Meet the new Charge Anytime!

Don’t quote me on this, but I understand that the bolt-on works with Ohme, Hypervolt, Zappi, and Indra chargers as well.

I guess I’m lucky in that I bought a VW and am therefore staying at 7p/kWh so while I initially considered moving, I’m not now because of that.

Having looked at the plans though, they’re not that great value and I think OVO need to look at that, the top plan gives 500kWh of charging for £79.50 which is £59.50 if you factor in the ‘free’ charging credit for public charging (let’s face it, an annual battery check is of little to no actual value). So that’s 500kWh at 11.9p per kWh, not huge savings and if you use less than 425kWh you’re paying more than the PAYG rate which is a bit of a con if you ask me.

So, in short, my thanks go to VW for tying OVO up in enough legal knots to ensure I continue to get the 7p rate.

Do you remember when we were sent a customer survey about their new ideas regarding these new packages? 

My feedback was that I would move to Octopus. I’m sure many would agree. 

Is my maths wrong?

Assumption is 4 miles/kWh

Standard plan

2750 p/month

Up to 700 miles /month

Equivalent to 700 miles / 4 kWh = 175 kWh

2750p / 175kWh = 15.7p/kWh

Or

600 miles uses 600 miles / 4 kWh = 150 kWh

2750 / 150 = 18.3p/kWh

Premium

3750 p/month

Up to 1000 miles / month

Equivalent to 1000 miles / 4 = 250 kWh

3750 / 250 = 15 p/kWh

Or

800miles uses 200 kWh

3750 / 200 = 18.5p/kWh

In what universe would anyone stay with OVO ?

Spot on I would say. 
This is what cynical exploitation looks like.

If you haven’t already viewed the comments of other customers you may find them here:

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/electric-vehicles-166/meet-the-new-charge-anytime-20267

I think the monthly plans should be viewed by taking into account the public charging credit.

If you take the £10 public charging credit off the monthly payment it becomes 1750p/175kWh = 10p/kWh. The premium plan becomes 2750p/250kWh = 11p/kWh. It would be up to you to decide if you would make use of the public charging credit or the other perks associated with any monthly plan or whether the PAYG plan may be more appropriate.

They care not one jot 🤬

"perks" 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Pointless that ngs of little use to most customers, especially.cpmpany car or salary sacrifice owners

My recent experience…

I have an Indra charger, a Tesla and consume around 50 kWh per week - not a lot.  I’m currently with OVO and they control the charger only (not the Tesla).  I love the fact that we can plug in the car at any time during the day or night, and if the grid is quiet enough OVO will start charging immediately.  As someone alluded to in this forum, if the car doesn’t charge when needed I could go into the charge anytime app and set the “ready by” time and it would force a charge using the cheap rate.  On the rare occasions when I needed this, it worked and I was grateful for it.

The recent email from OVO about the “changes to charge anytime” forced me to consider my options for the first time in 2.5 years, but the process wasn’t easy.  I wanted to do a proper comparison with other providers.

Rather than OVO tell me the price per kWh for each of their new plans, they left it to me to work it out myself:

• Standard Plan / 175 kWh offered for £27.50 = 15.71p per kWh
• Premium Plan / 250 kWh offered for £37.50 = 15p per kWh

I hardly ever charge away from home, so the above plans were no good for me.

Then to compare with other providers…

Due to the credit system that OVO uses, trying to work out how many kWh I was putting into the car was not an easy process.  There was no way to download data from the charge anytime app or look at my bill and and clearly see the number of kWh used by the car.  The new Indra app has also removed the ability to download historical data.  I had to take the value of the credit on each OVO bill and convert it to kWh (credit amount / (peak unit rate - discounted unit rate)).

I could then clearly see how much I was using on the car over the past year, and how much I was using on the rest of the house.

• With the increase per kWh from 7p to 14p, I will be going from £326 to £652 per year for the car.
• Using the new October prices from OVO and the 14p car rate, I’ll be paying approx £2,500 per year for my electricity.
• Plugging in the new October Intelligent Octopus Go prices, I’ll be paying approx £2,300 per year.  Note that this does not even take into account the overnight discounted rate provided to the house by Octopus, so I expect my bill to decrease further.

With Octopus I was concerned about not being able to charge during the day.  It turns out that Octopus provides a very similar “ready by” service to their customers and that more often than not, they will give you charge if you need it.  As I said earlier, its very rare that I’ll ever use this facility.  You can also choose not to integrate your car with Octopus and just connect the charger.

For me, I loved what OVO offered, but sorry, it makes sense for me to move.  I had confirmed a fixed rate with OVO to start from the 3rd October - I have now cancelled that and signed up for Octopus.  Let’s see whether Octopus put up their prices.

Thanks to OVO for looking after me for the last two and a half years…  bye!

This is a truly bizarre move by OVO, perhaps pricing themselves out of the EV charging market for some reason beyond any information we have access to? Doubling the price and being disingenuous (with the communication of that move) makes no sense as a move to retain customers.

Very strange. ill continue to review which is the best alternative for a switch.

I was an evangelist for OVO until last October. Then they sent an email in bold caps stating (gleefully, I felt), that I was NO LONGER ELIGIBLE for Power Move, due to the fact that I had a dual tariff meter, which OVO fitted - thus losing the £10 per month credit which I had received for the previous year. I was offered the opportunity to sign up for a 12 month contract (at a higher price than I was paying) - which I declined. At that time I started to get the feeling that the £0.07 EV rate’s days were numbered - and it has come to pass! I can only think that the latest price changes mean that they are actively trying to reduce the number of their customers. Anyway - in this respect they have been successful - I leave WEF 1st October. Thanks for all the fish…

Even if the premium plan becomes 11p/kWh (unlikely to use all the public charging miles) that's still significantly more than 7p. And then you're paying 14p if you go over the home allowance.

