Why are there large estimated usage and charges on my bill just before my recent smart meters installation?

Hi all ,

Hope everyone is keeping well and enjoying the holidays .

New to the forum and looking for some help / advice , i have looked around the forum and there doesn’t seem to be a situation like mine so will explain the situation.

We had a traditional electricity meter with. An LCD display which we gave meter readings from the last reading we gave from that device was June of this year , a couple of months later (around Oct ish ,I know) we noticed the display was blank and called OVO to advise we are unable to provide a reading  , they then set us up with getting a smart meter fitted (Dec).

We had the smart meter fitted and the old one taken away and All was well until today when we received 6months of estimated bills with a total debit of around £3700 and an estimated usage of 2800/3000  KWH ish , prior to this bill we were in credit and paying £130per month with 350/400 KWH per month usage advised on the comparative year on year.

We know we haven’t used as much electricity due to it being the summer months and being rather sparing with the usage.

 Our smart meter reads we have used £70 since being fitted on December 6th before that I don’t think we even had the heating on which is a fraction of the £3700.

How Will the estimations be corrected when the old meter is broken and been taken away and the smart meter differs from the estimated bill ?

Any suggestions or advice before I discuss with OVO? 
thanks 🙏 

Please can someone help me. Understand. I have a smart meter. Just looked at it. and it was reading 82p.And two minutes later it was reading £1.10.hows that possible. Our OVO stealing money from customers. It seems everyone having the same problems with there smart meters .or moving over from SSE. Something not right with this company. 

@Jammintunes your account will correct itself if you send in manual readings until your smart meter gets settled/sorted. Can you see from your account if any readings are being sent from your smart meter?
@Maria Ozegovic the meters only update every 10/30 mins so you can sometimes see a jump from one reading to the next

Hey @Jammintunes,

Sorry for the issues you’re having,

Are we in communication with your Smart Meters? If so your billing shouldn’t be estimated.

It may be that the removal reading (presumably estimated) from your faulty meter was too high. Or the install reading for your smart meter may have been incorrect. You should be able to find this information on your billing, there’s also a yellow or white sticker on your meters that should display this information.

If we aren’t in communication with your meters you’ll need to do a health check:

We don’t have access to your account, but if you send a screenshot on this thread of your meter read history we may be able to work out what’s going on here.

Hope this helps. 

Hi  @Emmanuelle_OVO ,

Thanks for getting back to me , i have now signed up to my account online so can provide some more accurate information.

It looks like our traditional meter display broke down 16th June as this was when we provided the last reading , this was after a local power outage in the area , new smart meter fitted 6th Dec.

Just to summaries our outstanding balance today is £3,947.23.

For comparative please see our May Usage.

June once our readings were estimated :

From June to Sept average usage 90kwh per day , Sept Dec estimated 106kwh per day , 

Dec 7th Smart meter fitted.

Any advice on how long this may take to be corrected , its very stressful and worrying ? , the customer service team on the phone didn't understand the problem and just wanted us to pay the balance , spoke to 4 different agents and it was until the 5th that she put the account on hold for investigation , but TBH my confidence in the agent understanding the issue is very low.

Please help

@Emmanuelle_OVO

One of the estimated months.

Hi @Jammintunes do I take it that you have meter readings from before the high estimates and at the time of meter swap? If so these will be useful for reference. Also your ‘typical’ use should help correct this. 
Incidentally I don’t believe @Emmanuelle_OVO or any other mods are back until tomorrow at the earliest. Like us volunteers, they don’t have access to your account but might be able to connect to the best support team

Good morning @BPLightlog , Thanks for taking the time to look at my thread its appreciated.

We have all our readings  for previous months up to the 16th June 22 ,prior to this we put in regular meter readings and had an average usage of 17kWH / 20kwh per day ,  there was local power outage  in our area and after that our LCD on the meter stopped working , we called OVO to advise and they told us they don't repair old meters and the smart meter was needed with Dec being he earliest they could fit.

so we have an estimated usage for the period of June - December which is around 5 times higher than what we have used or currently used.

Would you know how we could provide / obtain the correct meter reading from when the traditional meter ceased to work .. would OVO have access to that in their system some where ?

Just to add that what matters isn’t the pretty usage charts you see on your screen. The underlying meter readings (together with your plan rates) are the basis for all calculations, so that’s where to look for evidence, and for justification of any claim for inaccurate estimates. You should be able to find a year’s readings for your account on the meter readings page, admittedly with many clicks on the Load more button. 

Since you’re able to document your average daily consumption before and after the period of inflated estimates, you should be able to beat them down to size. If I were you, I’d do this in writing so you have a record of who said what. *edited by moderator: email address only for ongoing and escalated complaints*