@Emmanuelle_OVO @Tim_OVO 

My missing readings for gas and electricity have still not been back filled for the 1st or the 3rd, leading to missing half hourly information, incorrect daily totals (numbers have been fudged) and a September bill which includes 30 days of standing charge, but only 29 days of usage costs. This has been reported through chat and forums, and my account is supposedly "under management" yet nobody appears to be managing anything.

I had to submit readings today via the Ovo app because my smart meter hasn't provided any gas or electricity data since 8th October 2022.  The lack of data is a nuisance, as I use the half-hourly data from the previous day to try to reduce my energy usage.

Since the problem arose, I have twice used online chats via the Ovo app to attempt a resolution. Yesterday, I returned a series of health check question answers via email although the estimated time frame for a response was 47 days. Ouch! However, from answering the questions, it appears that the smart meters are working normally.

My in home display is clunky and it's worse than useless because it uses an old tarrif.

An attempt to bypass the problem by deploying Samsung Smart Things failed because according to the records they accessed, there's no smart meter registered at my address despite the installation of gas and electricity smart meters by Ovo in 2017.

This is frustrating and worrying.    If anyone has any helpful suggestions, I  would be grateful.  Thank you.

Comparing figures from two pages of my online account, I see:
  

In my case, Total Electricity - 57.41kWh - is made up of peak and off-peak usage. However, if I view the ‘current billing period,’ I see the following charges and credits:
  

Off-peak usage: 10.25kWh, peak usage: 22.75kWh, total 33.00kWh. This appears to reflect my usage for 1-8 October while including the standing charge for 1-14 October.  Daily usage figures post 8 October aren’t available, even though they seem to have made it to the totals shown in the top screenshot.

Did the system choke on my Direct Debit (due 8.October) or the EBSS credit? 

Is anyone else seeing the same sort of discrepancy? 

I’m not particularly concerned, because I trust that my smart-meter-delivered half-hourly readings are safely stored on the OVO database. However, if it’s just me seeing this, I feel I ought to draw someone’s attention to it rather than just expecting it to be all right on the night.

ETA a few minutes later:]

However I stretch my arithmetical abilities, there’s no way I can find out how that impossibly high interest reward is arrived at. Even if I add the £66 to my balance before my DD, I still get a lower figure. And it shouldn’t ever be higher than £4.17.

Oh, FFS! Smart meter readings taken for gas and electricity this morning (15th). Yesterday's usage for electricity is showing up, but for gas there is nothing - just blank space, not even the date.

And usage for 2nd and 3rd is still wrong. Probably the 1st too, but I can't keep all the wrong numbers one my head for weeks on end.

Nothing wrong with my meters according to the health check steps outlined. 
It also seems that that should be no reason why the rate change would affect the processing of readings to give electricity usage information (based on half hourly readings), which was working fine until it stopped for no apparent reason!

As for the rate change, mine hasn’t- still paying the same rate above the cap, despite information to the contrary on the OVO apps front page!

it also seems that OVO aren’t handling the government credit in the way they said they would according to another thread!

What is going on OVO?

@GwenllianP it might be that your meters aren’t on DCC yet. Give this tool a try!

https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Thanks, @Blastoise186 

That's a handy tool. Unfortunately, it returned a similar result to the Samsung Smart Things app, as it stated that there's no Smart Meter at my address. Something is seriously amiss with Ovo… <bangs head on nearby wall in frustration>

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

This is probably not an OVO issue. You might not have them at all. Please can you show me photos of your meters. I’ll identify them manually.

Thanks for replying.

I definitely have Smart Meters for electricity and gas. They were both installed by Ovo in 2017 and both were working until 8th October 2022. However, I'm beginning to wish that they are a figment of my imagination.

I have attached screenshots of my recent readings instead because they detail the type of readings submitted.

I also submitted health checks to Ovo via email but sadly it seems it will be a lengthy wait for their response.

Thanks. I do also need to see photos of the meters as well, so that I know exactly which ones you have. OVO has installed several different types, so SMETS1 alone isn’t enough to figure this out.

