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

You don’t have to get one, but refusing a Smart Meter means you’re basically refusing the easiest fix for this issue.

Why is it you don’t want one? They work a lot better than you think and ultimately, your existing one only has a finite lifespan - it can’t remain in service forever.

With smart meters having a 14 percent failure rate I am not going to take that risk. I know when to turn lights on and off, when to put my heating on and switch unused appliances off. It's when I do my side of the request from OVO giving readings and they fail to do their part. Either someone is being lazy at the company or the computer program has been poorly written to do simple tasks.

And where did you get the 14% figure from exactly? That feels like you plucked it out of thin air. Please provide evidence to back up your claims, otherwise we can just smash them to pieces. Not least because the actual figure of Smart Meters NOT working in Smart Mode is more like 9% but pretty much all of them can still be read manually.

“Meter Failure” in our eyes (as in between all the Forum Volunteers) is only when the meter fails to perform the primary function of recording meter readings/usage locally. Everything else is secondary and the worst case is that you just do manual readings.

I’m sorry to say this, but if you’re unwilling to accept what is probably the easiest solution, you’re going to have a much more painful experience. I strongly recommend you reconsider - as I suspect upgrading the meter may well eliminate the entire issue.

Over 4 million out of the 30 million smart meters in operations not working properly is not plucking figures out of the air. You come across as someone with a vested interest in smart meters so would not have a bad word said against them.

Sadly computers do go wrong (just look at the Post Office Horizon system) so no I am not signing up for a system with a high enough failure rate to warrant caution.

“Not working properly” != Not working at all.

Far too many IHD Only issues are in that 4 million. Knock those off and the number of sites with issues plummets a LOT, likely by more than 50%. In fact, the actual figure is more like 2.7 million without removing IHD-Only issues - and it’s dropping constantly.

Likewise, Horizon’s issues were not just crumby code - that was also heavily caused by DELIBERATE MANIPULATION of the entire system by engineers at Fujitsu messing with the systems via remote access as people were trying to use it and quite literally changing figures right as people were looking at them. Sure, the code for Horizon is about as solid as a chocolate teapot, but it’s an extremely rare case of a sloppy build of the entire system right from the start - I doubt we’ll see anything like that again anytime soon.

It doesn’t matter how good (or bad) the code is - if someone’s messing with the underlying database or data files, they can do absolutely anything they want and the code will just believe what it’s seeing - because as far as the code knows, that manipulated data is the data it thinks it’s supposed to be working with.

And there’s not much you can do to idiotproof commands like sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root or DROP DATABASE horizondata; beyond locking down access to the underlying system. The same access is required however, for legitimate purposes from time to time.

And I know that because a few years ago, I literally spent several days reading the court transcripts - they’re on the public record if you’re interested.

You cannot just blindly compare literally everything to Horizon or CrowdStrike. Those who do will soon find themselves in a pitfall trap or two…

In case you’re wondering, I have interests in the technology behind Smart Meters, but that’s about it. If they were scrapped, I’d just move on and wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

Hi @Frustrated100,

I’m sorry to hear this.

When’s the best date to submit a reading for my monthly summary?

The best date to submit your reading is on or just before the date shown on your bill - the email or text reminder you receive may suggest you enter this the day before to make sure it’s received on time. If you do enter the reading slightly early we’ll only estimate your usage between the date you entered the reading and the date the statement was generated, so it should be fairly accurate.

These threads might also be helpful:

@Shads_OVO Sorry, but we’ve been through this before. 

1. Bills have at least three dates on them: 
     

   

   Referring to the date shown on your bill isn’t very helpful. 
     
2. We established some time ago, subsequently confirmed by Billing, that the best time to submit a reading in order to avoid estimations is (in the early morning of) the first day of the billing period. In my example above, I should submit a reading on 1st October for the billing period 1st Sep - 30th Sep.
   The ‘best answer’ in the first thread you referred to says just this.

It’s time this old chestnut was roasted to oblivion 😊

Hi @Firedog,

Unfortunately this is the advice we’ve been approved to give to customers. When I discussed this with the team during our last discussion, they wanted to keep this advice the same. - https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/article/estimated-reading-on-bill

I do however understand your frustration. I’m aware that you may have found a better alternative to this, which is why I linked the first topic that has that best answer you’ve mentioned.

OK, I don’t think I’d spotted that particular variant: “the best time to send a reading is on the date we bill you each month.”

Sadly, that is just as ambiguous as the screenshot above would suggest. For the past many months, I have been billed like clockwork on the 5th of the month for the previous one, so this instruction would tell me to submit a reading on the 5th - which is wrong if I want to be sure of not getting an estimated bill. I don’t know what a customer whose billing period isn’t the calendar month sees, so I can’t say what this instruction would mean in that case. 

There are several articles both at this site and in the Help pages that still aren’t quite right in this respect. Perhaps they’ll all be updated just in time for Billing to change the system again without telling anybody 🙂

One positive is that the billing is live so when a customer submits a meter reading their balance will update within 24-48 hours. 

We’d always recommend customers get smart meters installed & set to half hourly reading so their bills are always accurate & to an up to date reading. Although I understand not all customers are able to have meters in communication.