I have topped up £100 on the 5th December, paying back emergency credit leaving £76 on my meter.
Now today is the 8th December with only £9.87 left.
I live in a 2 bedroom flat with one child.
I have not used my cooker nor did any washing this week and my heating has been on low. What on earth is going on OVO?
when I call and ask for temporary credit, I have to pay it back putting me in more debt. Why? I do not need need this kind of stress.
OVO you have already sent an engineer out to test my meter and claim there is no faults on my meter but looking at my spending I believe there is.
I am fed up and frustrated. At this point, I'm lodging a complaint with my citizens advice bureau and I am demanding answers or my money back because this is ridiculous.
This is not the time to be playing with money during this winter season.
Best answer by Emmanuelle_OVO
Updated on 07/08/25 by Ben_OVO
Hey @Lovely Tam,
I’m really sorry to hear this,
I was going to suggest the same as Blastoise, there may be some other debt on the meter. Debt can still build up on Pay as you Go meters for a number of reasons.
This smart meter guide may have some helpful advice:
You can also check out this topic for more on traditional meters:
The Support Team should be able to confirm any ‘background’ debt. You can find the contact details here:
If it turns out that there’s no background debt, and there’s no fault with the meter, then one or more appliances could be using a lot more energy than you’d expect. This is often the case if a property has electric heating and hot water, or underfloor heating. If you think that any electrical appliances are using more than they should, you can contact an electrician to come and check everything. There are also many energy advice organisations and charities that can help you reduce your costs. A quick google search of ‘energy saving advice in (your local area)’ will show what support is available.
There is probably another debt on the meter. Please show us photos of it and we’ll help you check.
The temporary credit you refer to is known as Discretionary Credit aka Additional Support Credit. This is credit you borrow to get you over a tight spot, but you do have to pay it back and can’t always ask for more while still paying back a previous request.
It gets added to the meter as a credit (available immediately) and a debt (repaid slowly over time). If the repayment rate is too high for you, the Support Team can talk to you about slowing it down a bit.
I was going to suggest the same as Blastoise, there may be some other debt on the meter. Debt can still build up on Pay as you Go meters for a number of reasons.
This smart meter guide may have some helpful advice:
You can also check out this topic for more on traditional meters:
The Support Team should be able to confirm any ‘background’ debt. You can find the contact details here:
If it turns out that there’s no background debt, and there’s no fault with the meter, then one or more appliances could be using a lot more energy than you’d expect. This is often the case if a property has electric heating and hot water, or underfloor heating. If you think that any electrical appliances are using more than they should, you can contact an electrician to come and check everything. There are also many energy advice organisations and charities that can help you reduce your costs. A quick google search of ‘energy saving advice in (your local area)’ will show what support is available.
Blastoise is right, the support team should be able to let you know what’s going on. Sometimes there can be debt on the meters but this would either be built up standing charge. For example in winter when the gas hasn’t been put on for a number of months. Or an agreed repayment plan of ‘backscreen debt’. As you were out of the property & nothing was being used this does seem unusual.
How to get in touch about my OVO Pay As You Go account
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Despite putting 50 pounds in my smart meter hours ago I only have eight pounds emergency left it’s a new meter.i am 72 years old and freezing as if I put heating on I will run out of credit
Did you have a debt on the meter that used up the credit you put on? It may be worth contacting the Pay As You Go team about this to see if there’s anything they can do to help.
If you haven’t already, it may also be worth signing up to the Extra Support Package.
When I used to top up my old meter with SSE, the full amount I bought was transferred to the meter as credit. However, now that I have a smart meter with Ovo, the amount being shown as credit is 10% less than I paid (i.e. purchase £50 credit and £45 is registered on the smart meter).
Are you reguarly going into emergency credit, or perhaps paying off a debit balance?
eg. Maybe there was a debit balance calculated (rightly or wrongly) when you moved from SSE to OVO?
If/when you use emergency credit they you have to pay for what you have used from the next top up, plus it hasn’t been taking a daily standing charge while in emergency credit mode and so any accumulated standing charges are also taken all at once from your next top up.
Of course the amount taken will vary depending on how long you were in emergency mode and how much power you used.
If you have a debit balance then you may have agreed for a set amount to be taken from each top up to pay that debit back.
