Hey @TracyH80,

Really sorry to hear this,

As far as I’m aware, unless there is an agreement in place where debt is loaded onto your meter to be paid off or you use emergency credit you shouldn’t have a debt balance for pay as you go.

We don’t have access to customer accounts here on the Forum, I’d advise contacting the Support Team, they should be able to raise this to our billing team to investigate. If they’re unable to resolve this, there’s always the option to raise a complaint.

Hope this gets resolved for you as soon as possible. 

@TracyH80 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/investigation-ovo-and-its-compliance-its-obligations-under-gas-and-electricity-supply-licences-slcs-03-264-265-27-27a-and-281a

I’ve recently been moved to OVO from SEE.

Currently on a pay monthly Gas - new supply we added when moving in. The property always had a pay as you go electricity meter, we assume because it was formly tennanted before being sold to us. We never got around to changing it, but upon needing to sort out a login with OVO to top up since the SSE app was closed we had to contact OVO. Upon doing so, the customer service agent started trying to tell us that we have a £200 plus debit which must be cleared before moving to a monthly meter. We’re pay as you go.. so how they believe this happens is beyond me. The CA agent hid behind the ‘its from SSE period previously’ and provided no proper information. After doing some googling it appears I’m one of many who suddently has a debt on my account following the merger…. we’ve written to their complaints department so we see what they have to say. OVO - you need to sort it out before myself and other customers move on

Hey @DeanF,

Really sorry for the issues you’re having,

It’s unusual to have that amount of arrears as pay as you go. There’s likely to be some debt from the migration if the meter was put into non disconnect mode. 

I’d advise contacting the support team for this one, if they aren’t able to offer a solution you can raise a complaint. 

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 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 2pm on Saturday.
• Or call us on 0330 175 9669 during the same times.

OVO trying to bill me over £300 when I have a prepayment meter how’s that possible?

Hi,

The best people to speak to about this are the PAYG Support Team.

Please try Live Chat via https://ovoenergy.com/help or 0330 175 9669.

@Catherine mcc 

How are you paying you PAYG ?. Do you top-up in a shop, or use the app, or a credit/debit  card scheduled payment ?

Have you switched suppliers or tariffs in the last year ?

Are your current payments to BOOST or to OVO ?

The reason I ask is because I’m finally getting through a problem caused by an unexpected OVO account ( and bill ! ) when I was actually on BOOST. 

If yours is a similar problem then I can assure you there will be no solution by talking to either BOOST or OVO, no matter what anyone on here says.

OVO agents will tell you it’s a BOOST problem, and BOOST agents will tell you it’s an OVO problem.

You will get nowhere talking to either. I have been through all that already.

The only way I solved the problem was to take it to a higher authority.

@Buzby sometimes the best thing you can do is to just do what I did and leave it be.

Just because you yourself have had a bad experience with Support, doesn’t mean literally everyone else under the sun will as well. Additionally, you CANNOT just assume that the problem is the same as the one you had - it’s more often than not something else. This is precisely why Forum Volunteers won’t speculate, and why we don’t give reasons if we’re not confident enough about our thoughts.

In cases like this, we feel that simply signposting the user the right way and watch for updates is a better option than trying to force their hand. This is especially true for Account-Specific Issues where you cannot possibly get all the context needed to figure out the puzzle. We’re actually under instructions to let the Support Team handle those.

Additionally, for those on the Priority Services Register and/or Vulnerability Guild, OVO has specialist resources dedicated to helping you out. The exact nature of those resources is tailored to the individual customer so I cannot give an overview that covers all bases.

However, in my case the support is tailored to the fact I have Autistic Spectrum Disorder and reside in Supported Living, which - when combined with the Account Management Team model my account has run under since 2021 - results in super rapid queue times and many agents taking the extra time to better understand me and learn how best to support me due to the unique traits that every Autistic individual may possess. Everything one agent learns about me goes onto my account notes and is shared with the rest of the team - and ALL of that information is at their fingertips anytime they wish to or need to review it, such as when I get in touch with someone who’s not spoken to me before. The fact I’m a Forum Volunteer is also factored in, but this mostly just causes OVO’s teams to be able to serve me faster purely because I have a deeper understanding of how things work so they can get straight to the point and cut down on the amount of “ping pong” games that might otherwise happen. Similar measures are applied on the OVO Forum - the Forum Moderators have a deep understanding of my circumstances and can use that to adapt how they handle interactions with me if needed.

As a result, the experience I get is effectively Rockstar VIP Service, it’s that good - and it’s what I WANT everyone to get closer to over time as OVO rebuilds itself. We - as the Forum Volunteers - are watching this closely and we have… Ways… Of making sure that the Support Team plays nice with folks who aren’t one of us. I don’t go into details, but my strategy is highly effective.

The intelligence that is gathered is also shared with other departments within OVO, and where appropriate, with other organisations via the Priority Services Register so that those other places can keep their records up-to-date and fully synchronised. Likewise, if OVO were to send anyone to visit me, that intelligence would also be included with the job request so that the visiting engineer or representative is aware upfront. The only entity which does not get automatic access to that data is the OVO Forum - the reasons of which should be fairly self-explanatory. But even then, we can often detect signals of vulnerable customers and have agreed “workflows” between the Forum Volunteers and Forum Moderators to help get those customers the best experience we can provide while they’re here - but ultimately the Support Teams are the ones who have all the required info available, not us.

As a Forum Volunteer, the way I respond to threads is based on a lot of factors, many of which aren’t obvious upfront. This may include things like whether the question is Account-Specific, targets certain criteria that the Forum Moderators want us to focus on (or even flag directly to them!), fits within one of my specialist topics/subjects and how urgent I determine the need to resolve it to be, among other things. However, one cannot help everyone no matter how hard they try, sometimes you have to know when to step back - and this is important. I ignored that advice a few years ago on Discord, and it burned me hard. I learned that the hard way, but you shouldn’t have to.

You also have to bear in mind that we get a lot of folks here who are in difficult circumstances, being respectful and understanding is a key quality that runs throughout both the Forum Volunteers and Forum Moderator team, but so is knowing when to let things be.

Just some food for thought.

Hi @Catherine mcc 

One of our volunteers has left some really helpful advice here, as it’s best to get in touch with the Support Team about cases like this as we don’t have access to accounts here at the Forum.

Hopefully this has been helpful and you can get the matter cleared up.🙂

This seems to be a common problem.

I think something has gone wrong in the migration from SSE to OVO.

OVO were so awful to me when I was migrated to them, I transferred to E.org… have always been on a prepayment meter and they have sent me a final bill for £1,000 even though I was always on prepayment.

They claim I migrated from SSE with £1,300 worth of debt, on a prepayment meter.

Trying to get it resolved has gotten no where.