Why have I been billed to an incorrect estimated opening reading - can this be recalculated?

Morning ​@spaldino,

I’m sorry to hear of what has happened here, it sounds very frustrating 😔.

On the Forum we don’t have access to customer accounts, so I can only speculate as to what’s gone wrong here. 

In my opinion, it sounds as if we never received readings, and billed the account completely on estimates. When you received your bills, the reads would have appeared as ‘estimates’ and, when you logged into your online account when you were our customer, there would have been messages telling you to submit manual readings as the meters weren’t in comms.

if you never gave any manual reads from the smart meters, then OVO wouldn’t have had anything to base your bills on apart from estimates. It sounds like the new tenant has immediately provided a manual read, which we would have re-billed you to. If this reading was taken manually from the meter, then it will have been an actual reading, rather than an estimate, and would have been in line with your actual usage.

My advice here, is to provide the correct opening reading from when you moved into the property, if you never provided this. if you took a photo of the reading when you moved in please send this to our Support Team. If you’ve already logged a complaint  then you should have received an email with the complaints reference number. If so, please reply to that email with your meter photo from when you moved in, if you have it.

If you don’t have a photo of the meter reading from when you moved in, I’d advise contacting the Letting Agency, as it’s likely they would have taken a reading from when you moved in. They may even have sent you an itinerary when you moved in, that contains a photo of the opening read. I’m speaking here from my own experience as a renting tenant. 

All in all, it sounds like the final read of your account is correct, but maybe not the opening read. Once we’ve billed you from the correct opening reading to the correct closing read, then that will be the final amount that needs to be paid.

If you haven’t been sent an email containing a complaints reference number then get back in touch with our Support Team and request to log a complaint. You’ll then be given a complaints reference number, and will have a dedicated Complaints Handler. OVO will have eight weeks to resolve this for you. After the eight weeks has elapsed you’d be able to refer this to the Ombudsman, but I can’t see how it would take OVO eight weeks to resolve this one for you. 

Best of luck, and I hope it’s all sorted quickly for you. If you get the opening read from the Letting Agent and send it to us we can generate the correct bill within minutes.

​@Ben_OVO Somehow my original topic thread has been deleted? Is that how this forum works?

Overall, I believe my experience represents a chain reaction of system and process failures at OVO Energy that could be resolved at a company level reviewing its CX.

I’m certain I provided an opening meter reading. I was informed the account was closed and refunded. I didn’t believe I needed the original meter reading based on what I was told by OVO. It was then magically re-opened, with a new balance. Just bizarre. 

The fact that a person can open and close an OVO account with estimated readings without it being flagged as a problem and communicated directly, that’s a bit like setting up an Amazon Prime account without a valid card security number i.e. it wouldn’t be allowed to happen.

I wouldn’t trust the letting agency reading, since I strongly believe there is unbilled usage at the property that I was being wrongly charged for. I did put trust into the smart meter reading, because that’s what was promised by OVO (and is still being mentioned in this thread as a solution). I don’t see any point in this process so far where OVO has done the right thing. I have received a complaint reference to resolve formally.

Hey ​@spaldino, 

If you’ve asked a question that’s similar to existing questions then we’ll merge the newer question in to the existing topic thread. This keeps the Forum cleaner and all of our advice and suggestions from the community in one place! 

As ​@Ben_OVO has said we can’t see you’re account here as we’re just a customer forum but if you contact our Support Team they’ll be able to look into the status of the billing dispute for you.

When you closed your account, did you provide a final meter reading? Your previous bills should indicate whether the balance was based on estimates or actual readings. To accurately update an account and reconcile any unbilled usage, a meter reading can be used to adjust for past consumption.​

I’d suggest getting in touch with our Support Team and i’ve left an article below that might be helpful that covers what meter reading disputes are:

I hope you get things sorted!