Need help with FIT payments

Hey @sandmark 

I’m really sorry to hear about this.

Let me have our Forum_Support reach out to you about this. You’ll receive a Private Message here soon: https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview 

Very sorry to hear of your difficulties with FIT payments but OVO just don’t seem willing or able to fix problems. We are coming up to nearly 2 years of exported energy unpaid by OVO since the enforced transfer from SSE.

We even have a judgement from the Energy Ombudsman and OVO Ombudsman department have written saying it’s all resolved, but it isn’t.

Just come off the phone to customer services again, very nice and helpful but a complaint gets raised and nothing happens.

Can’t even transfer my account because there isn’t one for export.

somebody help please!

Have you tried this?

Raman-complaints@ovoenergy.com

Are you sorted now @sandmark 

I too have had issues with OVO and their FIT payment schedule.  Like @sandmark, we are in our 70s and I estimate our FIT payment based on the meter reading submitted.  This helps us budget through the quarters with things like heating oil purchase.  Since the lamentable switchover from SSE to OVO, I’ve had nothing but trouble and delay.  My June payment was received in December after two months of phone calls, emails, and stress.  This late payment put us in an overdraft situation because of the purchase of winter heating oil that I had budgeted for based on the payment being received by September.  It has been explained to me now several times that the way OVO operate is:
to gather all the meter readings during the “reading month”
these are then sent to Ofgem at the beginning of the following month (the “processing month”)
payment is then (allegedly) made to OVO by Ofgem of their customer readings at the beginning of the next month (the “payment month”)
In reality, therefore, it is potentially 8 - 10 weeks after your meter reading is submitted that you “may” receive payment.
There are also constant references to “initial hand over teething problems”.  I say it’s inefficiency and ineptitude.

I submitted my last 2023 quarter reading on December 9th.  Their email acknowledgement cites:
 

Here we now are at just about the end of the first week of March and I’ve had neither the Statement nor the payment.  I will be calling them again on Monday, and I envisage another two months of hassle and stress trying to get this payment from them!
I have today submitted the meter reading for the end of the first 2024 quarter and am not expecting to receive anything in this regard until on/about 27th May!!  Interestingly, their online link submitted in their reminder email to me was not working (yet again!) so I have had to resort to another method!  I too am considering switching my FIT account to another supplier and really cannot understand why SSE passed the baton to such an inefficient entity as OVO. 

@Jeffus - I also endeavoured to contact the OVO (previous) CEO (Stephen Fitzpatrick) and had absolutely no acknowledgement so I doubt that Raman Bhatia and his team will perform any better!

Good luck everybody!

I’m really sorry to hear this @EssJayBee, how frustrating.

Let us know how your call goes on Monday, and if you’re still having issues i’ll ask Forum_Support to reach out. 

Good day @Emmanuelle_OVO.  Have just come off the phone from the FITS team having queried the late payment (again) of my FIT.  i was advised that the payment had been prepared/sent out on 28th February and that I should receive it on Thursday 14th March.  Royal Mail advertise1st Class mail is delivered next day, 2nd Class Post is delivered after two working days.  International mail is cited as taking 3-5 working days for delivery.  My cheque, therefore, from OVO in Bristol should have been received either on Thursday 29th Feb or Friday 1st March.  Indeed, it could also make a theoretical journey to and from the other side of the world in the time that it will take it to travel the 62.5 miles from OVO to my front door.  As with everything else at OVO, I was quoted that it “takes 10 working days” for a cheque to be delivered.  I was told that customers who have opted to be paid by BACs will have received their payments into their accounts only 3 working days after release of funds, the inference being that I should perhaps opt to have my FIT payment made in this manner.   It is precisely because OVO cannot be trusted to deliver on time and when they say they will that I choose to remain as a recipient of a cheque.  In that way, I can track my payment and monitor the performance of OVO and not make OVO’s job “easier” by becoming an account number instead of a customer whose business it purports to value.  If the cheque does not arrive on Thursday as advised, I shall be making (another) complaint and I shall be using the intervening days to investigate an alternative energy supplier and FIT licensee.  After 12 trouble-free years with SSE as my FIT licensee,  I am sorry to say that  my first year with OVO in this role has been nothing short of lamentable.

3 working days for BACS payments, don’t believe that for a second!

