Moved into new property and I owe previous tenants bill, why?

Dear OVO,

I’ve some question about the bill. And I tried to contact to you via email, chat and phone. but there is no response. How can I contact to you.

Hi,

Sorry, only just saw my tag in this. Unfortunately I'm not really an expert in the way OVO sets out its bills so I think you are probably better off in @Blastoise186 's safe hands.

Hi @juliamc ,

Thanks for your information.

“PM” is “personal message”? Do you mean to chat with the OVO’s agent.

Thanks,
Thura

Ah no - I meant our new Prime Minister ! Let’s hope !

A further though Thura, can you ask the Property Management people to show you how to access the electricity meter, or explain how to get it from the NetThings screen?

:D :D I see :D :D

I’ll send an email to property management tomorrow morning. and explain to them. Yes, I think it is the only way to find out the error.

Thanks @juliamc.  

I'm afraid I'm struggling a bit here. Net Things appears to be a dead company. I'm attempting to trace their timeline to see if I can figure out what happened to them. 

Ok, finally got somewhere. NetThings as a company is dead. It collapsed into administration in December 2018 and was dissolved in February 2020, according to https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC313913 .

The assets were sold/transferred to J-Teq Energy Ltd https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC618189 . They are said to continue supporting the system to this day. The website also redirects to https://j-teq-energy.co.uk/ .

The system in question is a building management system, for use in what’s called intelligent buildings. Although NetThings is dead, J-teq Energy said that they’re going to continue supporting that system for the foreseeable future. Probably could do with some firmware updates though!

This system is not SMETS1 or SMETS2 compliant and cannot be used for metrology purposes. In other words, OVO can’t see it nor read anything from it remotely, and it cannot be used for meter readings because it won’t have gone through the certifications required to enable this.

There will be another electricity meter somewhere in the building. You’re looking for one that matches the Meter Serial Number on your bills. Your MSN has 19L at the start, so you’re looking for a SMETS2 Landis+Gyr E470.

Phew! Tracing that mess took longer than I expected!

WOW
 

Amazing tracing. Thanks @Blastoise186. 

 

No worries. I literally had to read 134 pages worth of company documents and administrators reports to get the full picture of exactly what happened. I might be fast at reading, but man that took a lot of work!

The things I do for this forum are just beyond explaining! :P

Hi @thura747 Did you get a reply from your property management people?

I’m waiting some of the evidences and I’ll be back.

We have recently moved into a new property. For the first four weeks our electricity consumption apparently cost us £677. This is over twice as much as our previous property where we had gas and electricity, more people, and more appliances. Here there are only two of us and have use oil to heat our rads and water. I have spoken with two agents both of whom have dropped me. Any ideas how to resolve this

Hi @sam1959 have you checked your meter readings ? It may be that you have been billed on estimates rather than actual usage.

https://account.ovoenergy.com/meter-readings

Hi @sam1959

Welcome to the customer forum, i am just a customer like you.

No one on the forum can access your account, but we can often help resolve queries or give you advice on contacting OVO. 

Do you have a smart meter at your property?

Can you post what you see on this page?

https://account.ovoenergy.com/meter-readings/history/electricity

Here is mine for example

Also have a look on this page on the website not the app. 

https://account.ovoenergy.com/plan

You will see something called Future Annual Consumption, this is what ultimately drives your direct debit and is what OVO estimate is your annual usage. It is automatically updated.

What are you looking at when you say £677? Is that a bill that has been created? 

Hey @sam1959,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community,

I can see our Community Members have already given some helpful advice here. If your meter reading was opened to an inaccurate estimate, please contact our Support Team with two meter readings, two weeks apart and they’ll be able to re-estimate this for you. 

Keep us posted with how you get on!  

Hi,

I moved into a new house at the end of March, and became a new OVO customer (previously on British Gas). OVO took all of 18 days to enable us access to the web interface to provide meter readings. And, when they finally did that, they did no longer accepted our initial reading (as it was more than 10 days old) nor did they accept our current readings from that date. Not even with photographs of meters, dated and showing the meter serial number (from both dates).

