Hi. Have you solved you issue? I just got today the same email requested £377! I’ve paid all bills previously and today found that all historical bills changed for a much higher amount and some of payments just disappeared!  

They basically have said we are at fault! How do you pay your bill? 

I’m paying from the webpage without direct debit. I had some overpayments that were returned to the account, but today I found that they disappeared!

It’s really shame! Have you have to pay all requested amount?

Yes that’s how we pay. They’ve tried to fob us off saying that the usage doesn’t make up our whole bill and because we only paid the usage we missed out on paying for the standing charges?! Never even heard of this. So therefore we are at fault and have to pay!! Absolutely livid 

Hi @JS2024,

I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing this. I’m afraid we don’t have access to your account here however, I’d be happy to try to help. Just so I can get a better understanding of the issue, do you have smart or traditional meters at your property? Are your bills currently showing estimated meter readings?

BP has highlighted some very valid points here that this could be the result of a migration read dispute. If you would be willing to share the answers to the questions above this will help us drill down to where the issues could be coming from. You can find more information on read disputes here:

Meter Reading Disputes - What are they? 

Hi @OksanaBondar 

I’m really sorry to hear this. Just so I can figure out what would be best to advise, please let me know if you’ve recently submitted a meter reading? This may be why your bills have been recalculated if you’ve previously been getting estimated bills.

You can also check your online account here to see if there are any estimated readings that may be causing issues with your billing amounts as when you submit a new reading, older estimates can be recalculated to ensure you are being billed correctly. 

When is the best time to give my meter readings to avoid estimated bills?

Another helpful thing to share would be the kind of meter that you have as this will give us a better understanding of your home setup.

Hope this helps.

Hi. I have smart meter and my readings are not changed, but it was broken 2 months and for that period bills were changed for huge amount!! Let me please know how is possible to use 100m3 of gas for a summer month when I'm using 60-70m3 for winter month?!?

Another issue my overpayments that were done to SSE and have been returned to my account, but they disappeared from my account in some way.

It seems that your company is not very much respectful for customers, as it is not only my issue! There are a lot of the same published here

We have a smart meter for electricity but not for gas. We were promised a smart meter for gas years ago when we went through our last issue with you. But as always nothing seems to be upheld and you constantly seem to bleed people dry for no reason. We currently need to pay nearly £400 and for what? We put in regular meter readings for gas and hardly use anything when looking at our usage. The bills should be showing accurate readings. But who knows. Seems like you make it up as we go along and it’s always changing! 

Hi @OksanaBondar @JS2024 

I’m really sorry for the issues you’ve both been experiencing with this. I’m going to have our Forum Support reach out to you both separately about this so they can look to help with this.

Keep an eye out for a private message here soon: https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview.

On my account summary page online, the amount to pay is much more than the sum of the monthly billing history. 

Please can you clarify? 

Hey @Daniel Clark ,

Sorry, but we can’t do that here - we’re not the Support Team and can’t access your account.

Please try https://ovoenergy.com/help for contact options.

Thanks

I think that what you are seeing online is the difference between the current Calender month, and your particular Billing month.

On the online portal what you first see us your usage for the Calender month. So from the first of the month to date.

That is not the same as your billing period which does not (usually) start on the first of the month

So what is shown for the current Calender month will not be the same as what is shown for your particular Billing month which (usually) starts on a different date.

Drop down the page and look at what it says for your current bill (with “so many” days left until the billing period ends).

Then- Check what Calender month it is showing you. It may still be the last month, and you may have used more in the current Billing month.

And yes, it can be confusing at first.

Hi @Daniel Clark, 

I can already see our volunteers have provided a lot of handy tips when it comes to checking your billing. 

There is a really handy guide here which covers most topics. If you have any account specific questions you can contact our Support Team. 

I hope this helps.

I have being making the payments that OVO for the full debit but when I went into my account today I had a much larger bill than expected. When I started going back through my payments I discovered that I was not paying off the full balance as I had thought and there appears to be a further balance running in the background which keeps increasing. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Sorry I'm not clear here, are we talking about Direct Debits? And are you on variable or fixed tariff?

I think that you are saying that your recommended Direct Debit (or payment if not on DDs) was more than your usage, but that you had a debit balance over and above your usage.

And that you were only paying for the usage.

Is that correct?

In that case your recommended payments (direct debits) would be how much you need to pay each month to cover your expected usage and also get the debit balance to zero at 31st March if you are on Standard Variable Tariff (SVT) or at your plan end date if you are on a fixed tariff.

So if you haven't been paying the ‘recommended’ amount that recommendation will grow each month because there  are less payments due until the next 31st March (or the fixed plan end).

It isn't the debit balance that is increasing; it's the number of monthly payments left to get it to zero that is reducing.

Having all SVT accounts expected to be zero balance on 31st March (rather than 12 months from whenever you look) can make things look odd - when you also have a debit balance.

As you reduce that debit balance then they start to look more like expected from what you use over a year  - until the debit has gone and you are just paying for what you use.

You may be seeing the effect of ‘live billing’. Do you have a smart meter? If so, you have the option to have meter readings taken every day or only once a month. If not, are you submitting a reading each month?

