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

Smart Meters submit the reading the day after i.e. the Meter Reading for the 1st February is submitted on the 2nd February to cover the entire day. OVO’s billing platform is designed to be Smart Meter First in this regard, so all meter readings are treated this way.

While you won’t see the “estimate” being removed retroactively (legally speaking it MUST stay this way) you can remove the issue by either getting a Smart Meter, or doing the reading on the day I suggested in the cycle. It’s worth noting that if an Actual Read wasn’t submitted for the day the cycle reset, then OVO cannot start the next cycle with an Actual Reading anyway.

Either way, the next time an Actual Reading goes in, your billing will update and recalculate everything up to that point using the Actual Reading, thus cancelling the estimates out. You won’t necessarily see this, but it will trigger.

This is a feature, not a bug.

That’s the way it has to be. One billing period must necessarily start with the previous period’s closing figure, however it was arrived at. This will happen each month when you don’t submit a reading on the first day of the billing period.

Can you see your meter readings in your online account? Or the billing details for the current period? I’ve had a smart meter for so long that I just can’t remember what life was like before ... 

Yes you can, it’s on ‘Meter readings’ at the right of the online account, and on the billing itself.

Below is a clip from my gas bill last year when I still had a dumb gas meter so had to send in gas readings.

​@Feel fed up 
My billing period is the 24th to 23rd of each month, as you can see below I sent a reading on the 24th of each month, (the first day of the billing period), and so there are no estimates on the amount billed.
This is for gas, but it works just the same with electricity, that is:
To avoid estimated billing you need to send a reading on the first day or a billing period and not the last day.

When you send in a reading it gets allocated to the midnight at the start of that day, in other words it is allocated to the full day before the reading sent.
So by sending in my readings on the 24th they were allocated to the end of the 23rd, which is the end of my billing period.
If I had sent my readings on the 23rd instead, then the would have been allocated to the 22nd, and there would be a 1-days estimate for the 23rd.

Being charged every month from estimate although I send actual readings 

Welcome to the forum! 

Does it happens every single time? Does the estimate approx the same as the submitted readings or is it completely different? Do you submit the readings on the date it is requested? 

I found that! I now enter the reading the next day so that the reading is always dated in the past and there is no time left on that day!

However I also find that readings are not cast in stone. That is to say that if you look up the reading history that will state the readings that you have entered but OVO is quite capable of changing the date/time or reading on the bill - even after you have downloaded it!

I have a screenshot of mine in a certain date and when it arrived in paper form it was a completely different balance for that day. I submit readings too

It’s worth noting that if you have gas, the bill will update once the Calorific Value data has been factored in, which takes a few extra days.

You can mitigate this by submitting a reading on the first day of the next billing cycle.

Alternatively, the recommended long term solution is to get a Smart Meter and it’ll auto-submit at the perfect moment to eliminate the entire issue.

Very Strange,

                       Have you requested for a new Smart Meter to be fitted, I used to send my meter readings monthly on-line until I found out that Valiant & OVO had a discounted tariff for ASHP customers and I needed a Smart Meter fitting to take advantage of the Tariff, I`ve been very happy with the new meter,

If possible request OVO to fit new meter.

As said if you submit a reading on (or before) the last day of your billing period there is still that day until the end of the period - so you will always get an estimate showing for (at least) that day.

The trick is to send your reading the day after, ie on the first day of a billing period.

That way then the reading sent covers up to midnight on the last day so there is no estimate on the bill.

My case is that I have to send in the readings because I had a smart meter fitted but am told that it cannot transmit to OVO. Therefore I do not have the privileges of having a smart meter and there is no reason why they should play around with the readings as sent (See my earlier reply).

I would dearly like to know why OVO thinks it is OK to change the “readings on the bill” and even send me “corrected” bills several months later with different values. The result of this is that I do not fully trust the system but feel they may all be the same. It does rather remind me of the old joke when someone had to pay in a cheque for £0-0-0 (ie. old money and yes the cheque did, I believe, have to be sent or so the story goes!)

I have several bills where the brought forward amount does not agree with the carried forward amount on the previous bill but have tried to convince myself that the amounts do correct themselves! I do pay by direct debit!

Hi, what is ASHP?

ASHP = Air Source Heat Pump.

​@puffin could you show me photos of the meter please?

Thanks.  I have one too.  But I didn;t know about that discounted tariff!  

Now I;m locked into another tariff for a year.  Heat pumps are expensive without solar panels. :(

That’s why OVO has Heat Pump Plus. 15p/kWh for eligible Heat Pump usage 24/7/365. They’re not as bad as you think. It’s also an Add-On so you can enable it without breaking contract and racking up exit fees - you just attach it to your existing tariff.

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.