Going by my experience so far, I was transferred from SSE without any notification as well, it will be about 10 working days for BACS - if you are lucky…

Hi Sandmark,

I feel really sorry for your position BUT I am in a worse one …. They are simply refusing to engage with me and I just spend my life being passed around the off shore call centers.

ALL there staff decline to provide a surname and so you can never get back to the same person.

Compliant handlers are all in off shore call centers - there names are so unique you can easily find them on Linkedin

Does anybody know if the community managers work for OVO ??

Good luck everybody in dealing with these people

Hi @martin123 

I’m really sorry to hear about the experience you’ve been having with this.

Let me have the Forum_Support reach out to you to help with this. Look out for a private message here soon: https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview.

It’s coming up to the two year anniversary of non payment of my exported energy and two years of complaining to OVO without any action… until today!

I actually got a phone call from OVO just now, a nice lady called Thembisa, who went through the opening meter reading, todays export meter reading and calculated the units unpaid and told me the rate to be paid which I agreed. Then the amount, which I also agreed. She said this has to be approved by Ofgem then paid.

I also had a conversation yesterday which got my export meter verification from an email I sent in November.

While I don’t yet have money in the bank, this is real progress and it now feels like the beginning of the end of a long road of complaining. 
It’s not clear why this has all finally happened, but I will tell you the process I’ve been through which has got me here.

Phone calls to customer services approximately every two months, 03301027421, patiently going through the problem very politely and some humour. Checking on progress of my complaint quoting the reference number and date. Not screaming when they tell me it is closed! Raising a new complaint, recording date and number and details of call and name of representative.

Concurrently I raised a complaint with the Energy Ombudsman which they screwed up, appealed the decision and why they were wrong, got a new decision which was right. Notified OVO at my next bi monthly call.

Ombudsman received an email from OVO say all remedies were done and all good. Not true, they did nothing which I advised to Ombudsman.

Rang OVO again got transferred to department handling Ombudsman complaints and gave him all the details and embarrassed him as his department had lied to Ombudsman. What’s this the turning point, don’t know.

At the suggestion on here I emailed CEO and told him my woes, never got a reply, but things started happening and suddenly my calls were getting positive responses. Then, todays phone call.

So, which bit worked, I don’t know, but relentless pressure, Ombudsman ruling and CEO email may all have played a part.

I am going to miss my regular calls to OVO, like a hole in the head.

Thank you Thembisa for today’s phone call.

Good luck everyone.

I’m so relieved to hear you’re finally making some progress @MikeT13, what a long and tedious experience it’s been for you!

I’ll see if I can contact Thembisa with your feedback and ask how/what the turning point was to allow them to start sorting it.

Hi Emmanuelle,

When you ask about MikeT13’s resoltion can you see if you can find somebody who can address the meter install that your company did to  my home but despite knowing there was solar there decided to install a meter with no export reading ??

Be really usefull to find someone to deal with the root cause rather than the complain about it.

Cheers

Martin 

Hi @martin123 

I’m sorry to hear you are still facing issues I can only imagine how frustrating this is for you. 

I can see @emmanuelle_ovo has escalated this to forum_support and asked them to reach out to you directly to look into this further. Please keep us updated and we will do our best to support you!

Hi Christopher

I fee so sorry for you - your left with the task of being the face of OVO to the public and it appears all you can do is say sorry ….. :-(

In terms of an update …. absolutely nothing has happend …

Literally all that I need to resolve the issue at this stage is to get the correct smart meter fitted to my house and that now appears impossible - if I try and book a smart meter install your system says your not doing any of them right now ….

I feel really sorry for the poor customers who have been moved onto you guys without there consent …..

I’m coming to the conclusion that OVO are really a company worth NOT doing business with at all cost. which is a great pity

I’ll let you know if anybody ‘reaches out’ to me to address these issues.

Regards

Martin 

Hi Martin, We also had our FIT transferred from SSE to OVO in August last year, it is now June  and we have not been paid.  We have an energy ombudsman decision, but OVO have closed our complaint as completed. OVO owe us over £14,000 (we have a hydro FIT) and we really need the money. We asked our MP to write to OVO on our behalf, and OVO wrote back saying they had completed all the ombudsman remedies. 
This is a bare faced lie.

