Hi @Jack Oat ,

We need to see photos of the meter first.

Thanks, hopefully these will do

Can you see your meter readings online at Billing history - OVO Energy? If so, you should be able to match what you see on the meter (Rate 1 - 00967 and Rate 2 - 07091) to what is recorded as peak and off peak, or perhaps day and night or even normal and reduced or something like that. 

If you have electric heating, I would expect the bigger figure (7091) to be the offpeak one, but it depends a lot of course on what other energy-guzzling equipment you have running and when.

Again, if you have access to your online account, you can see the peak/offpeak timings on the Plan page. Then it’s easy to match the meter’s RATE NOW (in your picture, that was RATE 1) to the current time. 

Thanks Firedog, my problem is that I need a definitive answer. The meter was  changed for a new one (with 00000 starting values)in 2019 before Covid and I am pretty sure that the initial readings were probably entered on line the wrong way round ie off peak was put into peak and vice versa. Since then the readings have been entered as I see it correctly, but the system automatically swaps them over. Written and verbal contact with SSE was fruitless and I am now taking up the case with OVO who at the moment seem similarly resistant.

Thanks for your help

In addition to the above, yes we have storage heaters and do not have any other energy guzzling equipment. Images of the meters have been sent to both SSE and OVO

Sorry, I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. What counts is the meter readings in your account. If the electricity passing through the meter during offpeak hours is shown as being added to the offpeak register online, that’s what should be happening and your bills will be correct. 

Your bill will show the readings used in the calculation. Are you saying that offpeak usage is being billed at peak rates and vice versa? If not, what’s the problem?

I am being billed for off peak electricity at peak rates, because even although I enter the off peak usage in the off peak slot online and the peak reading in the peak slot online the system automatically swaps them over because of the initial readings being entered incorrectly when the meter was first installed (ie the peak reading was put into the off peak slot and the off peak into the peak slot in error) ie the meter reading in my account are real readings but the wrong way round. Thanks again.

If you take a look at which register increments during the day (peak hours) then that should be fairly clear. If you felt so inclined, you could also check at off peak hours too. 
Note the reading(s), take a look an hour or so later and again note the readings. 
 

Edit: looking again, the top photo says ‘Rate Now’ which suggests that register 1 relates to whenever the photo was taken (peak presumably). Also note that there have been a number of users who have had problems on E10

Thank you BP Lightlog, good advice

OK, that’s a real cause for concern. I’d really like to see the evidence for this situation; other cases where we’ve seen E10 customers billed for offpeak usage at peak rates and vice versa have apparently resulted from misconfiguration of their smart meters. That’s clearly not your problem, so the fault seems to lie with billing.

It would help if you could post screenshots of:

• your Plan page showing the rates and timings;
• your Readings page;
• the Electricity in detail page of your latest bill showing the charges and readings on which the bill is based.

(None of that contains any personal information you’d want to keep private.)

It should be fairly obvious from these images where the fault is arising, and it will simplify making your case to Support: if you use webchat, you can copy the images into the chat to get them added to your account notes. 

Hello again Firedog, you had better know one or two other facts which complicate matters. Firstly the meter is faulty with regard to the time. I have included two screenshots of images I took where the time of the images being taken does not correspond with the time on the the meter clock- currently it is running approximately 4hrs 42 mins behind GMT. 

SSE, as it was then, sent an engineer to change the meter but he advised me not to go ahead with this because I would lose evidence for the incorrect readings. He agreed that the readings were the wrong way round but also checked the wiring to see if the meter had been installed incorrectly, which it hadn’t. He was supposed to let SSE know his findings. I subsequently contacted them on their complaints page but received no response.

That all said, using the timings on the meters, and having looked at the information you asked for, it is now clear to me that Rate 1 is Peak and rate2 is off peak and therefore I am correct in thinking the readings are the wrong way round on my bills.

Thank you very much for directing me to the information needed for proof of this, however, I would be grateful if you would confirm my conclusions please.

Thanks again!

Thanks, that’s excellent - the more documentation, the better!

This is a complete nightmare, now that you’ve revealed the problem with the meter clock. Modern meters have a backup battery that keeps the clock ticking over - keeping time - even though there’s a power cut. I can’t find any details about your Type S123C03 meter, but it may be that it either doesn’t have a backup battery, or if it does, it’s flat. but this is what I think the situation is:

(Numbering your latest images from the top down)

• No. 4 shows that you took the pictures at 16:07 meter time.
• No. 5 shows that at that point, the current rate was Rate 2, reading 07085.
• No. 3 shows that 16:07 is in the second daily offpeak slot, 13:30 - 16:30.
• Ergo, Rate 2 is offpeak as far as the meter is concerned.
•  No. 2 shows that Rate 2 readings (in the 07000 series) are (wrongly) applied to your account as if they were peak readings, confirming what you’ve suspected all along. 
• No. 1 shows that you have been billed at the higher rate for what the account thinks is peak consumption.
• No. 2 shows that something happened between March and July last year; the registers swapped places in the listing, but the readings were still applied as if they hadn’t. Was this something you instigated - by asking Support to reverse the registers, for example?

This is an impossible situation that may not be resolvable, unless you know and can prove exactly when the clock went wrong. Even assuming that it’s been wrong for the past year, it will take a really determined operative and a supercomputer ages to adjust the consumption figures to the correct times, and of course that wouldn’t make sense until the meter clock has been put right or - preferably - the meter exchanged for a modern smart one. You’ve been diddled out of at most about £20 in the past year, which I’m sure OVO would be happy to compensate you for once they’ve acknowledged the fault. 

Now, there is little difference between your peak and offpeak usage according to your readings page (80 peak and 75 offpeak in 120 days). I would call this extremely light usage (1.3 kWh/day), so I wonder where else you’re getting energy from. If your storage heaters are being switched on and off automatically at the right times according to your plan, I’d expect the off-peak consumption to be a lot higher during the winter, but it’s impossible to say how much higher. 

The first thing is to get the meter sorted out. Do any of your neighbours in that enchanting spot have working smart meters? I’m not saying that that would be the end of your troubles, because getting smart meters to work with Economy 10 hasn’t proved problem-free for some customers. But I’d say it’s a prerequisite for any further action: How to book a smart meter appointment on your online account or OVO app | (ovoenergy.com) 

First of all thanks for all the time you have spent on this and for your advice.

Having raised the issue of the faulty clock, I think that it is probably irrelevant anyway as the meter shows what rate it is recording at any one time with NOW on the display, and therefore I think that the readings are correct (albeit the wrong way round) and the meter just switches to a different rate as it should according to the time schedule for Economy 10, but 4hrs 40mins out.

As far as the low usage is concerned, especially recently, this is due to two things. It is a second home and we switch off all circuits on the CU when we are not there, and secondly we have stopped using the storage heaters even in really cold weather as they are so expensive to run especially as we are being charged at peak rate for them. We rely on a woodburner, plenty of jumpers and a thick duvet.

You’re absolutely correct, it’s a lovely spot and we’re very lucky to have it.

I’ll now write to OVO using the web chat as you suggested and include appropriate evidence.

Have a good weekend, you deserve it!

Hey @Jack Oat,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community,

Did the support team get this sorted for you? 

I can see Firedog has already given some brilliant advice here, just wanted to add, an easy way to check which register is peak or off peak is to see which register clocks during ‘peak’ hours.

That’s presuming a customer knows what hours are peak or off peak, usually simple for Economy 7 and more difficult for Economy 10. 

Yes, thank you I now have the evidence I need to ask for my meter readings to be reversed and ask for a refund.

Firedog was excellent, thorough, prompt, knowledgeable and gave good advice.