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Updated on 12/11/24 by Shads_OVO

 

Help and Support

 

 

I can’t afford to top up or pay for my energy. What can I do?

 

There are steps you can take if you’re not able to pay for your energy: 

  • You can activate the emergency credit on your meter. 

  • If your emergency credit runs out, get in touch via one of the ways below. We can take you through the different options, for example borrowing credit that you can pay back over time. 

You can always talk to us if you’re worried or struggling to pay for your energy. We’ve supported lots of people in similar situations and we can help you, too. Chat with us here. Just click the blue chat icon at the bottom right of your screen. Or call us on 0330 175 9669.

 

Not sure how to activate the emergency credit on your smart meter? Check out our topic hub with guides on how to do this for your meter type:

 

 

How will I pay my debt back on a meter in Pay As You Go mode?

 

We’ll put the debt onto your meter and set the amount you pay back at an affordable daily rate. This is called your daily repayment rate. We’ll base it on what you have already told us about you and your home.

 

Once we’ve loaded the debt to your meter, your daily charges will be calculated by:

  • The amount of energy you’ve used

  • Our daily standing charge

  • The daily debt repayment rate

  • Any top-ups you make will be added to your meter balance. 

 

Please make sure your meter has enough credit on it to cover standing charges and debt repayments, even while you’re away and not using energy. Or, you might come back to find your credit has run out and your supply has stopped working. You can avoid this by getting our OVO Energy Top-up app (you can download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play) and opting into low balance notifications to avoid running out of credit, even when you’re not home.

 

How to get in touch 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.

 

If there’s an emergency with your meter

 

You can chat with us here. Just click the blue chat icon at the bottom right of your screen. Or call the OVO PAYG Team on 0330 175 9669 – we can help.

 

If you’re not sure Pay As You Go is right for you, and are interested in switching to pay monthly you can contact the Pay As You Go Support Team. 

 

If you or anyone in your household is vulnerable, or just needs a little extra assistance at a difficult time in your lives, our Priority Services Register is a free support service you might find useful.

 

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.  

Struggling with your energy bills? Our Support Package might be helpful to you.

Good evening @Nigel 15 ,

Sorry to hear about this. I’m afraid I’m only a Forum Volunteer myself so I can’t action anything directly. However, I have raised an emergency flag against this thread and a Forum Moderator may reach out to you directly in the morning. Please keep an eye on your Private Messages at https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview and you’ll also receive an email when that happens.

We as the Forum Volunteers are empowered to set these flags at our discretion in cases where we think it’s needed. It is my view that your mother definitely qualifies, so I will additionally monitor this thread as best I can. Just so you know, I’m heading to bed shortly but please leave any other comments or questions here at your convenience and I will try to respond to them in the morning.

Hey @Nigel 15,

 

I’m really sorry to hear this, it sounds like a stressful situation to be in. 

 

If she’s off supply and unable to top up, the support team should be able to book in a faulty meter exchange. Phoning is the quickest way to get an emergency engineer out. 

 

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.

 

If you’re with Boost

 

It sounds like she may still be in PAYG mode, if she has communicating smart meters they should be able to change the meters to pay monthly remotely. We’d strongly recommend for anyone vulnerable to have pay monthly meters to ensure they don’t go off supply. 

 

These topic’s may also help:

 

 

Please keep us posted. 

 

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.  

 

If you or anyone in your household is vulnerable, or just needs a little extra assistance at a difficult time in your lives, our Priority Services Register is a free support service you might find useful.

Took me an hour and half to finally talk to someone who seemed to grasp the situation. Engineer coming out to get power on within 4 hours 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

Just got to hope it gets put on her monthly account now not pay as you go again I don't think we can cope with it a third time. OVO are absolutely dreadful I have never known anything like this in all my life. Seems that none of the departments work together or share messages as every time you get transferred you have to start all over again it's frustrating beyond belief. If I could I would get another supplier now but I don't think that would be wise while the account and meters are in a state of confusion.

Update engineer came. Meters had been set as pay go. He put £15 emergency credit on each and said we have to phone OVO again to change modes. So it goes on and on.

Still no phone call from OVO by the way 

I’ve spoken to the Forum Moderators. They’re looking into this thread today.

Hey @Nigel 15 

 

I’m glad the engineer has been out and put credit on so you’re back on supply.

 

It will be best to get back in touch with the Support Team yourself as this will be the quickest way if they’ve not already called. 

 

Let us know how this goes.

Hey. 

So I moved home had pay as you meters installed they wasn't allowing me to top up via the app. 

So I had them changed couple days ago they guy said wait 48 hours and all should be working. I'm sick to death of ringing ovo. 

Does anybody know what I do now is it still the same top up number on my app because it hasn't changed since the 15th when they came. 

 

Thanks 

Hi @heatherelizabethlib ,

Try Live Chat at https://ovoenergy.com/help instead. It’s faster and arguably easier. But if you keep struggling with PAYG, I’d recommend switching to Pay Monthly instead.

Thank you ❤️ 

Hi, we’ve got a pay as you go electric meter but have notice recently that we’ve had two payment come out of bank accounts, both £8. Does anyone know why this is? I didn’t even think they had our bank details. Doesn’t make sense to me 

 

thanks

Who does your statement say that the payments have been made to?

All it says on the statement, is ovo energy and NOT-USED 

Odd, I wonder just what that ‘NOT-USED’ actually means in this case?

