up for another 2 year fix despite the fact that there were cheaper rates per KWh elsewhere?

Or MAYBE they did, and that’s why they just decided to treat us all like suckers!

No thank you Ovo..

I’m a high mileage driver. Just been doing some digging. Yes octopus are more expensive on the ev tariff for the rest of the house but if you take out the intelligent drive for £30 the standard rate applies and  is 26p kWh. And unlimited free charging unlike this joke of an offer where they charge and then double your ev rate to 14p.   So looks like I’m much better off on octopus now ovo have done this. Goodbye after 5 years loyalty. 

Well this is a complete bust! I based my whole charging strategy for a new EV on the current £0.07 charge. Now this is doubled.

You would at least have thought that the “plans” would offer a cheaper pro rata charge, but no!

• Standard is 15.7p per kWh
• Premium is 15p/kWh
• Standard plus 17p/kWh
• Premium plus 15.9p/kWh

You don’t even get the 14p “pay as you go” rate if you fall off the end of your plan!

OK, so there’s other benefits…?

• Charging voucher - I have yet to find OVO Charge points in locations convenient to me
• Charger cover - on my car insurance
• Battery health check - almost certainly an upselling opportunity for OVO’s “partner”
• Kwik Fit Club Subscription Discount - more upselling. I shop around for tyres as needed to get best deal at the time. Info on Kwik Fit website not immediately clear what you pay or what you get - my car doesn’t even look up as it is new

So where’s the deal here OVO?

Also, I came to OVO at first due to excellent (by comparison) standing charges. If this is to change in January with other suppliers forced to offer lower standing charges, the whole benefit of OVO for me evaporates.

Puff!

I was much impressed 6 months ago and now feel utterly deflated!