If that CAB Smart Meter Check tool can’t find the meters, it could be that they’ve not yet migrated to DCC and are still on the original SMSO (Smart Meter System Operator) or that they’re currently migrating to DCC via Enrolment & Adoption. The latter is definitely one possible reason why they might not be working right now.

OVO has never had direct control or access to them either way. It always goes through some kind of SMSO as a proxy.

Hi @Firedog and thanks for posting this question. Lots of detail and some screenshots. How come you have darkmode on your online account? @Blastoise186’s idea hasn’t been implemented has it?

I’ve checked my online account usage page and current billing period and for the electricity, they align exactly. For the gas, they’re out as the billing period for the gas is two days shorter than the usage section. Why? The usage section can guess in the absence of readings. When the readings are received the charges will align. 

Our advice is always to refer to the actual billing section for charges, as the usage sections aim to indicate usage over time. I think it relates to the smart meter data and how it can actually be estimated for any missing sections for the usage, but it’s a bit over my head as this billing platform is provided by OVO’s sister company, Kaluza. Keen to hear from other forum members if they see something similar… 

That’ll either be a browser feature (some browsers support automatic dark mode for websites now!) or a browser extension doing it like Dark Reader.

Sorry @croninsfc I can’t offer much more advice about the smart meter issue than what I have above. You’re able to request a move to the variable rate, Simpler, if you prefer. It sounds like you might be in the band of customers who have a fixed tariff that ends up being roughly the same price wise. Without access to your account I can’t confirm. 

To see the Energy Bills Support Scheme payments, look at the October billing period here: https://account.ovoenergy.com/billing-history

if you’re a Direct Debit customer, make sure to expand the summary with ‘View more details’ to see the payment into and out of your OVO account as it goes to your bank account following a Direct Debit payment. 

How come you have darkmode on your online account?

Microsoft Edge with this flag enabled: edge://flags/#enable-force-dark. I use it all the time, and it works well for almost all the sites I visit.

…

Sorry if this is a bit long, but I wanted to include enough detail to avoid being advised to do stuff I’d already tried. 

After a lot of clicking around, I found that the half-hourly readings were not being received? | recorded? by the online account. I eventually found a notice reading 

Looks like we couldn’t find your usage data

We’ll take a look at this shortly, please try again later.

So i waited until later. At some stage I came across (not sure where) a button inviting me to submit a manual reading. It brought up a page telling me that because I have a smart meter, I don’t need to submit readings manually. Stymied, I gave up.

Then I remembered that someone had written that things ‘work differently on the app,’ so I downloaded the app. There I found pretty much the same as before, except that the button I found labelled Send electricity reading worked and I was able to submit a reading. 

After that, I logged on again on the computer, and now I could see the reading I’d just submitted on the Meter readings page, along with this note:
Your electricity smart meter hasn't sent us any readings lately. To keep your account up to date, you'll need to send us regular manual readings. Find out more. 

That page assured me that This usually fixes itself, so I stopped worrying for the time being, except that it didn’t tell me what ‘regular’ means here - every half hour? Every day? Every month? I rather rely on the half-hourly readings to keep me on track, but I settled on bedtime each day.

I’m fairly sure the meter is working properly; its little red light flashes reassuringly with 3-5 blips per burst, and the IHD is working normally.

It looks as if the figures in my original question are arrived at by (over-)estimating usage for the days when readings weren’t available. It’s all in order now on the two pages concerned, even though the Usage page still shows the inaccurate estimates. 

It’s now nine days since my last smart readings were recorded. How long should I wait before panicking? What should I do then? 

…

In general, I find it really difficult to track down what appears to be reams of detailed advice and guidance at this site. I have happened upon some helpful pages labelled  Tutorial  or  FAQ  because others have linked to them in replies to forum posts. I still haven’t found out where these pages lurk.

On one of them, I learned that I would have to take register readings from the Liberty 110 meter itself, because theyre not accessible from the Pipit 500 IHD. This isn’t true, at least for single-fuel systems: Menu > History > Usage shows the status of both registers.
  

