E.ON and OVO - what you need to know

Ive just had to cancel my Home Services agreement after shocking lack of service . I wondered why it took more than 10 days for OVO to respond to my cancellation. I wonder if Hometree are any better, although I must admit Ive never heard of them.

I had to cancel due to a boiler issue where the “Engineer” turned up and didn't even look at the fault as he said something to the effect that the firm I work for won't pay to try and fix that. Ive had the massive cost of a new boiler fitted and now to add salt in the wounds, because we had 1 call out (which cost me £60) they charge a £120 cancellation fee!!!!! I like OVO or should I I say liked…..

Kathryn Porter (of Watt-Logic fame) makes her personal comments on the current state of the retail electricity market after the E.On - OVO merger: Swings and roundabouts: the retail energy market consolidates again.

I subscribe to Katherine as well and she does tend to come out with good observations but she is a bit fossil fuel biased but usually on the basis that our headlong rush for renewables (remember that it was only 10 years ago that we were ramping down coal in a major way) has perhaps been more expensive for the majority of people that it perhaps it needed to be. I'm not saying that is an overly bad thing. I am massively benefiting from the disordered integration of renewables into a system (CfD, negative pricing) that was (and still is) ill equipped to accommodate them but people who are not able to take advantage of that have been significantly disadvantaged and are poorer as a result. And maybe this is contributing to the level of debt that remains unpaid and eventually falls to others to pay.

Peter

She says “More broadly, the transaction indicates that the “challenger supplier” era is effectively over, and after the collapse of dozens of suppliers during the energy crisis the market is consolidating back towards a handful of very large, heavily capitalised players with sufficiently strong balance sheets to absorb volatility, regulatory change and working capital stress. Ironically, one of the companies that spent years presenting itself as the technologically superior disruptor to the incumbent utilities has now been absorbed by one of them.”

Honestly, I’m not that surprised, as this is common in many other industries. The little guys (or disruptors, as they’re often called) come along with a better product or offering, only to be snapped up by a bigger fish further down the line. 

Peter E wrote:

The detail is that Eon use Kraken to manage the charging and OVO use Kaluza. Even though OVO is being sold to Eon those customers who were OVO will still use Kaluza so nothing should change. The electricity is all the same but it is managed differently in individual companies but you will still be an ‘OVO customer’ under the Eon brand. Think of it as a branding exercise and nothing changes internally.

​@Peter E this is a great way of putting it, and exactly right. Everything will be business-as-usual for some time yet.

Thanks for posting the article ​@Firedog - interesting read. Hopefully the acquisition, should it go ahead, will bring opportunity and security.

I’ve just seen this on Facebook:

Regulatory approval and next steps

The transaction is subject to approval by the regulatory authorities, with clearance expected in the second half of 2026. Until closing is achieved, E.ON and OVO will operate as two fully independent businesses.

On completion of E.ON’s acquisition of OVO Energy, E.ON will continue the existing energy intelligence platform licence agreement with Kaluza in respect of OVO’s customer base. Kaluza simplifies energy billing, reduces cost to serve and enables faster product innovation to support the energy transition. The parties will also evaluate the potential adoption of Kaluza across the wider E.ON group outside of the UK.

Thanks for sharing ​@HangNail999 - it’ll be interesting to see how this progresses following approval.

Those are bold statements, and I wonder if they can be substantiated. I’m not sure just when Kaluza’s Orion billing system was first introduced, but it’s more than six years since my account was transferred from Apollo. Since then, we heard that the years of delay in making smart meters available to customers with THTC systems in Scotland were a result of limitations in the billing system. It’s several years since we were told that the ability to reverse a dual-rate>single-rate transition for smart Economy 7 customers would become a reality within a few months, but we’re still waiting. So much for simplified billing and product innovation. 

Other large electricity retailers have long since introduced attractive and competitive Time of Use tariffs based on half-hourly usage data rather than register readings. OVO’s (and, by derivation, Kaluza’s) failure to innovate in this direction will undoubtedly have caused many customers to abandon OVO for suppliers with more advanced and appropriate offerings. 

I have no way of comparing OVO’s billing system to any other, but I have watched OVO introduce variously hare-brained schemes only to shoot themselves in the foot by abandoning them again later. There have been few signs for the casual observer of ‘faster product innovation’.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the term Kaluza means different things to different people. 

Now you’ve made me look that up … Polish for puddle !! 🤭