Pay as you go bill for debt! How is that possible?

Thank you both for taking the time to come back to me.

I am very lucky to have found a kind person with a sympathetic ear who has taken the time to listen to me and who is willing to investigate the problem for me.

I have been told that the money we are claimed to owe Ovo is complete nonsense  and that the only money that was taken from the keymeter (which is always in credit) during the periods of time mentioned are the only payments that were required and we owe nothing.

Basically, while a key meter is in credit it is not possible to owe any extra money. The whole point of a keymeter is that you pay in advance for future electricity/standing charges.

There is something seriously wrong when Ovo are trying to charge us £45 on top of the £25 that was taken from the keymeter balance for the 31 days in July when no one was living in the house, the only electrical items permently plugged were a small fridgefreezer and a small under counter freezer. I made some cups of tea during my visits and plugged a radio in for a few hours, but it didn't cost that much! Madness!

If I get to the bottom of what went wrong I will post again with the details. Hopefully it might help someone else.

Actually, it is possible for a Key Meter to have credit and debt on it at the same time - this is true of all PAYG Meters, whether they’re Key, Card, Token (remember those?) or Smart. The reasons for this can include:

• Actual debts you racked up for some reason and are paying off via a Prepayment Meter
• Use of Emergency Credit - you’ll be required to pay back both the used EmCr (only the used portion!) and any unpaid Standing Charges or Debts while in EmCr
  • This does NOT apply if you’ve never used EmCr
• Unpaid charges such as Standing Charges racked up whilst Off-Supply
• Use of Additional Support Credit aka Discretionary Credit - which loads on a Credit and a Debt at the same time

Hi @Pleasehelp,

I’m glad to hear that someone is now looking into this for you.

Please keep us updated.

I’ve just got my latest bill, does this mean payment has been taken from my balance (I’m PAYG)?   I’m £70 in credit but my latest bill is £111, do I need to top my balance?

Hi ​@Emma English ,

If you’re on Pay On-Demand, the bill payment is taken from your account balance automatically if there’s enough in there. Otherwise, you’ll be asked to pay the rest - the bill itself will tell you what you need to pay in. However, in this case, it sounds like the bill was auto-paid from the account credit.

If you’re Pay As You Go, you don’t get bills - you literally pay as you use energy which automatically settles the bill on your behalf.

If you’re on Direct Debit, the system figures it out for you provided you keep making your monthly payments.

Does this help ​@Emma English? I’m not sure from the information provided that you are pay as you go?

Check this thread and don’t give up.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of zero wealth but much pain.

At risk of being scrubbed, I'm just telling my story.

I moved into a home with BOOST PAYG supplying both gas and electricity.

I didn’t have any problems until the infamous phantom billing letters. Please use the forum search, or even check the popular Boost/OVO Failing Customers group on Facebook to learn more about that — I can’t link it without risking a ban.

Ofgem has some extremely interesting and relevant pages about OVO’s past fines and related issues concerning this scandal.
I believe it even made the papers. I was approached for a statement — I declined.

My bill was £1,346 on a PAYG meter three months after moving in.
It wasn’t the previous tenant’s debt.
This has now been resolved — it took eight months. I paid nothing toward the bill. If any of you have fallen victim to this scam, I’m sure someone from OVO could advise on compensation claims.

It was an error on their side. It is impossible to accrue a debt on PAYG.
You can be moved to PAYG because of a debt, but it's illegal to charge someone for another person's debt.

I managed to get onto a Direct Debit monthly electric account. Somehow, my gas account was left on PAYG.

Some of you may be aware of the Apollo to Orion system switch failures.
From what I’ve learned from Blastoise on this forum, OVO were forced to migrate to Orion, knowing full well there would be many problems and compatibility issues — but they had no choice, as Apollo deteriorated so quickly.

Again, I implore you to look at Ofgem’s pages regarding the fines OVO received. I believe they’ve been fined multiple times since 2008 for lack of access and overcharging.

For two years, I haven’t had any access to my Direct Debit account.
No one can help. “You must wait” is the familiar advice I receive.

I currently have “an agent” on it… I hope to post some results soon.

I believe I’ve been overcharged on my gas PAYG at 10p per unit instead of the 6.08p shown on my annual statement from 2024 — and the current rate (as of 01-07-2025) is 5.86p per unit.

This will also be looked into by OVO’s team. However, I have great difficulty reaching the right department due to my confusing account records caused by the Apollo/Orion transition.

Why am I posting all this?

One erroneous letter began all of this. I’ve been dealing with OVO on and off for three years.
For two years, I’ve been on Direct Debit with no access to my accounts.
I haven’t even received my annual statement for gas or electricity this year — which I believe was due in June.

One human error caused my accounts to be stuck. Both of my accounts should have been on DD.

Please be vigilant and relentless in the management of your accounts.
Both of my accounts

*edited by moderator* 

Most customers will be completely satisfied with OVO, they should be.
Unfortunately any small issue becomes a massive one for a long time, especially if you are on PAYG.

Hey ​@thereturn,

No risk of scrubbing here as we only remove content that violates our community guidelines and house rules. I’ve linked them below for anyone that hasn’t seen them. 

I’m sorry you’ve had a rough experience during the migrations as they’re never an easy thing to accomplish without some pain on both ends. I’ll try and address each of the points you’ve made to try and give some context but as we don’t have account access here some of this may be an overall context rather being specific to you and your circumstances so please bear with me. 

If you've recently moved into a property with an existing debt on the meter, our Support Team should have requested a copy of your tenancy agreement. This document confirms your property ownership date, and a new account will be created with a balance reflecting usage from that date to the present. We apologise if this process caused you any inconvenience or delay. For information on how to make a formal complaint or discuss compensation for your experience, please refer to our complaints process.

“It was an error on their side. It is impossible to accrue a debt on PAYG.” -

It’s possible to accrue debt on a PAYG meter. We have an emergency credit process to assist customers who are struggling and require additional credit until they can make their next payment. Repayment options are discussed and agreed upon by the customer and our agents to ensure that the customer does not face further difficulties. More information is available on our Payment Support page.

We've taken the issues regarding your online account access offline. I've forwarded this to our technical team to investigate the cause of the blockage. We hope to resolve this for you as soon as possible.

To transfer both of your accounts to Pay Monthly, please contact our Support Team. They will be able to assist you with this request. Unfortunately, as I am in a public-facing role, I do not have direct account access. However, I will do my best to help in any way I can. You are welcome to share the link to this thread with the agent you speak with, and they can reach out to me directly if they have any questions or concerns about completing this task. I’ve left the contact options in the link below:

I’ve addressed most of the points in your post. If you feel I missed anything, please let me know, and I’d be happy to revisit and offer further insight.

Let me know if you have any follow up questions. Again i’m sorry for the experience you’ve had and I know that we can do better to ensure this doesn’t happen again! 

Hello, I hope you ca help. I recently updated the details on my parents energy account to just my mothers. We were given a new account number and then a few hours later I recieved an email with a bill of £638.25. My parents are on a pre payment meter so I do not understand why we have received a bill. When I contacted OVO they asked me to press button A and B on my meters. The gas meter just showed our balance and the electric meter does not have a button A and B just a blue button. Would anyone know why we would have recieved this bill despite being on a pre payment meter, they are asking for copies of our receipts but we always throw them away and they claim that they cannot see that we have topped up, though our meters are showing the balance