This dispute with OVO has taken massive amounts of our time and energy, we are exhausted and depressed. We earned our FIT we shouldn’t have to beg for it as well. OVO customer disservice are a complete nightmare. 
Somebody reached out to us from this forum 10 days ago, but they don’t seem to have moved anything  

We’ll have to get the bailiffs in

OVO why can’t we talk to anybody who can actually sort this out. 

Hi, apparently Ovo sent my fit payment to my bank account on the 19/8 but it’s never been received. I have called Ovo, been told it’s on its way, promised call backs etc but now they say they have a problem and payments (not just mine) have gone missing, been sent but not received. This they are investigating and in the meantime I have to wait even though it’s not my fault. Does anyone else have this problem?  

Hi @Tim Cromwell, 

I’m sorry to hear that your payment hasn’t arrived, and I’m glad to hear that the FIT team is aware of the issues you’re having and investigating this for you. If you need to speak with them again, you can reach them on either 0330 102 7421 or fits@ovoenergy.com.  

Has anyone else NOT received their FIT payment for the period end of March to end of June 2024?

Ever since OVO took over from SSE I have had major problems trying to get my FIT payments. At one stage I was owed for the period end of March 2023 to end of March 2024, and eventually received payment in early August 2024. Apparently they were waiting for me to submit export meter readings, even though I have always been on deemed export, and didn’t have an export meter!

At that stage OVO wanted to close my complaint, but I refused to close it until I received the FIT payment for the period end of March to end of June 2024. This should have been paid by end of August 2024, but here we are at the end of September, and still not received. The reason apparently is that the calculation used to work out the deemed export part of the payment is incorrect, and the technical team are working on it! How difficult can that be?? It’s not rocket science, it’s a simple calculation involving 3 numbers!!

Frustrating!

The FiT increases every April, calculated according to the RPI (IIRC it increased by 5.2% in April 2024).
 

Like you, I too am on deemed export.  When it comes to my 1st June FiT statement every year, EON (who took over my payments after nPower bowed out, and who’ve been excellent) usually ask me to calculate my split in PV generation to show the prior and post 1st April production figures so that EON can apply the correct rate for the Feb, Mar, and Apr quarter.

As you say, being a fixed, deemed, figure every three months, the export calculation as a percentage of overall generation is hardly difficult! But it may well be that it’s the annual increase in FiT which always occurs awkwardly across that second quarter every year which is causing the holdup (“incorrect calculation”?! The calculation itself never varies) in your last payment.

Hope you get it sorted; maybe ask them whether it would help if you provided  a “before and after” generation figure relevant to 1st April 2024. 
 

EDIT ….and of course in desperation, if push came to shove, you could always switch to another FiT supplier.  All the best…

Hey @Pete in Dorset,

The best thing to do would be to speak with the FIT team on 0330 102 7421 or at fits@ovoenergy.com. They’ll have access to your account and can check for the payment for the end of August as we don’t have access to this here.

I’m sorry there isn’t more we can do to support and I hope you get the payments sorted soon!

Hey @waltyboy 

Just to be clear I submitted my generation meter readings on 31st March and 30th June 2024. So all the kw I generated and deemed to have exported between 1st April and 30th June would be paid at the new FIT rates introduced from 1st April.

We’re now coming up to the end of the July to September quarter, so I will send OVO my generation meter reading on 30th September.

It’s all very straightforward, and I simply don’t understand why it’s taking weeks and months to sort out the calculation. It’s just:  “the number of kw generated x 50% x the export tariff”. Something that a primary school child could do.

Please no smart Alec replies from company men posing as forum users. This is a long standing problem which I have raised before. I submitted my regular FIT readings for period ending 1/9/24. I received my invoice for FIT payment due at the beginning of November this stated it will make payment for electricity I fed into the grid a month after this. I know there is a delay because OVO don’t make this payment directly, but this sort of delay in this day and age is unacceptable. I wonder how long I would be allowed to pay my bill to OVO I doubt it would be the thick end of 3 months. My next FIT reading will be submitted at the same time I get payment from the previous quarter.

Good evening,

I am one of the Forum Volunteers here. To be 100% crystal clear, we do not work for OVO.

This is ultimately just how OVO pays out FiT Scheme stuff - it’s basically a business decision for them to use the cycle that they do.

In case you’re wondering… You are legally required to pay your bills on-time by the due date unless you discuss alternative arrangements with OVO. If you’re struggling, naturally 0800 069 9831 is your friend.