I give meter readings each month, why is my bill still based on estimates?

I sent in an up to date reading a week ago (21/09), and my account has still not been updated. We have had solar panels fitted and so the bill should be a lot less that the amount on the bill. Why is it taking so long to update?

Hi @serennu and thanks for asking this. Nice work getting solar panels fitted - you’ve just earned a badge on your forum profile for that!

I’m surprised to hear your OVO online account hasn’t been updated yet following that reading. It would usually take a matter of minutes to show, not days. 

Please check here to see if the reading is showing: https://account.ovoenergy.com/meter-readings

If it’s not, can you try and submit another reading and look out for any error messages you get when you submit them?

If the reading is showing, it should be factored in to your current billing period’s charges, shown here:

https://account.ovoenergy.com/billing-history

Hi @serennu out of curiosity, I assume this means you haven’t got a smart meter for whatever reason? 

No I don’t have a smart meter

Thank you, will try sending in another reading

Hey @serennu,

Any update on this? 

If the reading still hasn’t been updated I’d advise contacting the support team, there may be an error on your account. 

Thanks to you all for your help, I had to phone OVO as my account still hadn’t updated, nice surprise I owed £200 less than the amount billed. 

This morning my monthly bill for Import was online, I viewed this and was dissaponted to note it was again an estimated bill.

THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT, but can OVO please take a look at their billing computer parameters as there appears to be an issue.

Please treat this as positive feedback!

Background information.

Having noted the above estimated bill I went online to correct the readings to get my account to reflect the true figure, However when I enterred the actual figure for the bill end date of the 22nd of the month, it again posted an estimated figure on the account.

Thinking I had perhaps confused the software by entering the figure for the 22nd and the actual bill was showing end date as 21st I enterred figure for 21st. Again this resulted in an estimated figure on the account.

In both cases the figure estimated was below the actual readings so the account is shown in debt. This causes offence as

1. I always pay what I owe on time.

2. I will not pay an estimated bill ever, with any company, as this always leads to accounting problems. so I settle in Full! (I know others who do the same)

I am a perhaps fairly high winter user of elctricity but a net exporter for perhaps 2/3rds of the year due to substantial number of Solar panels. I suspect the problem with the software is it does not like what it considers extreme usage to be enterred so places an estimate.

I know theForum cannot access individual accounts and I am not looking for it to do so, However the OVO Forum Managers can flag issues to OVO’s departments, so as there doesn’t seeem to be any other way to get a message across I am asking for this action.

I cannot be alone in seeing this issue is any other customer on the Forum having a problem with consistently estimated bills and if so How do they deal with it?     

Hi @Colin Wheeler 

If your billing period ends on 22nd and you don't have a SMETS smart meter then enter a reading for 23rd. I know you don't or didn't at least have a SMETS smart meter.

This will mimic what a SMETS smart meter does where the usage on the 22nd is given to OVO via the SMETS smart meter network on the morning of the 23rd.

Going back to the 21st is the wrong direction.

This has worked for everyone who has raised the feature in the past on the forum as far as I am aware.

I don't think it is anything to do with your setup. You are not alone in reporting the feature, it is a fairly  common question that ovo are well aware of. Access to your account isn't needed.

See if that helps.

I can search and find some examples for you if you like, else have a search yourself and see if you can find any.

Did you get anywhere enquiring about ovo or in fact any supplier reading your AMR meter on a domestic tariff or alternative options for your setup? Hopefully one day you will have a setup that doesn't require manual readings on a regular basis.

Hope you get your bill sorted, good luck!

Feel free to post any follow up queries, one of the regular posters can often help with quite a few questions.

If you want to "get your message across" without raising a complaint then this is worth a try. This isn’t a complaint email address as I know you don't want to raise a complaint. It is just a feedback email.

"Or, if you’d just like to share feedback – good or bad – of a recent experience you’ve had with OVO, you can email Raman’s team. Please include your OVO account number, address, and a summary of your experience."

You can even include a link to this thread in any email to Raman if you like 

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/my-account-140/online-accounts-computer-parameters-17107

Jeffus has of course nailed this.

It may seem illogical, but this is a question of timings. In the absence of a smart meter reading, any manual reading will be treated as if it had been taken the preceding midnight, at the same time as that day’s smart reading would have been taken. Midnight belongs to neither the preceding day nor the following one, so it’s a matter of choice which date to apply to it. OVO chooses both, so the closing reading for one billing period becomes the opening one dated the following day for the next period. If there’s no reading for the first day of the current period, the bill for the preceding one will be based on an estimate for the missing reading. 

You know what to do next time, if you haven’t decided to ask for a smart meter.