Also, the public charging credit doesn't seem to include the likes of Applegreen or Gridserve, very common on motorways, (or Dragon Charging for those like me who go on holiday in Wales )

I have checked out the overall charges for Octopus dual fuel with smart meter and I’m switching!

I've left as well. 

It just shows the difficulty in trying to reconcile the rebate that OVO credits each month (in arrears) through Charge Anytime.

A flat rate of x p per kWh, like all the other providers offer, is so much easier to work with. 

Why OVO persist with this byzantine system is beyond me. 

Well I suppose people will vote with their direct debits!

This change in no way benefits anyone unfortunately! The email should start with we’re doubling your tariff rather than we’re making it easier. 

The most annoying thing is that they don’t give a cost per Kw anymore meaning you have no idea if 1000 miles for £37.50 is good value or not ……….. imagine driving into a petrol station and the board said £1.46 for 10 miles, but might be more, might be less. I am buying kw of electricity from OVO so surely I need to be charged per kw?? 

From my calculations it will be 14p per kw on PAYG, and 15p per kw for the first 1000 miles, followed by the full 22p tariff for anything beyond this on a subscription model..…… how does this benefit me. I believe OVO are deliberately hiding this so people think the PAYG tariff is more expensive and therefore go with a subscription despite it being the same price.

15% off my tyre at Kwick-fit won’t cut it …… 

Be Careful with at Octopus Intelligent Go.  the READY time, by their Terms, NEEDS to be between 4am and 11am.  you cannot set 5pm for example and force charge through the day, like you can with OVO.  so by setting 4am, it will still do most of the charging through the night, but will do small bits through the day

As with many of the comments here, got to do the spreadsheets as OVO have made it difficult to understand. 2 EVs and solar panels - rarely do public charging, and that's only with Tesla Superchargers. I have had a lot of problems recently (see different thread) with changes, making my Indra charger unreliable and going off line resulting in having to do full cost charging for an hour or two.

I have been a loyal OVO customer for years - even came to Bristol to a VIP open day, but it looks like OVO have blown it with us. What are they thinking? 

Could we have a reply from OVO please. I would accept a reasonable price increase eg to say 10p/kWh and drop all the public charging and quota nonsense, unless it's what some EV owners want. If OVO have made a mistake when they offered us 7p, then say so, and explain things. This is what the public have been asking the government to do instead of just announcing changes with no rationale. 

You’ll be lucky.

Perhaps this explains it all:

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/news/ovo-energy-at-risk-as-gas-and-electricity-supplier-slumps-to-a-loss-and-fails-financial-stress-tests/ar-AA1NEO5F

In a nutshell, OVO need to show they have net assets of £115 per customer - and they don’t.

So pi**ing off, say, 100,000 or more Charge Anytime customers sufficiently to make them leave will actually be useful for them, as it will help reduce this capital requirement!

It may not help them, depending on how many ‘leavers’ are like me.

I have always run in good credit with them, and leave with them owing me over £600, so in my case they lose a customer and £600 in capital.

It’s unlikely the example 100,000 customers you use are in the same position, but if they were that would be £6M in capital they would also lose, further burdening the asset per customer needed from the remaining customers.

Interesting point - at this time of year we are over £2K in credit at the start of the winter usage. Does all this money disappear if they go into receivership, which is what the linked article hinted at if they get things wrong.

I don't think they can count your account credit as part of their assets - it's your money and so should actually be a liability on their balance sheet.

I've been in the situation where my energy company went bust owing me a bunch of money.  I didn't lose anything - the company I got 'transferred' to honoured the credit balance. I think they have to 

From a balance sheet perspective it will appear as both an asset and a liability.  On receipt of advanced payment, the cash counts as an asset, but a balancing liability is put on the books for future provision of service/product.  So, for the balance sheet it is net neutral, but is would certainty be a negative cashflow / liquidity impact for the business.

There was also a typo in my last reply.  The calculation should be £60M in potential cash outflow.

Difficult to capture politely how rubbish this is (Ohme ePod user too)

The OVO website used to break out usage for car charging each month, both as cost & kWh, until it changed in the summer. No longer, I believe (happy to hear if someone has found it). You now need to take the retrospective CA credit on a bill and back calculate the usage as the difference between the std charge & the 7p/kWh.

New plan costs include VAT. Standard for 175kWh at £27.50 is > £25.73 (175x0.14 + 5% VAT), ie no benefit if you do no public charging or have other options. No better on the premium plan, £37.50 > £36.75

I believe anything over the cap (“helpfully” shown here as miles when it’s kWh CA plans) would then be at the higher standard home tariff, not the lower PAYG - is that correct? That makes the switch even poorer

PAYG seems the least worst option

I have just arranged a move from Ovo to E.on NExtDrive Smart 5.2 due to Ovo doubling the EV charge rate from 7p kWh to 14p kWh. It’s a shame, as I have been with Ovo for YEARS and have recommended lots of friends and family join. Not now - greediness is not a good look.

For anyone interested, E.on NextDrive offer 6.5p kWh for 24/7 smart charging, and 6.5p kWh for all electricity usage from 00:00-06:00. While the standing charge and standard price per kWh are slightly more than Ovo, the reduced EV charging and lower electric rates overnight will make my bills much smaller than sticking with Ovo