We’re updating some of our Charge Anytime T&Cs

very very disappointed in this change. I am on a good tariff and only fixed for a year due to the charge anytime for the two cars. We have been using around 700 kwh per month at the moment I am at or the near the cap but once my deal ends I will well over the top (current saving 0.15p kwh so allows 666khw usage which means I will be paying another £50 a month for the same electricity) I will be leaving to another provider. With the other 4 big brands they provide cheap energy for the whole house but I thought this was a good system but clearly two car house holds will be penalised!! there should be a bit or tolerance given we have two cars and also spend a lot as a household. Also I see Ovo happy to give away 30000 miles to some customers. Maybe just keep the ones you have!

Hi ​@leebobbycastle,

Thanks for your post, and sorry to hear that the new terms will have a negative effect for you. If you reach out to chargeanytime@ovo.com they’ll be able to give you further advice on how the changes will affect your set up going forward.

Good evening. This is very disappointing as I have recently signed up to a fixed tariff on the basis of this ev tariff.  OVO have now changed the terms and conditions and monthly costs. Im assuming I can switch suppliers now without paying any fees? 

Hello,

Charge Anytime is NOT a tariff and is not a Fixed Rate deal either. It’s an Add-On that comes with it’s own set of terms and conditions which runs independently of your supply contract.

As such, objecting to these changes would not be considered valid grounds for an exit fee waiver for your supply contract. If you leave because of this, you WILL be charged the standard Early Exit Fee.

To be honest though, this will only hamper you if you do an extreme amount of home charging anyway. 99% of folks won’t be affected by the fair use policy.

Disgusting how you’ve done this! Waiting until a good majority had fixed their tariff over 2 weeks ago and then add this fair use policy to charge anytime so you get a £50 cancellation fee. Well another supplier is now going to get my custom.
 

Before you took over SSE were brilliant always answered calls, asked if we wanted to change our direct debit etc….OVO no stuff that for a laugh!! dd has suddenly gone up 50% because we based your direct debit on your charges before the credit for charge anytime which in my case is over the new stupid fair use policy I’m not an excessively high user and only a one ev household but I always go over the new £100 cap. Well what happens if I can’t afford it?? Don’t care about that do you? And strangely enough everytime one of these increase emails gets sent you suddenly don’t answer! Strange that isn’t it?? 

As mentioned: Charge Anytime IS NOT linked directly to your supply contract and doesn’t form part of any tariff - it’s an Add-On that runs independently across all of them. If you leave OVO, you’ll get charged any exit fees that apply regardless of your reason unless it’s within the free exit window. That’s always been the case and has nothing to do with these changes.

Not everything is a conspiracy. Not everything is out to get you. Sometimes it’s better to not try to spin up those stories because you’re reading into stuff that’s not there…

As we have ALWAYS said on the Forum, you can ask for a Direct Debit Review if you feel it’s wrong or you need to reduce it for affordability reasons - and financial support is available if you’re struggling, you just have to ask.

It is also only the CA credits that count under the Fair Use Policy, not what you spent prior to the credits. That’ll make the £100 go further than you might think.

As for the SSE → OVO thing? That has been discussed on the Forum many times over the years. But that ship has sailed and those discussions have already ended.

your right it was an addon but given whether I have one or 5 cars to charge or 5 different houses have one car that does lots of miles it seems odd as the 0.07p figure just means customer will not sign up 500kwh at the price is not that many miles and when octopus and eon allow hours at night and discount all the usage at that time. Ovo clearly think its more hassle than its worth. I sent them an email and had a reply asking send us your details and that's was 5 days ago. customer service non existent. Not sure its very good customer service to ask me to sign up and then cap it and not allow someone to leave as its an addon to a tariff so OVO know I'm on a fixed tariff let me change something as an addon to make me stay and then change the t and c right away. I have asked Ofgem for their thoughts on the wording and implementation of such addons. 

You are free to leave OVO if you want. But I cannot waive any exit fee because I’m not allowed to do so - Forum Volunteers can’t access your account. The only way to waive them outside of the free exit periods are if you’re moving house or you’re renewing/extending early (some contracts will waive the fee for that reason). You knew what you were signing up to. But alas, most people don’t read the rules first.

Either way, it works out at about 2,000 miles a month which is plenty for most folks. If you’re doing more than that, you’re probably also using public chargers anyway - which won’t count towards the cap.

But the rules/terms are clear and I doubt Ofgem would side with you.

You’re thinking of more Economy 7 stuff which is completely different to Charge Anytime.

I didn't ask you to access my account or waive the fee that's for OVO to do. But its obvious as a volunteer forum moderate you get sometime as you have no empathy with the fact I signed up over the phone asked about the tariff that I was fixed on and they said the the charge anytime wouldn't be changing when clearly they planned to introduce a cap, that only penalises individuals who use two cars or one that does a lot of miles.  Verses multiple customers who between them could actually use more electricity. I am a high usage customer but wont be staying with a provider that wants to keep moving the goal posts. I'm sure you will defend it as unlike actual OVO customer service who never reply seem to reply you carry the company torch well!

