This weekend I’ve completely run out of gas, emergency gas and real world money.
I’ve not been in this situation before so went through all the appropriate channels OVO provide. The website is very clear the phone numbers and chat are open on weekends, however, if you are part of the thousands of of blundered accounts still on Apollo you cant use those channels.
Lets skip the usual grandiose scornful rants and just get to the nitty gritty.
When requesting to be moved to OVO a few years ago (before boosts implosion) after a long arduous process with boost due to a simple error they made. Lettergate. They messed it up, only my electric was moved over to Direct DEBIT no probs. My gas remained with boost.
Boost was using the Apollo payment network, or something, its very difficult to find genuine information. It wouldn’t be public knowledge just like the booking software taxi offices use for instance. It moved to Orion or OVO use Orion but my account got messed up, again no one knows why but there is lots of history of OVO having fines and issues with accounts through OFGEMSs site, then eventually was reabsorbed by OVO and the brand Boost closed.
So there are many people with no access to any online account, they use the OVO Energy Top-Up app, its the boost app in green.
No access to an OVO online account for Direct DEBIT in at least 2 years.
How is this being addressed?
My experience won’t be unique, I know you can borrow emergency funds from OVO. Boost forced £50 on my meter in the past which I paid back. Because of the issues with Apollo, I cant do this because the phone line wont accept my account number. The webchat can’t help either, I will wait until Monday with no hot water or heating in 4 degree weather with snow everywhere.
Pretty messy really.
The numbers of customers who are still on Apollo has been dropping rapidly recently as OVO has managed to resolve several migration blockers. The remaining blockers are being worked on as a priority.
Getting rid of the legacy Apollo billing system and moving ALL customers (regardless of brand) over to the scratch-built Orion billing platform has been a major project for OVO in recent years. Apollo caused OVO far too many problems and OVO ultimately decided enough was enough - IIRC Ofgem agreed that getting rid of it would help solve those old issues from back in the day, but that doing so would not be an overnight job.
The intricate details of Apollo have never really discussed on the Forum, certainly not in the four years I’ve been on here at least. There may have been some early stuff but at the time when the Forum first launched, it was probably getting close to the point where OVO was starting to consider a replacement billing system. I know that because some of the highly active threads on here from the early days heavily discussed the “new billing platform” - we never used to reveal the codenames back then - and to be completely honest, the trail kinda went cold after that. This was all before my time though so I’m unable to say much from my own experience - I switched to OVO in 2020 when Orion had already been made the default system for new customers.
The reason web portal access was discontinued for Apollo was ultimately down to security concerns - long story short there was a security issue with it and arguably it wasn’t worth spending any more developer time on it given the fact it was ultimately under sunset anyway.
The web portal for Orion is scratch-built - just like Orion itself - and therefore cannot just be plugged into any old billing system. It works with Orion and Orion only.
One thing is confirmed though - Apollo WILL be permanently decommissioned and shut down once the last customer has been migrated. I imagine OVO will then terminate the contract with its developer/supplier/vendor once they’ve backed up the final state. No-one else is being added to Apollo anymore.
I would imagine that once the entire Apollo → Orion Migration is done and everything has been cleaned up, the entire matter will eventually succumb to the sands of time.
As for the OVO Top-Up App, it’s actually managed by Paypoint (just like the Boost Top-Up app was) and runs Paypoint written code - not OVO written code. The reason it looks and feels identical is because that’s what Paypoint does for all of the apps they manage - they all use a shared core/engine.
I will wait until Monday with no hot water or heating in 4 degree weather with snow everywhere.
Can you see a banner reading Emergency contact info … at the top of this page? It lists all the channels open to you, including through the social media team who are usually quick and effective, also at weekends. You shouldn’t have to stay cold if a bit of discretionary credit would tide you over. Give them a chance to help you.
Hey
I’m really sorry for this stressful situation you’re in. I hope you managed to get this resolved?
If you need to contact us regarding an out of hours emergency follow the steps below:
Pay as you go emergencies - https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/article/emergencies
Phone: 0330 175 9669
Opening hours:
Mon-Thu 8am to 8pm
Friday 8am to 6pm
Sat-Sun 8am to 5pm
Pay Monthly and Pay as you go users can also send us a private message on our Social Media channels at the following links:
https://www.facebook.com/ovoenergy/
https://x.com/ovoenergy?lang=en
https://www.instagram.com/ovoenergy/?hl=en
One of our Social Media team members will respond to your messages as soon as possible and you’ll find the opening hours below:
Opening hours:
Mon-Fri 8am to 8pm
Sat-Sun 8am to 5pm
There’ll be planned outages that’ll affect your ability to top up
We want to let you know that maintenance is planned on the following times:
Sunday 3rd November from 1am to 9am
Wednesday 6th November from 8pm to 2am
Sunday 17th November from 7am to 9am
Monday 18th November from 12am to 5 am
Monday 25th November from 12am to 5am
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