Why have Standing Charges also increased so much with the Energy Crisis?

Yes, you can find in general why companies have increased the Standing Charge, but different companies have done it in different ways.

The Which website is good it states:

The standing charge you pay counts as part of the price-capped amount. It's paid in addition to the unit rate - that's the amount you pay for the energy you actually use and report through your meter.

Simply put, gas and electricity providers can't charge you more than the price cap for the combination of your standing charge and unit rate if you're on one of these tariffs.

But how they split the balance is up to them.

As a customer of OVO I want to know how OVO arrived at the Standing Charge that they are charging me.  An increase in the Standing Charge because items that legitimately should be in there have increased is fine. However if they are bumping in costs that should not be in there and are perhaps offsetting unit costs by increasing the Standing Charge, that is not okay.

Over the summer roughly half of my monthly bill was the Standing Charge, I can cut back on electricity but I cannot cut back on the Standing Charge so I very much want OVO to justify their massive increase in that charge.

Honestly why would they not? It should be simple: here is what is included and here is how those items increased this year.

@Emmanuelle_OVO

As you say you are not adding anything. There are plenty of people out there angry about Standing Charges and all I am asking from Ovo is a justification for the charge that they have levied. These differ from supplier to supplier so there is no point in referencing general information on the internet.

I am not a legal person so I don’t know if this applies but it has been pointed out to me that the Gas 1986 and Electricity 1989 Act's state the following -

Condition 0. Treating Domestic Customers Fairly -
0.3 The Standards of Conduct are that the licensee and any Representative:
a) behave and carry out any actions in a Fair, honest, transparent, appropriate and
professional manner;
b) provide information (whether in writing or orally) to each Domestic Customer
which:
i. is complete, accurate and not misleading (in terms of the information provided or omitted);

If asked OVO should be providing information on how OVOs  Standing Charge is calculated.

As one part of a formal complaint to OVO I have asked for a breakdown of its Standing Charge and how each element varied in April 2022. OVO have simply not replied to any part of my complaint including the Standing Charge question. As a result the complaint will eventually work its way to the Energy Ombudsman.

To try and gee things up, my complaint has been rumbling on for a year, I emailed the OVO CEO Stephen Fitzpatrick. Emails to him are of course intercepted and what you get back is a bland message from *Edited by Mod* Ovo Groups Senior Executive Complaints Manager, promising to get something done. All that results in is somebody else coming back who clearly has not read the complaint and tries to shut the complaint number down.

Customer Service at Ovo in non-existent. They have a call centre, email help addresses etc. but there appears to be absolutely nothing behind that to address actual problems. All that happens is they bounce problems from person to person continually raising and losing complaint numbers but never actually addressing the problem.

The time and effort wasted by this dysfunctional service is chronic. If Ovo want to raise your Direct Debit but you want to keep it the same you have to phone the Call Centre, with lengthy waits. When you get through they will tell you that they are not allowed to put accounts on the 3 month exemption list for DD increases any more. Repeat this process 4 or 5 times wasting a huge amount of telephone time and they will freeze your DD. Why not do it the first time? Why not give a breakdown of Standing Charge elements when one is asked for? Why not actually fix the problem that is preventing monthly bills being sent out instead of just sitting on it?

@AngryOVOCust How about sending your question to BBC’s More or Less ? They like getting to the bottom of these kind of questions.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/40zRcKypd3lHBNWl0xWJYMF/contact-us#:~:text=Send%20us%20an%20email%20now%20to%20moreorless%40bbc.co.uk

I mean about the Standing Charge of course, not your other complaint!

Ovo boasts that all electric is from renewable sources. So can anyone expalin why standing charges have increased by 53% and KWh by 57%? Does all the wind and solar energy come from the Ukraine!?

To add to the excellent answer above... the standing charge has increased due to the costs of rescuing customers of energy companies that failed last year.

Today, 16th November, 2022, I received the expected EMail stating that I am moving to a variable plan with a new (double!) standing charge of 52.64p/day.  I go online and discover my standing charge is 50.13p/day.  Which is it?

O.K.!

Hi @Dean2709 

Welcome to the customer forum again. 

OFGEM set the maximum for the unit rate and standing charges every 3 months for the default standard variable rate tariff for each region. 

Some regions pay a bit more than the average, others a bit less. 

Basically it is more expensive to transmit gas and electricity, and to maintain and upgrade the network in some regions than others. 

It may be in the future that standing charges get even more expensive as we transition to net zero. 

There did use to be a few suppliers with a few tariff with low or no standing, but these all had higher unit rates. There is only one tariff like this at the moment and that is a PAYG one

https://utilita.co.uk/energy

Hi @Dean2709 

You could ask OFGEM as they set the charge for default standard variable rate tariff 

Here is their email address

consumeraffairs@ofgem.gov.uk

As this is a customer forum you will only get the thoughts of other customers here like me usually. Obviously i don't know where you live.

This is the last update from OFGEM for the price rises, although the £2500 Energy Price Guarantee announcement form the government further capped the unit rates. 

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/ofgem-announces-latest-quarterly-price-cap-update

Let us know what OFGEM say if you ask them.

This is what OVO say

You can get an overview of the number of complaints and the time taken to resolve them. This is the latest OVO report for example. 

https://www.ovobyus.com/m/5d1a0718ff477e6d/original/2022-ovo-quarterly-performance-report.pdf

OVO have been one of the many organisations, charities etc. campaigning for a social tariff for vulnerable people. The reduction in standing charges for pre payment meters is good, but we need the government and OFGEM to do more in this area to introduce a new tariff i personally think. It won't be easy as the costs will have to be loaded onto everyone elses bills. At the moment the government are not keen on a social tariff. 

https://www.cityam.com/ovo-energy-backs-social-tariff-for-vulnerable-households-facing-record-bills/

I wasn’t expecting an answer Jeffus. I was just illustrating the absurdity of proudly publishing complaints data without thinking through the consequences of analysis. Indeed, now that I have read through the posts above I am inclined towards the view that you started the digression from the original post, but that would be a petty argument.