Fixed rate changes

Hey ​@Bendog 

This change is part of the government levy changes, and will have no impact change to the end date of the fixed contract you agreed to and is not being cancelled early.

The current rates you pay will change as of 1 April, the teams are currently working in the background to make sure everyone’s correct, new rates are ready to be applied from 1 April which means we do have to change the contract, so we can queue up the new rates with the discount, which will have your original end date applied. You’ll receive an email or letter soon explaining more about including terms and contract end date which will remain the same as before.

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused, I hope this helps clear that up.

Hi ​@Abby_OVO thanks for the clearing up…I must say I had to read ​@Bendog’s post two or three times to get a handle on what was going on!  But now I think I understand…maybe it might have been clearer if the wording at the top of the Plan info had been something like “The newly amended Government Levy rates of your 1 Year Fixed Loyalty 17 June 2025 plan will apply from 1st April 2026” perhaps just to emphasise that no existing contract was being terminated, just the terms relating to the new tariff? Forgive me, my suggested wording is a bit woolly and only a feeble example, but something along those lines to make it clear that the rates were actually being improved!!

I mean ultimately it’s good news (at least in the short term!) for us consumers, but at first or third glance might not actually seem be worded to imply that!

All the best as ever….Walt

My problem was that nothing was communicated to me before these changes were made. I said that I understood WHY the changes were to be made. I just expected that customers would be informed of changes before they appeared on their Plan Page. 

The statement at the top says, quite clearly: “Your new 1 Year Fixed Loyalty 17th June 2025 plan will start on 1st April 2026.” This implies that the new plan will last for 1 year and not just until the end of my present plan. That could and should have been worded more accurately. That page is, after all, where customers can check that the rates on their bills reflect the rates on their agreed Plan. 

It would have been, relatively, easy to make the statement at the top an accurate reflection of what Abby has said will happen by saying something like (in my case): “Your amended 1 Year Fixed Loyalty 17th June 2025 plan will start on 1st April 2026 and finish on 6th August 2026. Details to follow via email/post.” There is no ambiguity here. 

I’d just point out that suppliers are under no obligation to give prior notification of price reductions, but they are required to notify price increases. You’ll enjoy the Standard Licence Conditions’ legalese to cover any nasty not actually a price increase - Disadvantageous Unilateral Variation:

  
You could argue that (c) applies here, I suppose, in which case there’s all sorts of other conditions to be met. That will presumably become clear when the promised email or letter turns up.

Still, it would be nice to let the customer know what was going on. Just a couple of sentences briefly ensuring that there is nothing to worry about and a more detailed email will come soon. 

To be kinda fair on the industry…

This is probably the first time the UK has ever suddenly made a change to the system which requires all Fixed Rate Tariffs to be modified mid-contract. It’s likely most billing systems aren’t really built to handle that because almost no-one ever thought it would happen.

Just some thoughts as an IT guy.

This is uncharted territory, so I suspect that there’s a little bit of left-hand-right-hand going on, coupled with a whole army of billing, IT, commercial, website and communications people rushing to meet a deadline which has probably already passed. Perhaps they’re concentrating on what has to be done, even if that means skating over the ‘would be nice’ stuff. I don’t envy them at all.

Fair comment.  However the emails that we have received are personalised to the extent that they include an estimate of the effect of the (as yet) unspecified rate reductions.  Given that this estimate can only have been produced with knowledge of the future rates, there seems to be no good reason not to have included that information, as well as clarifying that fixed term contracts were not in fact being abrogated.

Try scaling that up to 5+ million customers with a bazillion different possibilities…

It’s not as simple as you might think. With the limited time available, there’s only so much OVO can do.

As I said, OVO clearly know what rate they are going to charge me in order to be able to make the savings estimate, and they have managed to sow confusion by amending the contract end date without explanation.  At least one other supplier that I know of has overcome the challenge of telling their customers what their new rate is going to be in two week’s time.  But if you are telling me that it is too difficult for OVO, I am sure you are correct.

Gonna be honest here…

In this day and age where ANY good news is welcomed… One thing I’ve never understood is this... Why do people always want more whenever a good thing happens? More speed, more discount, more free stuff… I really don’t want to see another Energy Bill Support Scheme monster again...

Personally, I really think folks should just give OVO - and all other suppliers - more slack in the current situation. You absolutely will get the discounts from the recent government changes where they’re applicable but please be patient as this requires a bunch of background work since it’s not just a case of push magic button make cool things happen. We as the Forum Volunteers know everyone wants to see this work out just as much as OVO does and we feel the pain too. But OVO is clearly working on it and you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. This task has basically never really happened in the UK before and I think it’s been a shock to the entire industry - hence a likely reason why things aren’t being handled as smoothly as even I would admittedly like to see. And this is a rare admission from me on the OVO Forum.

I do want to take the opportunity to mention the chaos caused by the Energy Bill Support Scheme back in 2022. It only lasted a few months and was basically automated for the most part, but caused absolute bedlam on the Forum and I think we saw some of the highest activity levels the OVO Forum has ever seen during that period. We were literally working pretty much flat-out just to keep up with the insane levels of engagement. I don’t have the numbers handy but I do recall spending pretty much entire days doing nothing but responding to just EBSS related stuff. For me, I’d personally prefer not to relive the chaos again so I’m kinda hoping this latest change just works without the madness from last time.

I received this in an email this morning (20/03/2026) Although it does not actually state the new charges (although OVO, obviously, know what they will be), it does make it clear that the end of my fixed rate will still be on the same date as originally agreed by me.

Reverse engineering the figures in your email, and using the FACs on your plan page, we can apply the levy reductions of 3.54 p/kWh for electricity and 0.331 p/kWh for gas to estimate the saving:

Electricity: 2833 kWh x 0.0354 £/kWh ≈ £100
Gas:  5476 kWh x 0.0033 £/kWh ≈ £18
Total: £118

I think the difference is within the rounding error arising from using integer FACs, when billing always seem to use FACs with one place of decimals.

Subtract the saving from the current estimated annual cost to find the new estimate.

The current cost is just FAC x unit rate + 365 x standing charge, then add 5% VAT. It’s not unlikely that your new unit rates will be:

Electricity: 23.53 - 3.37 = 20.16 p/kWh
Gas: 5.81 - 0.031 = 5.78 p/kWh

Check: (0.2016 x 2833 + 0.0578 x 5476) x 1.05 ≈ £932 
Standing charges: (0.4944 + 0.2653) x 365 x 1.05 ≈ £291
Total new estimated annual cost: 932 + 291 ≈ £1223

Again, within a rounding error. One little caveat: I’ve seen some suppliers using a rebate on electricity unit rates of 3.51 p/kWh inc. VAT instead of the original estimate of 3.54 p/kWh. This original figure was derived from figures published by Ofgem in November 2025, so there may have been a change since then. The saving would then be closer to the email’s £117.23 figure, and your new unit rate could possibly be 20.19 p/kWh.

Please let us know what your rates turn out to be.

Further update: My Plan page no longer has the “Thanks for staying with us” section on it, including all of the text below that heading.

Everything else remains the same as in my original image at the top of this thread. So it starts with the My Plan heading.