There is no conspiracy theory magic trickery here. It would just be a case that whoever you spoke to gave you the latest available information as it was at the time you signed up. It’s normal for rules for just about anything to change over time. It’s your expectations that must adapt along with them. It doesn’t matter where you go - the rule changes WILL follow you across the market.

Leave if you want, stay if you want. It makes no difference to me. But I won’t change my answers regardless because I’m giving the answer that makes the most sense.

your condescending and obtuse tone leaves me to think this isn't a forum for people to discuss or ask questions or raise concerns. what if OVO get 100k new customers then reduce the cap to 10kwh a month just seems a bizarre business and customer service move for those making the EV change. 

I very much doubt they’d lower the cap that much. If they did, I’d literally be the first to yell at OVO and I’d make SURE they felt my wrath. But what it does reveal is that I’m not sure you’re thinking that logic through - that’d be a terrible business decision for starters! OVO knows I have standards and won’t hesitate to speak my mind and call them out if I feel the need to do so.

Being neurodivergent (specifically, I am Autistic) means the stuff I post may seem different from what you’d expect. That’s core to who I am and there’s nothing I can do to change that. If you want to talk to OVO about this, 0330 175 9678 is your best bet. I’m giving you the direct number to the team responsible for this stuff, but please play nice with them as the agent you speak to  on that line won’t be the one who made the changes.

The Forum is open to everyone, but please remember what I said. We do get folks who are neurodivergent posting here and those folks - myself included - may have impaired social skills and may struggle to get the right meaning across. It’s not intentional, but we ask for your understanding as we can’t always adapt as much as we’d like to.

As for my volunteer status here? I literally get nothing in return and that’s a deliberate choice. The closest I get is more access to information - but that just makes me more helpful.

​@leebobbycastle Being another forum volunteer I wasn’t sure whether or not to add a bit of perspective here as I’m EV owner of four years and an ex-OVO customer. I spent quite a lot of time researching the type of EV to get and not a lot on the charger (charge point) which proved to be a bit short sighted but it worked out ok in the end but only by luck.

My car doesn’t support CA (Zoe ZE40) so I would have had to have spent about £1,000 getting a compatible charger but I wouldn’t saved enough each year to pay for it. It would have been cheaper to have the standard tariff even though that was expensive. I chose to leave OVO and go to Octopus Agile and I saved about £600 in the first year (for everything) because when the supply is cheap it is cheap for everything in the house. However, when it’s expensive it is eye-wateringly expensive at up to £1 a unit. I charge when it’s cheap. We studiously avoid the peak periods because we can cook/heat with gas when that happens. This year is not so good and you are always living on a knife edge wondering when cheap periods are going to happen. Doing a comparison for the past 365 days, CA is £11 cheaper over the year than Agile. Certainly not enough to buy a new charger.

The point is you can only go with what you think is best at the time. I do sympathise with you that OVO have changed the T&Cs for the Add On but any energy supplier can do that and if you have spent out on a charger specifically for your energy supplier a new potential supplier may not support that or your car. The whole thing with charging an EV is a complete minefield which I didn’t see with getting one but we have found something that works well for us and that is what you have to do.

Getting back to basics, the biggest saving with getting an EV is not optimising the method of charging but not having to pay the 50-55% tax on fuel and only paying 5% VAT on electricity. Simply doing that means I'm only paying 5p/mile instead of 13p/mile for a petrol car. A saving of £3,500 over nearly four years.

Peter

You are completely missing the point,  we chose to stay with OVO as CA at 7p was suitable for our needs. But we would never have fixed our tariff if we knew we’re going to be price capped and as for no conspiracy theory, look at it from our point of view, just over 2 weeks before everyone was being told to fix so did then just after the magic 14 day cooling off period they price capped CA, looks like a money grasping exercise if ever I seen one but on the surface a great short term business move to get money sadly they will lose a lot of custom over it 

Unrelated. You chose to get the fix deal when you did (and arguably it’s still available for a couple more days). I could do one right now and the magic 14 days would start today.

You could have also waited a few more days resulting in the CA changes being in the exit free window. That was your choice.

Gonna be honest here... I literally just got back from doing two scuba dives with a Surfacing Code of F as my last one was to 20m. I now need to rest for at least 16 hours for the purposes of decompression and off-gassing, so I don’t feel like discussing this any further tonight. At least not while my body is still full of dive gases (especially Nitrogen).

If I feel like it, maybe I’ll come back tomorrow or something and talk more then, but for now I need to endure my decompression cycle.

Hang on a minute, who was telling everyone to fix? OVO? Ed Milliband? Some bloke down the pub? 

The decision to change tariff, e.g. to a fixed-rate one, is a personal one only to be taken after you’ve carefully worked out the pros and cons for you. No-one can tell you to fix.