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MHarley
Rank 2
March 27, 2024
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I've been charged £13,000 for 29 days electricity and gas! Is this due to an out of line reading?

  • March 27, 2024
  • 43 replies
  • 1361 views

My 3 bedroom house was empty for 29 days in October 2023 as there was a change of tenant.  The house is 3 bedroom semi detached.  My estate agent supplied details to OVO for meter readings.  

Electricity use for the period was approximately £50

Gas use for the period was approx £12,800 - that is a bill of around £480/day

OVO were alerted to this by my estate agent in December.

Since then i have spoken on phone and on chat with customer care, sent emails in, sent complaint emails in and had no response.

I have had one debt agency contact me and when i spoke to them about the debt they said “we are sending this back to OVO, its clearly a massive mistake, that bill is ridiculous.’ 

My estate agent said after speaking with OVO that they would stop with the debt collection and investigate.  Then yesterday, 26th March, i was contacted by ANOTHER debt agency chasing me for a £13,000 unpaid bill - for 29 days of gas and electricity.

Why am i getting absolutely nowhere speaking with OVO on the phone and via email?  I am being harassed by debt collectors for a bill that is clearly a screw up - and no-one at OVO seems to want to do anything about it.

I am now looking at Ombudsmen complaint and arranging legal representation because no-one will tell me who i should speak to.  Clearly the £13,000 bill needs erasing and an estimated bill put its in place for the period (29 days).

Can anyone help point me in the right direction?

 

 

 

Best answer by Abby_OVO

Updated on 23/06 by Ben_OVO:

If you have a sudden large bill, this is likely due to an out of line meter reading, the first thing to do would be to check the meter reading history via your online account or app. If you’re still living in the property please contact the support team with an up to date meter reading. It’s always a good idea to send in a clear picture of the front of the meter, displaying the reading and meter serial number.

Out of line meter readings could be submitted incorrectly by an out-going, in-going tenant or owner or letting agency. But can usually be corrected quite easily by the billing team. 

These similar topics may be helpful: 


 

 

Hey @MHarley 

 

Sorry to hear about the trouble you’ve been having.

 

Looks like Blastoise186 has left some helpful advice in contacting the Support Team, the team are available to you today if you’ve got time, but you can always take care of things tomorrow.

 

You can contact the team now via social media, send us a message on Facebook or X from 7.30am - 8pm monday to thursday, 7.30am - 6pm fridays and 8am - 5pm saturday and sunday.

 

 

Let us know how you’re getting on with this, the Support Team will be able to help get this sorted with you.

43 replies

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Blastoise186
Super User
Blastoise186Super User
Super User
January 9, 2025

Thankyou for your replies: I have received a second email pertaining to a period we were with ovo in spring 2024 with the following: a bill for £8.99

No idea why they're sending me this stuff now, clearly some kind of glitch, but I'll take it over the previous one!

​@Account1 If I were to hazard a guess, it’s probably a bill correction. Perhaps someone was looking into it in the background? Either way, if you pay that off (and I suspect you probably already have) then it’ll disappear forever and you shouldn’t see it surface again.

What's your normal billing usually  ?

Have said all along  when working for SSE and then SSE/OVO that if a bill is produced  way out the normal it should be stopped and looked into before getting sent to the customer 

Dealt with loads of inaccurate billing and have been out to customers that are in distress or terrified by them 

​@Skeck   exactly the stress must be terrible especially if this is an older person or even a pensioner who has already had their winter fuel payment stopped by the government😕 

 

I've actually been to customers in the middle of winter where they have panicked and switched everything off fue to high inaccurate bills…

Sitting with layers on and their outdoor coats trying to keep warm…

Saw the coldness in your breath inside the house 

Immediately turned everything on for them 

Looked at the Meter and the reading on the bill and it was mokes out 

On the phone and hot it sorted 

Horrible feeling seeing them like that 

​@Skeck The old SSE billing system was abysmal from what I understand and it corrupted tons of accounts. OVO had no choice but to dedicate entire teams to spend tons of time fixing that and doing data cleansing as part of the migration to OVO. While they did the best they could and did manually fix well over 10,000+ accounts, there’s always a chance that some will slip the net. It’s precisely why OVO decided to scratch build Orion because the legacy Apollo billing system also proved to be trash. At least a scratch build means you can fix it yourself if it breaks!

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!
    Newcomer
    Account1
    Newcomer
    January 9, 2025

    Thanks for the help folks. 🙂 

    It's upsetting to think errors like these can terrify vulnerable people into turning their heating off, that should be a scandal. 

      Blastoise186
      Super User
      Blastoise186Super User
      Super User
      January 9, 2025

      It’s… Complicated… Very complicated...

      Not sending a bill at all also kinda breaks the rules in an even worse way so it’s a rock and a hard place situation. But I am tempted to fling this backstage to chat more with the other volunteers...

      I will be back shortly, just catching up with other threads at the moment and talking to someone about unrelated stuff. Sorry to be a pain, but please bear with me while I get some other things taken care of!

      And only after I posted this do I realise that I messed up the comment. So I’m gonna add this little extra to clarify something. I’m absolutely NOT saying it’s acceptable to scare the living daylights out of customers - in my view it’s completely unacceptable  to do so and one supplier (not OVO) has already felt my wrath in recent months as a result of their staff doing so.

      I stand firm that I frown upon suppliers who deliberately engage in some of the behaviours that this thread mentioned. If that means being critical of OVO, then I will do so too - my Forum Volunteer role here doesn’t prevent me from speaking up if I feel I need to. But I kinda also prefer more to talk about solutions over ranting which is one of the reasons I don’t post much criticism publicly - it’s not really my style per se.

      But at the same time, the supplier still has to send something to avoid other issues cropping up. I need some time to think this through before I reply again - purely because this is a crazy complicated topic and I don’t want to mess up my comments!

      Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!
        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement

        OVO Energy Ltd, Floor 5, Crescent, Temple Back, Redcliffe, BS1 6EZ, (Company no. 06890795) registered in England and Wales.

        OVO (S) Gas Limited is registered in England and Wales (Company No. 02716495) at Floor 5, Crescent, Temple Back, Redcliffe, BS1 6EZ.

        OVO (S) Gas Limited is part of OVO Group Ltd