Can I switch from an Economy 7 plan to a single rate plan without a smart meter exchange?

Well, thanks for the standard response.

I don’t want a smart meter. I’m not obliged by law to have one and have been advised against them for health reasons.
Last year when I was considering switching away from Econ 7 one of your colleagues told me that I could switch to standard tariff and simply add the day & night rates together to give my monthly readings, which I ‘m happy to do.

Doing that opens up a HUGE can of worms to be honest. Even if OVO agrees to you doing that, you’ll have 50 years of red tape trying to get the thing approved for use. It’s not worth the hassle.

That’s all speculation and untrue. If smart meters affected your health, then so would pretty much every electrical and electronic device. You might want to check out https://smartme.co.uk 

Health matters aside, there’s still the matter of getting permission to have your own meter installed, the fact you’d probably have to pay to de-energise and re-energise the supply, pay a qualified installer to swap the meters out… The money adds up massively. You’re talking at least £300 by the time you’ve done all that.

If OVO agrees to install a non-smart meter, it’d also be a Non-Standard Installation for which OVO reserves the right to charge you for the job even if OVO provides said meter - and they are legally entitled to do so. It’s at least £160 if memory serves.

Alternatively, all suppliers will happily offer smart meter upgrades for free as the supplier will cover the cost of such upgrades.

Ultimately it’s your choice, I’m just a messenger at the end of the day.

Ultimately it comes down very heavily to supply and demand. Demand for non-smart meters has massively dwindled in recent years, so stocks of them have also been reduced to make way for smart meters. From my understanding, most of the remaining stock is for replacing faulty meters or other edge cases. But eventually they will run out. It’s a case of when, not if.

Suppliers can also force a smart meter on you under specific circumstances. I don’t have the list handy but setting an opt-out mostly just blocks marketing more than anything else.

This is exactly what I was hoping for Jess, thank you.
 

Hi @Naptonian the main thing that strikes me is that 30.48 definitely looks like the unit rate till end September.…

Perhaps wait till you get an email from OVO about your 1st October rates, then ask OVO again.

I got my email tonight, but am not on E7. 

 Hey @Naptonian,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community.

Great to see our community members giving you some tip-top advice here. 

As this is account specific and unit rates vary depending on region I am unable to answer this question. You are best placed to go to Support with a query like this. 

@Jeffus and @TiminSurrey are right, you’re probably best off waiting for confirmation of the unit rates in October. When you do compare rates between Economy 7 and Single Rate, I'd advise ensuring they are giving you the variable rate for both and make sure they are both with VAT. This will mean you get an accurate comparison. 

Hope this helps.

@tonyx1302 OVO do have the ‘Drive’ tariff option although I’m not sure if you’d be able to change from your current fixed tariff 

https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/ev-tariff/

I’m in the same situation, although in my case the fixed-price E7 contract is coming to an end (today!) and I wanted to switch to single-rate. I used the web chat option at https://help.ovoenergy.com (open weekdays between 8am - 6pm, 9am to 1pm on Saturdays) to make the request. The advisor said he’d made a note on my account recording the request and gave me a case number. Now it’s a bit of a waiting game; I’ll be surprised and delighted tomorrow if I discover that I’ve been migrated to the standard variable single-rate tariff, but I’m admittedly not holding my breath. You will see another reply here from me in the fullness of time. 

When you get through to the webchat, the topic you need is ‘metering’. You’ll also need to know your account number (shown at the top of your bill).

Alternative contact methods are available, but apparently the telephone option is frustrating, with long waiting times and unsatisfactory outcomes being reported daily in this forum - and of course you have no record of the conversation unless you are able to create one yourself. 

The actual Meter Readings are in line with those quoted by OVO but the usage data they produced on 5 January bears no resemblance to what we use. For example, Gas use that day is said to have been 513kwh, whereas our normal use is about 100kwh, or a bit less.

So, the faulty Meter Reading seems to have caused the problem.

Actually, because of how OVO’s billing platform currently works… The changeover from E7 → Flat Rate takes about the same amount of time regardless of smart meter or not.

I wonder how long ‘a bit of time’ is 😉

Here’s a little caveat: I made this request via webchat a couple of weeks ago, in the (forlorn) hope that it would be actioned on the date of my fixed > variable switch. I spent a few hours on webchat again yesterday. The advisor told me that my earlier ticket had been submitted as ‘feedback’, which wouldn’t ever be actioned. It should, she said, have been directed to ‘billing’, which she then did for me because there’s no way for me to contact the appropriate team myself. So now we start on another stretch of that piece of string.

[We spent a long time trying to nail down the correct rates that apply for my region. She was apparently referring to a rate table whose figures varied significantly from the ones available to me. It took a lot of consultation with her colleagues (who seemed to have the same information) and her supervisor to get her equipped with the correct current rate table. I wonder how many customers have been misled since the Jan-Mar 2023 rates came into effect.]