OVO Energy Live billing platform and monthly summaries - What do I need to know?

This looks reasonably straightforward to me. If your balance was £48 4 or 5 days ago, £66 will have been added under the government’s support scheme. That would have given you a £114 balance which has reduced now to £106 as per your energy usage.

I find the live billing quite useful...

It will be shown in Charges in detail as Energy Bill Support Scheme -£66 which is a negative charge ie a payment in. 

Can you show a screenshot of your bill summary - no personal details as this is a public forum - we’ll see what’s what..

Also it would be good to know your meter readings are up to date and you bills aren’t based on estimates. Have you sent a meter reading recently or do you have a smart meter? 

It says if current balance is zero, ignore giro slip 

You can see on here that my bill which goes to 2nd October says ‘Reading’ on the line with that date, that’s what you’re looking for 

@BPLightlog 

I did make a payment, so I’m confused. Might have to ring them and make an enquiry about it 

Do check the meter reading before you call - if this bill is calculated on an estimate they can probably send an updated one which may be less (hopefully!).

Save you having to phone twice. 

Hi @gletley there are lots of customers who are happy with OVO so don’t go yet !! You may even get to like it here. Is your main concern that your bill appears to relate to last month ? What dates are the meter readings used on the bill ? Are you paying by direct debit ? 

Sounds good. Is this your first bill from OVO ? When we’re you migrated from SSE ?

I see that nobody else has commented on the bizarre and budget-defying presentation of bills since September this year.  I present a snapshot of my  bills:

There seems to be an inability with OVO AI to make use of the TOTAL function for the charges before including the spurios in/out money as part of the bill.  This means the onous is now on the client to get a calculator to calculate their bill.

I would levy the same charge against OVO AI in calculating direct debit. Give a TOTAL after estimated usage and then present the value of debit/credit value to arrive at the value that the direct debit calculation is based on.

It is all very well to say that pay-as-you-go customers need higher tariffs because of ‘extra administration’, but I am sure that they also receive sensible bills. What do I get for all the time and effort required  for my ‘extra administration’  to interpret my bills?

The upside to this is that as OVO AI is held in reverence by customer service, I can now hold these bills produced by the same OVO AI to demonstrate that my bills (for at least the next 3 months) will show that I have spent maybe only £200-£300 instead of the £1000+ it initially calculated.

Towards the bottom of the Home page is Your Bills where the latest 4 months bills are displayed.

Ideally this should be organised such that merely reading left-to-right, the actual cost of energy is displayed.

The Aug- Sept bill has standing charges, usage charges, 5% Vat and the result is then displayed  in the Aug- Sept box.

The problems arise subsequent to Sept. where direct debit customers like me had £66 passing through the account, with NET ZERO effect on the bill.  So displayed is standing charges, usage charges, 5% Vat -£66 and the result is then displayed  in the Sept -Oct box. Although not ideal, OVO could be forgiven if there was a TOTAL of charges prior to subtracting the £66.

This problem is compounded in Dec. with the warm home discount of £150 being subtracted as well, which gives rise to the ludicrous situation of a bill being presented as maybe £160 in credit .

SSE used to add the WHD to the current surplus.  Where the company is being used as a conduit for transferring customer money, it has no role in being subtracted from the bill.