If it’s always a fixed amount or percentage (£5 or 10%) less than what you top up then the second one sounds the more likely. Does your account online or in the app show any signs of a debit?
I’ve also never been made aware of any debt as a result of the handover from SSE to Ovo or otherwise.
To compound matters, I can’t create an online Ovo account - the page keeps reporting an error and to try again later. I employed Ovo customer services to help but all they could do was register me on the payment portal, which doesn’t give any account details.
I’m not happy at paying a 10% premium every time I top up so I suppose the only option is to go back to customer services? 😥
Online Services are not available for PAYG Customers, other than the OVO Top-Up App and PAYG Payment Portal. If you desire more access, you'll need to migrate to PAYM
Difficult to tell what may be going on here, but Is it a percentage or is it a set £5 amount?
ie If you top up say £30 then is it still £5 or only £3?
Which one it is may give someone a clue as to what may be causing it.
(An off the wall thought that is unlikely but just possible - how are you making the payments, and is it possible that your bank/card/service is taking a transaction charge each time?)
Difficult to tell what may be going on here, but Is it a percentage or is it a set £5 amount?
ie If you to up say £30 then is it still £5 or only £3?
Which one it is may give someone a clue as to what may be causing it.
Hello Nukecad
Thanks for following up.
I’ve only ever topped up by £50 at a time. I’ll try an experiment later by topping up with different amounts, and over shorter periods, logging the results. At least then I will have clear evidence to present when the inevitable phone call takes place.
Please forgive my ignorance but what is ‘PAYM’ please?
PAY Monthly - in other words have the meter changed from a top-up account to a credit account where you either pay by direct debit or on demand as you get billed.
With smart meters that change can be done remotely without having to physically change the meter, which make it much faster to change your account type with just a phone call.
I have no intention of paying by direct debit, as I do not trust energy companies’ methods. Paying as billed is an option I hadn’t considered, so that is valuable advice.
After I have exhausted my experiments and consulted customer services on the same, it may be my only viable option, if I’m to keep abreast of my account.
Both you and Blastoise186 have been very helpful. Thank you.
I’ve never really had a problem with DD’s other than:
SSE were always setting them too low so you could get into debit balance if not careful.
OVO’s computer does sometimes tend to set them higher than needed, but if/when that happens then you can often put them down by 10% for 3-months yourself on your online account, or failing that phone support to get the DD amount reduced.
In the end though even if it is set a bit too high it’s still your money and just builds a credit on your account. (Yes, I know some people don’t like that either).
PS. Getting a bit technical here: Why the recommended DD can sometimes be set higher than needed gets complicated, betwen us we have identified a few reasons why it can happen and what to do to fix them. eg. Mine can currently be too high because of an error in my Future Assessed Consumption (FAC) for gas. (My electricity FAC is correct, it’s just the gas one that’s wrong). I know why that FAC error started happening and have been sucessfully working on getting it down to where it should be simply by sending in more frequent meter readings. (A few weeks ago I got a new gas smart meter fitted and once OVO start getting daily readings from it the FAC should soon be correct again).
Could it be that there’s an arrears balance being paid off?
The support team will be able to help with this. They’ll have access to your account.
How to get in contact about my OVO Pay As You Go account
The best way to get in touch with us is via chat here. Just click the green chat icon on the bottom right of your screen. We’re here to help anytime from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. Or call us on 0330 175 9669 - Opening hours: Mon-Thu 8am to 8pm, Friday 8am to 6pm, Sat-Sun 8am to 5pm.
Got a question about your Pay As You Go energy use, top-ups, keys, cards, or anything else? Why not see if you can find the answers in our dedicated PAYG Forum category.
There are also tons of helpful resources and information available on our OVO Help pages.
I am emailing on behalf of my 19 year old daughter who lives alone and has been experiencing difficulties with Pay As You Go Meter since shifting to this method from pay monthly around 6 weeks ago.