In the meanwhile, they failed to read the smart meter themselves a single time. Yet, they had provided daily variable “usage” statistics on the online user interface. These, however, had no bearing on reality (as the usage was high on days when there was no actual use and did not increase when actual usage went up). These fictional numbers are of to an extent where one would think there is a major gas leak ...

I raised a dispute process, which seems to move at a glacial pace. And, now after a few weeks of not responding to latest message on the dispute, OVO further wants to increase the already-higher-than-expected DD despite not agreeing on any data on actual consumption. The consumption numbers on email on the DD increase and the web interface do not even match, not to mention matching to the reality measured by the meters. How do I process with ombudsman if OVO does not respond? And, should I just change provider to a sane one and let the complaint process happen after I am no longer a customer if they want to in the meanwhile essentially borrow a large pile of my money with zero interest?

Kind regards,

A regular user but who actually monitors their usage regularly and documents it, as I have little trust on the provider not wanting to scam my money ...

Hi @User 

Welcome to the forum, i am just a customer like you. 

Once 8 weeks is up from the date you submitted the complaint you can go to the Energy Ombudsman 

https://www.ombudsman-services.org/sectors/energy

https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Alternatively you could try asking OVO for a deadlock letter before the 8 weeks is up. 

I wouldn't recommend switching providers before any issues are sorted. 

Hopefully OVO have raised a read dispute as they can do that any time within 12 months of you switching as per the regulations on suppliers. I would recommend checking they have actually done this. 

"the proposed Switch Meter Reading is disputed by the Consumer, Losing Supplier or Gaining Supplier (referred to as a Disputed Switch Meter Reading), and 12 months have not passed since the Supply Effective From Date (or later, where the Energy Suppliers have bilaterally agreed to follow this process);"

The read dispute process can take a considerable amount of time. This is what OVO say. OVO are meant to freeze the bills and leave the DDs to build up credit. They are not meant to increase the DDs

" This whole process can take up to 12 weeks as we have to wait for the calculated reading to be received and agreed to by the other supplier.

During this process your regular monthly billing will be paused whilst we look to correct the opening statement. If you pay via Direct Debit these payments will continue, building up a credit balance in your account to cover the opening statement once it’s issued."

You could try calling OVO Collections, ask them to pause your billing and freeze your direct debit as it appears this hasn't been done. They will likely only freeze it for 3 months, so you may have to call them again if it drags on

0800 0699 831

It can take up to 6 weeks for smart meter readings to start appearing on your OVO account. During that time you will see estimated readings on the usage page

https://account.ovoenergy.com/usage

Keep an eye out on the actual meter reading page. 

https://account.ovoenergy.com/meter-readings/history/electricity

Once the meter connects you should then start to see daily readings like this with the word smart next to them

If the estimated data on the usage page looks very high, it is likely to be due to the incorrect opening readings and a Future Annual Consumption figure that is too high. This is what OVO estimate is your annual usage. You can see that on the website not the app on this page

https://account.ovoenergy.com/plan

There is more information on the Future Annual Consumption and Estimated Annual Consumption here

• Estimated Annual Consumption (EAC) - What this means and how it affects your OVO Energy account? Tutorial

While you are waiting for your complaint to progress you could try one of the ofgem regulated 3rd party apps to see if they can see any of your smart meter data yet. This is one a lot of forum members use. It uses slightly different data to energy suppliers but is usually pretty consistent. 

https://hugoenergyapp.co.uk/

If you post how your case progresses i am sure it will help other customers.

If you have any follow up questions i am sure the ovo moderators and ovo customers on the forum will be able to offer some useful input. 

