A quick Google and I discovered several websites explaining that the increases in the standing charges over the past year are due to the costs of rescuing customers from failed energy companies.

There's your answer.

If you want to complain you can email OVO. Their complaints email address is on their website.

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.

Hey @AngryOVOCust,

I don’t have anything else to add here, just wanted to step in and say...

There has already been many really coherent and thorough explanations to your question about increased standing charges by our Community Members. All information on this topic can be found on the OFGEM website. The market regulator increased the threshold for the standing charges due to the reasons already stated by other Forum Members. 

@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?

Hi @AngryOVOCust what date did you raise your complaint?

You simply have to wait 8 weeks, then if you haven't had a reply simply go straight to the Energy Ombudsman, no point waiting, and wait for them to make a ruling on what OVO are obliged to supply you. 

Then post the ombudsman reply here as i am sure it will help others whatever it says. 

Good luck. 

@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!

I would much rather OVO fixed the problems, particularly in relation to billing than make a formal complaint. Every so often there is a glimmer of light when somebody comes along that sound as if they either have some knowledge of what the cause of the problem is or at least have some determination to get to the bottom of things. However OVO escalation team seems to have a revolving door any you rarely get more that two or three messages from the same person. I wonder what their staff turnover rates are? It is going to go to the Ombudsman soon though.

@juliamc suggested writing to More or Less at the BBC, that is a good idea I may well do that.

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!?

Hi @stanbroadbent ,

Just so you know, I’m one of the forum volunteers. I don’t work for OVO myself.

It is true that OVO’s electricity is 100% renewable (but you need a Smart Meter to continue getting this), but the wholesale market does not provide separate channels for renewable and non-renewable sources. Everything is bundled together and whatever the most expensive fuel source is, defines the market rate for absolutely everything else - currently gas.

There’s been many calls to split the wholesale market up so that OVO can just buy renewable energy from a channel that’s unaffected by gas prices, but so far this hasn’t happened.

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.

Why am I being charged more than 3 times the cost for the same amount of power this time last year?  I’ve been cutting my power usage to the (miserable) bone, and I understand that of course with the increase in costs, I would pay more for the same amount. 

But the guarantee was supposed to cap us at roughly double the price for the ‘typical’ user of around £1200 originally per year. The truth is that for lower users, it’s actually way higher than that multiple when new standing charges are taken into account.  Those of us who are working hard to keep usuage low are not really getting the benefit of this. 

Why is no-one doing anything about this?

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?

Hi @kenmills22 the figures on the email include VAT at 5%

The figures on the plan page when you login exclude VAT

So figures net out the same 

OK? 

O.K.!

Surprise surprise, OVO are increasing the unit costs for Gas and Elec from April 1st. I don't like it but fair enough I guess. 

What I can't understand is the MASSIVE increase in the daily standing charge.  Can someone explain and justify why this is?

I'm close to paying £1 a day even if I tuen the gas off and flick the switch to off on my incoming elect.

It's like the supermarket sending you a bill when you're not buying any shopping. 

My thoughts? People are cutting back on usage so OVO are using standing charges to maintain their profits.

I know that OVO will say, "Other companies are doing it" 

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

How is it more expensive to transmit Gas and Elec to my house? What exactly has been done that justifying the MASSIVE increase in everyone's standing charge? 

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

The increase has been on average 15% for electricity, less for gas. Apart from general cost increases that OFGEM incorporates when calculating the maximum standing charge, we all have to pay for things like the price of picking up the pieces after so many smaller energy suppliers have collapsed over the past couple of years. The cost of Bulb’s demise alone runs into billions of pounds. And now we’re also obliged to pay for the reduction in the cost of energy for those on pre-payment meters. How would you raise those funds?

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/

Thank you jeffus.

@P50WKB i doubt any customers on this forum are going to be able to answer those questions and the OVO forum moderators don't post on every thread as this is primarily a customer forum for customers to help each other. 

You could try contacting OVO Support for answers

https://help.ovoenergy.com/#contact_us_container

Or via the OVO Twitter or Facebook feeds. 

https://www.facebook.com/ovoenergy

The thread has morphed from chatting about standing charges to chatting about about Customer Support, if you think it would help open a different thread about Customer Support. 

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.

Funny how the Standing Charge is always affected at the same time as the prices fluctuate…
Surely, once the supply is all set up to a property, it should increase very little and no more than once, annually…?