Live billing means that the account is updated each day, so you know precisely how you’re doing and you avoid unpleasant shocks when the bill finally arrives. This means that the bill will show the balance as it was at the end of the billing period, but your online account shows today’s balance. The difference will be the cost of the energy you’ve used since the beginning of the period. If you don’t have a smart meter, the usage will be estimated, but standing charges will inexorably be applied daily. 

You may find it simpler (and cheaper) to pay by Direct Debit; this scheme estimates how much you’re expected to spend over the next year, and works out how much you would have to pay each month to keep the account healthy.  

Hey @mf.inv,

You’re in good hands with our volunteers @Firedog and @Nukecad. They have already made a great start in trying to gather some more information from you so we can better understand what type of billing issue you have. If you have the time to update the thread with more context about your issue, we will see what the best methods to help you are.

You can always contact our Support Team, who can access the account and give you the most accurate information for your questions. As we don’t have access here, we can simply offer help and support to the right resources. 

Here are some articles that may help

Yesterday my balance was at £383.61, today my direct debit was paid in £125 my balance now shows at £513,63 rather than 514.61. I know it's no much but If they do this to every customer they're making a fortune besides the fact the balance shown when the bills are sent show something different - would someone at ovo like to explain  

While I can’t quite follow your arithmetic, I guess that you’re seeing OVO’s ‘live billing’ at work. Your (positive) balance will fall from one day to the next, to reflect the cost of energy used that day and the day’s standing charges. Read about this here: OVO Energy Live billing platform and monthly summaries - What do I need to know? | The OVO Forum

If this doesn’t explain the discrepancy you’re seeing, you’ll have to give us a bit more information (meter readings, plan details) if we’re to help you unravel it.

As Firedog says it will be the 'live balance’ that you can see on your OVO account.
(Actually it’s not fully ‘live’ but updates daily).
It's a bit like looking at your bank account online, you can see what has been debited or credited to your ongoing balance each day. Your statement/bill is still issued monthly.

Your numbers as you have given them don't add up though.

You say that you had a credit balance of £383.61 and added £125 which would give a new balance of £508.61 and not £514.61.

£514.61 is +£6.00 higher than the numbers that you have told us, that’s £6 in your favour.
(Has something else been credited to your account? Perhaps a £6 Power Move reward?)

Anyhow -
From the new (£514.61) balance you then have to subtract an amount for your energy usage and standing charge for that day, to give the balance for the next day..
The £0.98 difference that you show there seems reasonable for a low electricity users consumption and standing charge for 1-day.

PS. My own ‘live balance’ currently changes by slightly more that that each day, between £1.00 and £2.50 depending on how much electricity I’ve used each day.

Type error balance was £389.61 and it doesn't go down each day it changes when they issue the bill when I do a meter read - don't have a smart meter 

They use estimations for their ‘live billing’ when you don’t have daily readings so the balance will reduce as has been indicated earlier

That’s more like it!

I’m afraid I don’t know how live billing works if there’s not a smart meter involved. AS Nukecad points out, it could be that the balance is updated because a payment was received and the difference is simply the standing charge for the day.

Your bills will tell you whether they’re based on actual readings or on estimates; if the closing reading is an estimate, it could be that you submitted a reading on or before the last day of the billing period. That’s because OVO estimates what you would have used from the day of the reading up to the end of the period. You can avoid this by always submitting a monthly reading in the morning of the first day of the billing period; this is because manual readings are treated as if they had been made the preceding midnight. A reading submitted on the first day of the next period will thus be used both as the closing reading for the period it refers to and as the opening reading for the next period. If your last bill ran from, say, 26 April to 25 May, the monthly reading should be submitted on 26 June (regardless of what you may have been used to or what you read in the app, in the web account or in outdated help articles).

You can always submit readings more often, e.g. weekly, which would help to keep your daily balance more accurate. And no, OVO isn’t diddling you out of a little bit each time you look at your account. I hope we’ve managed to explain how it all works.

My meter situation is a bit odd, but it does help show the differences between having smart or dumb meters - because I have one of each.

1- My electricity meter is smart and sends in my electricity usage reading daily.
2- My Gas meter is not smart and so I send in readings from the gas meter ocassionally.

1- My live balance includes my smart metered electricity use each day.
2- My live balance does not include any amount at all for gas usage until I do send a new gas reading.

1 & 2- My live balance does include both of the daily standing charges for electricity and gas. (That’s £0.80 total for both SC’s on my currrent Fixed Loyalty tariff).

Which shows that the standing charges are being included daily, smart meter or not.

So, if you check your own plan/tariff what is your daily standing charge? the total for both electricity and gas if you have both.
Is it that £0.98? If not then how much is it?

Hi @Sutty61 

As some of our volunteers have already touched on the balance isn’t always necessarily the bill amount and that’s why we always say to look at the bill amount when paying.

The live-billing platform is ideal if you’ve got a smart meter set to send us readings either daily or half-hourly. We’ll then adjust your balance based on actual usage figures each day at midnight. If you’ve not yet got a smart meter installed this might be the perfect time to take the leap.

Without a smart meter, we’ll only be able to estimate your usage in between readings, and when you submit a reading, we’ll be able to update that live balance. Similarly when we issue a bill, it’ll adjust that balance amount as we’ve likely estimated the usage since your last reading if it wasn’t on the day of the bill.