Why am I receiving bills covering only 1 day?

Howdy!

Not seen this recently so I suspect it’s account specific. Definitely ask for this to be investigated though - it needs doing!

Hi Blastoise186.

On the previous 2 occasions that I’ve reported this, I had a call back to say that they cannot understand why it’s happening. I suspect that if I contact OVO again, I would get the same answer. I don’t think they see it as important, as it is an estimated 1 day (or zero day) bill that gets corrected the following month when I’m billed for the accurate meter reading amount.

I normally submit my reading on the morning of the 6th. Whilst talking to the OVO guy on the phone, I did ask whether submitting the reading just before midnight would stop these spurious bills, but he didn’t think it would. 

He also noticed that the zero day bills in April & July were sent in on a Sunday, & wondered whether that was significant. Looking at my last meter submission, that was sent on a Saturday (6/9/25). So perhaps there’s something about sending meter readings on weekends that causes problems? Is the billing computer unplugged on Friday night & plugged back in Monday morning to save a bit of energy.😆 

I was just wondering if it’s only me getting these spurious bills, or whether anyone else gets them.

Gotcha! Yeah, I’ve not seen this one in forever and there’s been no other recent reports on the Forum.

Getting a Smart Meter might help fix this, but I’ll fling this at the Forum Moderators as well, just to be sure.

Sorry, I’m not quite sure what this means. Do you receive a paper bill in the post? Or as a PDF attached to an email? 

In your online account, on the Billing History page, are these extraneous bills listed?

If they are, and you select one of them, will you please share the URL to the bill download? It may contain your account no., so please obfuscate that before posting. This is what I see when I right-click on the Download bill link; your browser may behave differently:  

This is the sort of URL I see: https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/bal/bill/•••••••?from=2025-08-01&to=2025-08-31

Yep. These spurious bills are listed.

I give my meter reading online on the 6th of each month. I allow a few days for the bill to be finalised, then log onto the website & download the pdf from there & pay the bill at the same time, usually around 12th of the month. My normal bills cover the 6th of the month to the 5th of the following month. In the last instance of a spurious bill, I got one for 6th-7th September. On previous occasions it was 6th-6th July & 6th-6th April.

Rather than posting URL's, I've taken a few screen shots to show what I see online. If you need to see anything else, let me know.

Thanks. The reason I asked to see the bill URL is that a URL whose query string covers a period other than from the start of a billing period to the end of the same or perhaps a later period will normally fail with an HTTP 404 (resource unavailable) error. It looks as if your account is suffering from some sort of confusion about when your billing periods start and end.

​@RadioFox,

Thanks for sending in the screenshots, that’s really helpful. I’d recommend sending these to our Support Team and requesting that they raise a tech ticket (CCSD).

Let us know how you get on!

Thanks for your replies. 

I notice that the next time the 6th falls on a weekend is in December, when it falls on a Saturday. It will be interesting to see what happens then. If a spurious bill is generated in December, it will add more ammunition to the glitch being due to weekend reading submissions.

Hey ​@RadioFox 

Thanks for that last update, do continue to keep us updated with how this goes. It was certainly interesting to read and see those screenshots of the single-day bills something I’ve not seen either, and if Ben_OVO hasn’t seen it very often, it’s definitely a rarity and hopefully they team can solve that one for you soon!