If you use online banking then that might give more clue/details of what they were.
Check in particular for DDs, Standing Orders, subscriptions, and the like.

Could ‘NOT-USED’ mean that they are dummy transactions and nothing was taken?
Could it be an old DD/SO which is still active but not actually sending any money?

Did your bank account balance change by the £8’s? Either up or down.

To me though ‘Not Used’ sounds more like a default payment for something you signed up for but haven’t used? (A bit like paying for a telephone but not using any calls).
Or possibly even a refund for something that you haven’t used?

It’s probably best to wait until tomorrow and contact your bank and OVO support about it.

Hey @heatherelizabethlib,

 

Welcome to the OVO Online Community,

 

Our pay as you go hub may have some helpful topics:

 

 

Pop back anytime and we’re happy to help 😊

Hey @Beccab,

 

Sorry for the issues you’re having,

 

The Support Team would be best placed here to assist with your issue as 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 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 2pm on Saturday.
  • Or call us on 0330 175 9669 during the same times.

 

If you’re with Boost

 

I wonder if the amount could be paying off a previous arrears?

 

Pop back if you can to let us know what the support team say, it may help other community members. 

Just to let you know that finally we received emails saying that the meters were on monthly late that day although the gas meter was not communicating. I messaged in several days later and asked you to confirm that the meters were definitely monthly and was told they were. I asked what was going to happen about the gas meter not communicating and how would you read the meter. I was told that the pay as you go department would deal with it! I said that you just told me that they are now monthly but the person didn't reply. 

Strangely both readings are working on my usage app. 

Possibly I'll get some contact from OVO one day. An apology would be nice as well. 

 

The credit that I topped up my meter with has disappeared after a general power cut in the village. I have had to put more money on my meter to get it going again but the credit of £49.50 that was there this morning has gone 

Hi @Carolyn1966 ,

That sounds like a possible meter fault to me. Please contact your supplier and they’ll try to help restore that credit for you.

Hi. I've moved home ans changed suppliers, and I was on pay as you go. Somehow according to my account, I started in £172 debt this month!!! How can I be in debt when I never have used more than I've paid for? I really don't understand as this debt I was never told, and I've only ever been on prepayment. 

Hey @Shellybrown,

 

Welcome to the OVO Online Community, 

 

When you moved into your new home did you inherit the current supplier of that property or did you switch to a new supplier? Could it be that the meter was pay monthly initially? 

 

If the meter is pay as you, it might be that the supplier didn’t wipe the debt balance off the meter from the previous tenant? 

Hi. I worded it a bit wrong. I moved house, and closed my account with ovo. Upon getting my final bill I had a debt of 172. I've rang up and all they can do is investigate. When I moved in there was already debt on the meter, but I rang up and thought I sorted it. I was with sse and they said I had 14 in debt then, but how have I gone from 14 in debt to 172 in one year with ovo? 

Hey @Shellybrown,

 

There are ways in which you can build up debt with PAYG, it may be a standing charge debt, you can find out more in this topic:

 

 

Or it might be an arranged backscreen debt, or a debt built up from a non-disconnect period.

 

The support team should be able to investigate this further for you. 

 

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.

 

If you’re with Boost

 

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.  

 

If you or anyone in your household is vulnerable, or just needs a little extra assistance at a difficult time in your lives, our Priority Services Register is a free support service you might find useful.

Struggling with your energy bills? Our Winter Support Package might be helpful to you.

I am having a nightmare with OVO. I moved in in August and both electricity and gas were on bill payment. I wanted PAYG, but they can only do that for electricity, because gas meter was far away from elctricity one and cannot communicate by wifi.

Since then I was topping up electricity and they took money to pay for gas as well, as written on the OVO Energy App. at some point they cut my access to the OVO energy app leaving me access only for the Top Up app. Now, that app only tells you how much you paid, never for what. Also amount of existing money  show on the app is always way of the reality, they don’t update even at midnight as they claim. Now after 7 months they are saying I never sent them a meter reading and might ask to pay all the gas. Well I paid that, as the amount of money spent on topping up was increasing constantly in the clod months, but never used more electricity, only gas.

Even if wanted to send meter readings for gas it was impossible as the website always gave a message for my account that is a PAYG one and cannot use the pay monthly feature. 

OVO is the worst ever utility company in this country.

To my surprise  my electric power  ( PAYG) has just run out and so was temporarily forced to use the emergency until sorted.

When I checked on the app this morning it was showing a balance of £9.40 cr, and seeing I've been at work all day, was a bit concerned that a 1 bed flat with little but the fridge freezer and tv on standby could have used that much power in 10 hours !

Having gone back into the app I noticed that alongside the note telling me the balance was as at midnight last night, the date showing was the 04th March !!!  Not bad seeing today's the 12th

I've uninstalled and then downloaded the OVO top up app again, but when I logged on just now its still showing a balance of £9.40 as at 04th March ?

Any ideas anyone ?

 

I'm just about to top up online to come off the emergency, but was just wondering exactly how accurate, and more to the point, how reliable the app is, and just how trustworthy are OVO in taking my.pennies and being honest about my usage and balance readings?

Any comments, advice or suggestions welcome.

 I might just add that at least the 'smart' (?!!) Meter  itself knows what it's dong and showing a true balance ! Maybe the moral here is never to take apps at face value !

Many thanks

G

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