Historic bills keep changing and random huge Balance Adjustment has appeared with no explanation

No. I had being paying it for many years. Every time I had electricity they're taken loads of every Monday daily. The meter would come down loads.

Hi @Scoobydomk,

I’m afraid we don’t have access to your account via the Forum so we could only really guess what has caused this rebill. Please contact the Support team who should be able to help further with this. 

Please keep us updated on how it goes.

I have tried calling OVO but they have been no help so far.

I was with SSE from March 2016 until I was migrated over to OVO in early August 2023. Most of my readings were estimated over this time due to other reasons I can not put in actual readings very often. The actual readings were sent in Oct 2019 and then again in Dec 2022. My bills were then revised all the way back to when I moved to SSE in March 2016. 

My question is due to Ofgems back billing rules of not being able to bill after a year of the bills date, can SSE revise all of the bills back to 2016? If they are able to do this, why have they gone back further than Oct 2019 (when I put in actual readings then)? 

How can I get OVO to help with this due to this happening before I was migrated? 

Any answers would be grateful 

The Ofgem back billing principle/rule is a lot more complicated than just the often quoted “no more than 12 months before the bill was produced”.

In many cases it can still be more than 12 months - because the principle/rule has clauses about previously produced billing, payments already made, direct debit payments, and so on, and blah blah….

Are OVO actually asking for more money from you?

No they are not, but when the revised bill came through there was about £5000 that was taken from my credit

I suppose then the question has to be why had such a large credit built up?
Was it because the SSE billing was estimated and you knew it was incorrect (too low)?
Were you paying high direct debits to cover when the estimates finally got corrected?
I don't know, just pointing it out as a possibility. It could equally be that you had built up credit for other reasons.

However the fact that you say most of the previous (SSE) billing was estimated, and presumably payed at the time, possibly/probably means that the backbilling principle doesn't apply.

The backbilling principle is to protect customers from brand new, never before issued, billing suddenly being produced and 'charge recovery action' taken for that brand new billing.

In this case prior estimated billing was produced (and paid) so the revision is a correction to those prior estimates rather than brand new billing.
It's a subtle difference, but such subtle differences can be important in law.

(eg If you had/have yourself previously asked the company to correct the estimated billing, which they hadn’t then done, that would be another subtle difference which could bring the principle back into play again - but how many people would do that? Most just wait for the company to correct the estimate).

That being the case then personally I don't think that the backbilling principle applies here - I could be wrong.
(But I’ll note that I have looked at it pretty closely when having my own dispute with a different provider. In my case the Ombudsman agreed with my interpretation of the backbilling principle, and overruled that provider’s interpretation of it).

So to be practical:

If you think that the revised billing is incorrect then your first step should be to query the revisions and ask for a FULL explanation.

If you are then still not happy with the explanation of the revisions you of course have the option to make a complaint, there are escalating steps to take leading up to the Ombudsman if necessary:
https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Hi @Dullday 

One of our volunteers Nukecad has left some really great advice here for you already, back-billing write offs are not a given due to the time period, but more if there was an error during that time.

It sounds like the usage has just been estimated due to lack of meter readings and when a new one was submitted, it corrected the usage and credit on the account. Having more than £5000 credit on the account isn’t typical and would usually indicate a problem such as the usage being under-estimated for some time as Nukecad also mentioned. 

If you’ve not already got smart meters, it’d be a good idea to have those installed so that we can bill you accurately for your usage and avoid such a catch up bill in the future. You can book this online here.

I migrated from SSE in September 2023. Because they did this without forewarning me I hadn’t given them up to date readings and they overcharged me by £650.00.

I raised this with Ovo at the time but was told not to worry, there was a problem with Migration and everything would be sorted out in about 6 months. I chased 6 months later, still no update.

I got hit with a bill of £1,550.00 (should be around £600.00) on the 7th of August this year, immediately being chased by their collections team. The SSE over-estimate was still showing and they had continued to over-estimate my balance since then.

I’ve given updated readings 3 times, spent around 4 hours on the phone to 8 different people at this point and no one seems to be able to adjust my bill for me.

I’ve now raised a formal complaint but even this hasn’t been acknowledged, which surprises me as the industry is heavily regulated.

Has anyone else had a similar issue and if so how did you resolve it?

No-one on these forums has access to customer accounts, so we can’t give specific account-related advice. However, if you gave a few more details of the problem, we might be able to make helpful suggestions.

I take it you don’t have a smart meter, so you have to submit readings manually. Can you share a list of the readings you’ve submitted since the beginning of 2023? This would give us an idea of how much energy you’re normally using. 

How have you been paying for your usage - on receipt of bill or by direct debit? Since coming over to OVO, you should have been paying monthly* - have you?

Bills show the meter readings they’re based on. Are you saying that these readings don’t match the ones you’ve submitted? It might help if you showed us your latest bill, with any sensitive personal information obscured, of course. This would also tell us what sort of tariff you’re on (variable, which OVO calls Simpler energy and which is covered by the price cap, or fixed-rate).

The more information you give us, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to help.
    

*  Since you’re paying monthly, you should submit meter readings monthly, too, to avoid the frustration caused by OVO having to estimate your usage. To be sure of getting an accurate bill each month, you should submit readings on the first day of each billing period. 

Hi, thank you for your input but I was hoping for a response from a customer that has had a similar issue for their advice. I’m already going through the complaints process to resolve the issue.

To answer some of your questions though:

• I don’t have a smart meter, OVO did attempt to fit one but it isn’t possible with my installation.
• I have not been paying for my usage. I was told at the point of migration that there had been an issue, that my billing cycle had been put on hold until it was resolved and that I should “put money away” in anticipation of receiving (and then paying) a fully-adjusted accurate bill once migration was complete. 
• The readings on my bill do not match the readings that I submitted in October 2023 following my migration from SSE. The bills have not been adjusted and are showing 4,000 kWh ++ usage higher than my actual usage.

Each person that I’ve spoken to has said that the above is due to migration issues between SSE and OVO and that I should be patient and wait for it to auto-correct.