Solved
Are the calorific values used to calculate monthly gas charges shown on the online account?
I've got two questions about the new OVO online account pages.
1/ Are the calorific values used to calculate monthly gas charges shown anywhere on the OVO pages? My apologies if they are displayed, but I've missed them.
I raise the question because you need to know the relevant calorific value if you're trying to check your gas charge calculations - right through from the meter readings to the final amount. Under the old arrangements the relevant averaged calorific value was recorded on your monthly gas bill. As far as I can see you can't download an 'old-style' gas bill under the new arrangements - and I don't think the calorific value is included on the new web pages.
I know you can download calorific values via the National Grid website - but this is a palaver because you have to filter out the daily values relevant to your local zone and then average them over the charging period. It would be much more convenient if the relevant figure was included alongside the other charging information on the OVO pages.
2/ My second question is to ask whether there is an easy way to download a record of the electricity and gas meter readings from the beginning and end of the monthly charging period. I'm not sure how charging periods work under the new OVO regime, but OVO is now emailing me my electricity and gas charges for the previous calendar month, so I'm working on the basis that my charging period is now each calendar month. When I check the monthly charges I therefore need to know the meter readings from the beginning of the first day and end of the last day in each month.
Again, the old-style gas and electricity bills made it easy because they included the start and end-of-period meter readings used to work out your bill.
I appreciate that you can still see this information using the bar graphs on the new monthly usage pages. For anyone who doesn't know, you could mouse over the bars representing the first and last days of the month. Mousing over the bars launches pop-up windows showing start and end-of-day meter readings. You can then subtract the start-of-first-day reading from the end-of-last-day reading to give you the total number of units consumed in the period.
To be fair, I think this pop-up access to your meter readings is rather neat, but it would be very convenient if the OVO pages additionally displayed the relevant start-of-the-first-day and end-of-the-last-day meter readings alongside the other charging information.
Displaying these two readings for each charging period as part of the other pages would also give customers a way of printing these key meter readings - making it easy to retain a permanent record. A problem with the pop-up approach is that, as far as I know, you can't print the pop-up windows or export them as pdfs. The only way you can 'grab' the information is to screenshot the relevant part of the web page while the pop-up is displayed. This is okay as a workaround, but simply reproducing the key meter readings alongside the other monthly charging information would make life easier for those of us who like to check our bills and keep a record.
Again, I'm happy to stand corrected if I've misunderstood how the new OVO pages work. Please put me right.
1/ Are the calorific values used to calculate monthly gas charges shown anywhere on the OVO pages? My apologies if they are displayed, but I've missed them.
I raise the question because you need to know the relevant calorific value if you're trying to check your gas charge calculations - right through from the meter readings to the final amount. Under the old arrangements the relevant averaged calorific value was recorded on your monthly gas bill. As far as I can see you can't download an 'old-style' gas bill under the new arrangements - and I don't think the calorific value is included on the new web pages.
I know you can download calorific values via the National Grid website - but this is a palaver because you have to filter out the daily values relevant to your local zone and then average them over the charging period. It would be much more convenient if the relevant figure was included alongside the other charging information on the OVO pages.
2/ My second question is to ask whether there is an easy way to download a record of the electricity and gas meter readings from the beginning and end of the monthly charging period. I'm not sure how charging periods work under the new OVO regime, but OVO is now emailing me my electricity and gas charges for the previous calendar month, so I'm working on the basis that my charging period is now each calendar month. When I check the monthly charges I therefore need to know the meter readings from the beginning of the first day and end of the last day in each month.
Again, the old-style gas and electricity bills made it easy because they included the start and end-of-period meter readings used to work out your bill.
I appreciate that you can still see this information using the bar graphs on the new monthly usage pages. For anyone who doesn't know, you could mouse over the bars representing the first and last days of the month. Mousing over the bars launches pop-up windows showing start and end-of-day meter readings. You can then subtract the start-of-first-day reading from the end-of-last-day reading to give you the total number of units consumed in the period.
To be fair, I think this pop-up access to your meter readings is rather neat, but it would be very convenient if the OVO pages additionally displayed the relevant start-of-the-first-day and end-of-the-last-day meter readings alongside the other charging information.
Displaying these two readings for each charging period as part of the other pages would also give customers a way of printing these key meter readings - making it easy to retain a permanent record. A problem with the pop-up approach is that, as far as I know, you can't print the pop-up windows or export them as pdfs. The only way you can 'grab' the information is to screenshot the relevant part of the web page while the pop-up is displayed. This is okay as a workaround, but simply reproducing the key meter readings alongside the other monthly charging information would make life easier for those of us who like to check our bills and keep a record.
Again, I'm happy to stand corrected if I've misunderstood how the new OVO pages work. Please put me right.