Since moving to this method, the consumption of both her electricity and gas has gone through the roof. She is a new build one bed upper flat and to date this month has had to find approximately £150 to ensure supplies. She receives Universal Credit and Ovo are already aware that she is struggling to pay bills. She put £25 on her electricity meter on Monday evening and there was only £5 credit left by yesterday lunchtime ! She is in debt of approximately £513 to the company but has not formally set up any repayment plan to repay this from top ups though I wonder if this is what is happening. She enquired about repaying but was told that the minimum repayment someone could make was £80 per month which is not feasible for her and seems a way for the creditors to penalise people in her circumstances with interest charges. She called OVO on Monday and was told that no-one could assist her in terms of checking that the meter was operating properly until she raised a “case” which would take around 5 - 10 days. She called again yesterday when her electricity credit had plunged from £25 to £5.09 in a day and again was told that she would not get help until the “case” was raised and advice given was simply “try and make the credit last”. She was told when trying to ask if they could confirm that repayment of the debt was taken from the account that “they were not able to tell her that “ which seems absurd.
Hoping that I might get help with the following :-
When Case raised, is it best to ask for a specific person at OVO to deal/investigate ? I think have picked this up from previous posters.
Other than take pictures of her meter going down- is there anything else we can do meantime?
Is it possible for me to pay her outstanding debt and, how do I do that ? To be honest, I plan to advise her to switch when cleared as all this has been very stressful and very unfair. System seems impenetrable and complex and really needn’t be.
Can I ask a few questions which may help us give better, more focused so shorter, answers:
Is the flat all-electric, electric heating etc.? How long has she been in the Flat? ie. how long was she on a credit meter before going prepayment? If she has built up a £500 debt (for whatever reason) in a short period before switching to PAYG then that doesn’t sound good.
What was it that prompted her to move to PAYG? It sounds to me that it was because of the debt, and the Prepay meter was agreed to as a way of repaying that debt.
It does sound probable that a debt recovery charge is now being made for debt repayment each time that she tops up.
One way to check that is to make another top-up and see it it immediately takes money for the repayment before anything else. (And so leaving much less than was topped up). If a lump is taken at once then it’s a repayment, (If it was a possible faulty meter it would generally take it gradually over the day and not all at once). EDIT - That may not be quite correct with OVO. It appears that OVO do it differently and instead of taking the debt repayment all at once from a top-up they take a daily amount along with the daily standing charge, that’s actually a better way of doing it.
It also sounds as if that charge may have been set too high for her to afford. They are allowed to recover debt from top-ups in that way, but that recovery must be “reasonable and affordable”. (“minimum” £80 a month is nonsense, that may be what they would like to recover it at but there is no such set minimum. See below for more about that).
What you/she needs to do now : You need to find out just how much is being taken from each top-up. As above making a top-up and seeing what is taken may do that, but be aware that it make take a percentage of the top-up and not a fixed amount.
Once you know what that is then she should ask support to reduce it to something more affordable for her.
If support won’t reduce it when asked then she should escalate things and make a complaint that the current repayment is unaffordable for her. https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback
Can you pay off her debt for her? I’m pretty sure that if she contacted support by telephone with you sat next to her and asked if they would let you pay it off by card they would agree. I doubt that they will be bothered who is paying as long as it is paid. (Or you could lend her your card which she then used to pay it off, or transfer money to her bank so that she could then pay it using a card of her own).
Hopefully once clear of the debt she will be able to afford the PAYG, if not then she needs to rethink her electricity use.
I said above about that “minimum” £80 a month recovery being nonsense. There is a scheme for benefits claimints where if they are in debt to an energy supplier they or the supplier can apply/agree to have payments taken directly from their benefits. When taking direct fuel payments from UC in that way then, as well as an amount for ongoing usage, the most they can take for debt repayment is 5% of UC Standard Allowance. For a single person over 25 that’s £20.00 a month maximum. You can see why suppliers would rather that people in debit switched to PAYG where they can take much more debt recovery a month than allowed from benefits.
Would it be the case that a debt repayment would automatically be deducted from a Pay as you Go account if someone were in debt? If so, how much would that payment be and would it be taken on a top up or daily from an account?
My daughter raised an issue on Monday and awaits a resp9onse as yet.
Debts of this type are sometimes time based if memory serves, so it’d be collected on a daily basis. In some cases it may be payment based though where it comes directly from the top-ups.
You should check your specific arrangements to be sure.
If you want, you can make manual payments via Support to wipe it down faster.