It certainly beats standing out in a thunderstorm trying to juggle umbrella, cabinet key, torch, pencil and paper while trying to stab the right tiny buttons with a frozen woolly-gloved finger (believe me, it can’t be done!).

I’m sorry to hear about these continued smart meter data issues. I don’t want to lump issues together that might actually have different causes and solutions. For anyone unsure if their smart meter is having communication issues, see these health check guides:

Our Support team remains available and will do their best to help with anything. Please bear in mind that we’re seeing very large contact volumes. Unless you have concerns around the charges on the account as a result of the smart meter issue, it may be worth waiting to see if these resolve themselves. 

That’s a Chromium Flag so it’s also available on Chrome too with chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark

However. Heed this warning please! You enable Flags ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

As for your other comments, I’ll be back later hopefully! Thanks for posting them. :)

[ot]
Thanks for your concern, Blastoise. I’ve been a beta tester for Edge since it was first released in 2019, so I think I know my way around it. Not all flags are equal, and experiments have different purposes. I’ve been using various flavours of the dark mode flag since it became available, but it’s never caused any of the problems in the warning. I suspect that the feature can’t be unflagged until a majority of popular sites provide dark-mode capability and the best set of options has been established through telemetry. That might take a few more years yet.  

Hello,

My smart readers have not provided a reading to Ovo since 9th October.    Nothing has changed my end, and the eletric meter is still flashing five times to indicate it is connected to the network and has a good connection.

I am a V2G customer and therefore I am worried that this will affect my export payments so would be grateful if someone could investigate asap.

I have the HUGO app on my android phone which is still receiving the meter readings each day with no problems which makes me think this is some sort of Ovo configuration error.

Can anyone please help?

Many thanks.

PS An important fact I forgot to mention: the Citizens’ Advice tool ‘can’t find my meter’ and goes on to report 
 

Trouble is, they’ve been saying this since sometime last year, so I’ll expect it when I see it.

Is there any way to find out when Ovo will get round to migrating me to the DCC? The deadline was at one stage 2021, then March 2022, then September and now ‘end of 2022.’ Tim says in his article that we receive notification of which accounts will be updated 15 days in advance which gives us time to send an email or letter to let you know. Since I’ve not heard anything, I assume that my missing meter readings haven’t disappeared because of this migration, as was suggested somewhere in the hundreds of posts I’ve read in the past few days.

Can anyone please help?

Not me, I’m afraid. This is just to say you’re not alone; my meter readings also stopped appearing online on 9 October. I’ve been sending daily readings since I found out they were (over-)estimating my usage.

It might help to confirm or refute this as a coincidence if you gave a few more details of your situation: type of meter, method of payment, date of direct debit if appropriate (mine is the 8th) and anything else you think might be relevant. The more details, the easier it becomes to pinpoint the cause of the fault. Meanwhile, I’d suggest submitting daily meter readings so that your billing page reflects your usage more accurately.

Hmm… It’s possible that your site is still migrating but only DCC would know for sure.

It’s possible that your site is still migrating

If it were, surely I’d know about it? “We receive notification of which accounts will be updated 15 days in advance which gives us time to send an email or letter to let you know.” I have to tell you now that no such communication has been received.

Hi Firedog.

Thanks for the reply.      I’ve just checked my online account again and suddenly all the meter readings are back up to the 15th October.

Must have been some sort of Ovo problem seen as yours stopped as well on the same date.

Maybe check yours again and see if it is now reading?

There is a time limit to get a migration done. If 12 months pass and it looks completely dead, you get to have the meters swapped out for SMETS2 for free. This scenario may trigger before then if it’s obvious that the migration isn’t going to work, such as the meters completely going offline and being unrecoverable.

You’ll need to check with OVO.

 STOP PRESS 

The missing readings have turned up, so there is light at the end of the tunnel!
Evidence:
 

Advice to those in the same situation: hang in there, it should all come right in due course.