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

Thanks!  I’ll check it out :)

Thanks Blastoise

I will send you a photo if you really think it is necessary and you tell me how! But the meter should connect but I am surrounded by hills. It is a year or two since I last got in touch with the help desk and I sent them a video but they told me it was no good so I assumed that they had counted the flashes. Actually I have ot tried that myself for a while 

No worries.

You can post it here directly or email it to forum@ovoenergy.com if you’re struggling and a Forum Moderator will catch it for you.

​@puffin Physical readings can’t change. Estimated readings can be replaced by actual ones if they become available. For gas, readings are taken in volume terms, but may be converted to kWh in some places. This conversion depends on a factor which may not become available until some time after a reading is taken, so it’s quite possible for the kWh figure to change. The underlying volume figure won’t change.

Again, readings are always stored with a date/time label. For manual readings, this will give the midnight preceding the actual reading time, so that any subsequent reading on the same day will necessarily be either identical or larger. Midnight belongs to two days, which is why the same reading can be labelled with the last date in the billing period and with the first date in the next period.

I’d be interested to see an example of dates, times and readings on bills changing from time to time. It would be really good if you could post before-and-after screenshots of a couple of bills exhibiting this behaviour; be sure to obscure any personal information you’re not happy about sharing.

I think what is being referred to is the occasional billing update which does replace any previous dated bill on the account history. Agreed, any actual (non-disputed) reading should not change

I think that I must apologise, I may have been a bit tired yesterday. It was about 2-3 years ago and the change in datetime may have been that date given on the bil was the download time. I also think that you are right and it was the value that I was complaining about plus the fact that the b/F value did not agree with the c/f value from the previous bill as I had downloaded it. So yes it may well have been the gas calculations that were the problem. I did give up on the problem in the end so was just talking from the top of my head!

Many apologies for bringing that into the equation.

I think I have found how to add the picture to this and will try it. I normally use attachments! Here is a photo of my meter. As I say I believe that there is no problem with it, just a geographical one!

Hey ​@puffin 

Glad to see some of our community members have already stopped by to help out here.

Does the reading on your meter match the readings you see on your account? Do you know if the meter is set to send half hourly readings or is it set to maybe just monthly? This could be one of the reasons we might have estimated the usage.

It seems like constant issues for everyone involved. I've given up at this point, as it's clear they have major internal problems and aren't being honest. My bills and readings are consistently incorrect, and the amounts on my emails and online account statements never match up. Was only able to access online account couple of months ago. They’ve even claimed I didn’t have an account until September last year, despite having been with them since 2023, with statements sent to my email to prove it. One previous statement even said I owed £5,000 for a single month! I live in a 3-bedroom house with one adult and two children—hardly the kind of usage that would result in that amount.

If, after two years of complaints and multiple attempts to contact them, they still can’t explain or provide accurate bills, then I simply don't understand how my direct debit has been stopped. This has been going on for far too long.

No-one in these forums has access to your account, so we can’t explain or advise unless you share some details of what’s going wrong. This is a forum open to anyone, so whenever you post details, please make sure to remove any personally identifiable information like name, address, phone number, email address, account no., meter serial number or MPAN. 

We could start by looking at a screenshot of a recent bill, along with your comments about what’s wrong with it. Please tell us, too, precisely what sort of meters you have. A clear photo of them would help a lot.

You may be being confused by OVO’s ‘live billing’ system, which updates your account balance every day so you can see exactly what’s going on. If you have a smart meter, it’s a good idea to opt for half-hourly readings. You can then see in the online account just how much energy you’re using and when, and the daily balance will be accurate. 

​@Bluebbee6 I agree with Firedog here. We’d love to help you, but can’t without further info. 

Could you give a bit more of a description of what issues you’ve actually encountered. You say that you have no online account, and no Direct Debit - I’m wondering whether you might now be on Pay As You Go (top-up), rather than Pay Monthly?

We’ll await more info from you.