Hi @Jeffus 

Thanks for the very detailed response, including a good timeline of (for the currently potential and what I still hope to be unnecessary) next steps. In essence, I have now sent one more email today to OVO, and will now wait either until their response to it or until a seemingly random day in the summer to escalate it to ombudsman (if needed, which I really hope not to need to do, but I added the date to my calendar in case I have to). If it goes to that, I will update on how the process goes from there.

Up until now, my tasks have been just a few phone calls to reach correct person, followed by two a sets of emails back-and-forth with them (the initial response times were very good after getting to the correct person, until after replying with the second requested information and asking for the next step, which was met by a complete silence).

In addition, as the process ground to a halt, I have kept taking regular meter readings and documenting them myself (as the system just refuses any entries I try to enter there; for OVO technical team, could you maybe make the error visible to the user and not just transparently ignore the inputted readings).

Unfortunately a common theme on too many issues is keeping the customer updated. 

Some processes do unfortunately take a long time in the Energy industry, but that doesn't mean customers shouldn’t be kept up to date. 

It may be worth seeing what this tool returns as it will give an idea of the status of your meter. 

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

Hey @User,

Sorry for the issues you’re having,

OVO should be able to recalculate your opening meter reading using the subsequent readings you have provided. I’d advise calling our Support Team on 0330 303 5063 and they can get this raised to our billing department for you. In the meantime they can also request to put your direct debit on a review exceptions for the next 3 months. This means that while you await your account being re-billed, your direct debit won’t be adjusted.

Keep us posted with how you get on. 

Providing a happy update.

I was contacted a moment ago today, and my manual meter readings were accepted (I was also provided an updated bill for April which more than halved the bill). As such, the billing issue is solved. Thanks!

And, as the smart meter issue seems to be beyond OVO’s control (based on the instructions in this thread, the meter does not appear to talk to the network), I just have to keep taking regular manual readings until it starts to talk to the network. Now that the past readings are in, I hope that new ones will be accepted in  the web form without needing to keep emailing them in.

With the DD, now that the billing is adjusted, I will have to see if I get an automatic update for it in the next week or so. So, well before next DD is due. Otherwise, I will give one more call to the OVO support team. Thanks for the instructions to @Emmanuelle_OVO .

As a feedback, or a review: If the contact today was a response to the email from yesterday only, and had nothing to do with this thread, I would say, 4 stars out of 5. The missing star comes for the 14 day silence when promising a reply in five working days. If this was due to the thread here, maybe 3 stars out of 5 for needing to go semi-public with the issue. The peer-support on the forums gets 5 stars out of 5; as does the customer service here for filling in the missing details.

Hi @User

Good to hear you are making progress

The DD will be driven by the Future Annual Consumption, on the website not the app. 

https://account.ovoenergy.com/plan

So when this goes down, so the Direct Debit should also then recommend a lower figure.

Sometimes the Future Annual Consumption figure takes a while to adjust automatically, it can't be manually changed.

If you find your DD doesn’t go down quickly and you don't have much luck with the normal support number, you can try calling collections. They have more flexibility and can freeze your DD at a lower level for 3 months usually.

0800 0699 831

I set up dual account with OVO for gas and electric based on my new moving in date of April 6th. Downloaded the app and on moving in immediately sent meter readings confined as received. App said

Tick you told us you want to switch

Tick we’ve started your  energy switch

Tick your officially on supply 11 April

No tick we’re getting your account ready 

 All well and good as I expected. Received bill to occupier today 5 May  from EON so opened it with demand for money 6 th April to 26 th April . Rang EON up saying should only pay 5 days as will get bill from OVO for rest up to including today.EON agent says no as OVO haven’t registered address on National database so they are still supplying the bungalow? Nigh on impossible to get in touch with OVO and had to put up with a bot.FINALLY was messaging an agent she gave me a case number and told me it is typically 45 days for an outcome. Am I missing something here as it seems like a poor company to me with poor customer service. I dread to think who is supplying the gas I am using. Suggestions welcome. Feel like jacking OVO in and going somewhere else

Jimbos