Getting desperate for help now. Ovo have last month billed me almost £3000 for a 3 month period back in 2020. I have a separate final bill received back in 2020 which shows as paid, in fact it actually shows a credit balance.
They are now persistently threatening me and chasing for the £3000 which I clearly don’t owe them.
I have phoned multiple times, I have emailed them as per their complaints procedure (on 18 July) (removed by moderator).
I’ve had no response to my email; when I phone they say it will be sorted.
How on earth do I get the complaints team or frankly anyone at Ovo to actually address this issue please?
Thank you for any advice..
Best answer by BPLightlog
Updated on 19/08/25 by Ben_OVO
What is a back-bill?
We send a back-bill, or ‘catch-up’ bill, when we haven’t charged correctly for energy use. This can be through inaccurate bills or not being billed at all. Back-bills can be for any amount, and may be a result of:
Technical or human error on the customer’s account which has meant that a statement hasn’t been received within the regular timescale
A customer has provided a reading that is higher than previous estimated readings used on their statements.
Mismatch between the data OVO holds and the actual setup of the meter for example crossed meters, or if a customer had a meter exchange which wasn’t updated before the switched to us
What is a Back-bill Write Off?
Where we've issued a back-bill for usage over 12 months old, not covered by payments made at the time and the reason for the delay in this billing is not the customer's fault, we may apply a write-off. This back-bill write-off will be a credit applied to the account to cover the difference between the updated usage and the payments made at the time.
The main situations where we'll write off usage prior to 12 months ago are:
We haven't billed the customer
We've billed an account but not for all usage at the property i.e. only one fuel was billed
We've billed the customer inaccurately due to a technical or administrative error
See below for Ofgem’s official recommendations on back-billing from BPLightlog.
Firstly I have to note that the back billing principle can be a tricky one to interpret. It isn't simply a case of being "can't bill for more than 12 month ago" that many people think it is. Depending on circumstances sometimes a company is allowed to validly bill for more than 12 months ago.
Let's see if we can work out what is going on here, and importantly just who these letters are from. Sorry for so many questions to start with, but the answers will help us to help you:
PS. Please don't post any personal details, account numbers, addresses etc. you don't want those to be visible to everyone.
So you left OVO 2-years ago, is that right or was it later and they backbilled? When you were with OVO were you Pay As You Go, Pay Monthly (Direct Debit), or Pay on Demand?
Two years later, I receive a letter with a final bill and back billing write off for £54.
Did that Final Billing have a zero balance, or did it still show an amount due after the back billing write off had been applied?
Then another letter stating we owed £34.45 - I searched the forum and the numbers on the letter were being discussed as a potential scam as they don’t align with the phone number advised in this forum.
You say that the phone number on the letter doesn't look right, so you are correct to be careful and not call them. Could you tell us what that number was, so someone can check if it's genuine or not? There are some contact numbers that are for special teams directly, so those are not widely published.
Was this 'dodgy number' just on the demand for £34.45? Was that demand letter from OVO or from someone else 'acting on behalf of OVO'?
You then say that you tried calling support but it was closed - was that on the 'dodgy looking' phone number, or an the generally available support number,
For now - Don't worry about Debt Collection Agencies at this stage, and if they do get involved then I have very effective advice on how to deal with them in different circumstances.
The back billing rules are part of the “Standard Licence of Supply” and are quite complicated.
It is not as simple as some people would have you believe.
You will often hear or see something like: ”Suppliers can't bill for more than 12 months back”.
However that is a vast over-simplification of the full rules and is just not true in a lot of cases.
eg. If the supplier had previously billed (taken recovery action) but hadn't billed enough, or the bills had been ignored, or ….. then they can still bill/chase more than 12 months later.
eg2. If the customer had been paying something, but not enough, then they can still bill/chase for the shortfall more than 12 months later. (That includes DD payments that were too low).
We would need to know more details to be able to offer an opinion on any particular case.
(PS. I know quite a bit about it because I personally won a back-billing case against an electricity supplier. I won because they had not billed at all for a number of years despite me regularly telling them so. They then tried it on in a ‘final bill’ 10-months after I moved house and left them. It took another 3-½ years for them to stop chasing me though, even after the Ombudsmans ruled in my favour it still took them 2 years to accept that ruling and stop trying).
I’m glad to see a couple of our community members have already stopped by with some really helpful advice and questions here. Some more information about the situation would be handy to understand what’s happened or what caused the need for a back bill in the first place?
Nukecad left some really helpful information about the back billing processes, but I thought I’d share the following handy article too:
Nukecad also mentioned that the back billing rules are part of the Supply Licence, these rules are set by Ofgem, you can find out more here on the Ofgem page.
If you’d be able to give us some more information around the situation, we’ll do our best to make sure you’re heading in the correct direction with this.
