Entered wrong meter reading when I moved in - can this be changed?

I moved in my current studio flat apartment around 7 months ago and I have completely forgot about paying the bills. The record said that I provided a reading in Dec which I don’t remember doing. and 

I just went on to my OVO account and looked at the bills and because I haven’t provided meter readings, they were all estimates. Some were reasonable but there were a few months that reaches unbelievable amounts. I live alone in a studio flat and it was shown £1800 in one of the months, which is impossible. I am going to get a meter reading and supply it asap. But my question is when I get my reading, how do I backbill or do a reversal in a way to get my previous bills recalculated.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi @Ovo_User_397 ,

Easiest fix: Just submit a meter reading ASAP. Your latest bill will be recalculated automatically and should fix more or less everything. If you’re owed money as a result, the system will figure that out for you and knock it off the latest bill. Do not attempt to get a reversal or modification to previous bills - that won’t help in this instance. Simply feed OVO the data to generate the latest one with instead.

I strongly recommend you get a Smart Meter to avoid a repeat of this issue. Book the upgrade via https://smart-booking.ovoenergy.com .

Hey @Ovo_User_397,

One of our volunteers, @Blastoise186, has given you spot-on advice here. If you supply us with an up-to-date reading, your account will adjust the billing to the new reading date. You can find more information on our how billing works guide under “Do I have to pay an estimated electric bill?”.

Let us know if supplying the readings balances things out for you. 😊 

Hi ChristopherS_OVO, Blastoise186 

I just did a meter reading but when I was about to update it, I found out an issue with the numbers. A previous record in the account is 09081 in Dec, which I don’t remember doing it myself. And today, when I checked the meter, it says 02413 which doesn’t make sense. Does the meter reset at some point or what that previous reading false? Should I still update it? I am really confused and is there any advice on what to do in this situation?

You should update it with the latest reading anyway - manual readings override ALL estimates like the ones you saw.

Please also show me photos of the meter itself. It MAY have gone round the clock - I can check for that if I see what meter you have.

Thanks for the reply Blastoise186. Here is my meter
 

Ah yes, I see the problem. That meter has definitely gone round the clock and back to zero. OVO’s systems are designed to detect this upon a reading submission and handle it automatically by factoring in the “reset” into the calculations. Submitting a reading now will correct the situation and you won’t see it again for another 90,000 units, by which point that meter will probably be removed from service anyway.

I’d definitely recommend getting Smart Meters sooner or later though, so that you can have the readings submitted automatically - one less thing to worry about. If you aren’t keen on OVO knowing much, you can always set the read schedule to Monthly which would purely send ONE reading a month. For the best experience though, you may want to consider Daily or Half-Hourly readings. You can change the settings whenever you want - just ask OVO Support.

https://smart-booking.ovoenergy.com to get that set up.

If you have any questions about any of this, let me know here and I’ll swing by again.

I have just gone onto my online account for it to say I owe them over £1000 for gas.

They have totally got the starting gas reading wrong how can I have used £1000 in one day before I even moved into my new property 

Hi @Elizabeth Drew ,

Please talk to OVO Support directly about this: https://ovoenergy.com/help .

They can fix this stuff - but we can’t via the Forum.

Hey @Elizabeth Drew, 

Our volunteer @Blastoise186 is right in giving you the best contact options. Our support team can help resolve this for you and get you on the correct path. 

Keep us updated on your progress 🙂

Thanks for the reply Blastoise186,
When I entered the most recent reading on Fri, the system says it needs to be verified.
I just realised that the meter reading provided back in Dec is false (instead of the meter resetting as speculated in the discussions above). I probably included the digits in red.

I know this because I just got the meter reading at the beginning of the tenancy from my real estate agent.

It was “2099” back in Aug 2023 (Forgot to provide to OVO)
Then, I provided “09081” in Dec 2023 (false digits)
Now, it’s “2413” in May 2024

How do I remove the previous Dec reading and add a meter reading that was done last August. I do have pics as proof.

Ahh ok. No worries - this can be fixed.

Please have a chat with Support, they can investigate and put this right for you. If you get massively stuck with that, let us know here.

You can reach Support via https://ovoenergy,com/help . Feel free to give the Live Chat agent a link to this thread - they’ll be able to read the discussion so far which should save you from explaining things again.

Hi @Ovo_User_397 

Blastoise186 has left some really helpful advice on this already in that the Support Team can get this resolved for you no problem.

I moved into rented accommodation and the gas smart metre was not working. Took me 5 months to get Ovo to eventually change it. 

Then the engineer messed up the final readings and ovo have tried to bill me gor £3500 bill. Which has now been reduced to them telling me I'm £350 in debt. 

My latest bill they are using a estimate of old metre and my new metre which is showing that I hardly use any gas but still saying I've used over £100 in gas which is a joke. 

How do I dispute them using a broken metre estimate?

I had a smart meter installed on 24/03/25 a few hours before this happened I took readings of both meters and sent them to ovo  my account was in credit at that time . The engineer left reading of Anytime use but no readings of heating and hot water meter .Everything appears to be working successfully as I was checking my online account daily .on the 5 th day  I opened online account to find a wrong reading on the heating readings  .I don’t know where this reading has come from as I didn’t send it I have the screenshots taken hours before smart meter was installed I don’t see the correct reading I sent to ovo anywhere . They are now saying my bill for three weeks is almost £700 .i am very concerned regarding this issue and am unsure how to resolve this should I send complaint e mail to ovo . Any help would be much appreciated thanks 

Contact Support tomorrow, using the webchat option. That way, you’ll get a transcript of what was said, and you can upload your photos as proof. 

Thanks firedog  I’ll do that tomorrow I’ll let you know how I get on

Thanks firedog  I’ll do that tomorrow I’ll let you know how I get on

Hi ​@Swanbush, and welcome to the OVO Forum.

I’m sorry to hear what’s happened here - very frustrating!

If the smart meter was broken, it may still have given manual reads, eg when you take a reading yourself as you would a normal meter. My advice here is to get in touch with our Support Team and raise a complaint. The team will need to check the job report to see if the engineer left a photo of the final reading from the meter. If you’ve got any previous manual reads from the old meter please send these across when you speak to them. 

If you don’t have any reads, and the engineer couldn’t take one (if the meter wouldn’t give a manual reading), then our Support Team will have to use the actual usage from your new meter to re-estimate the usage from the old meter. if this is the case, they may need to wait a few months to have enough usage data to do these calculations. 

Best of luck with this - I hope it’s resolved quickly for you! We’d appreciate it if you’d keep us updated on your progress.

Hi ​@Maurie,

Welcome to the Forum. I can see ​@Firedog has given some great advice here. Don’t worry - an incorrect reading can be easily fixed! Have you been in touch with the Support Team yet?

Yes I contacted ovo this morning.The advisor Adrian was most helpful and sorted my problem quickly and efficiently 

Brilliant news ​@Maurie - so glad to hear it’s all sorted, and thanks for updating us 😁

Thanks everyone for helping me I’m so relieved 

I've moved into a little 1 bedroom flat on the 28th March, I got the meter reading from the estate agent before I moved in 003184 and I sent that over to Ovo as no one was living in it and I trusted them, so a week goes by I check my account and it says I've used over £20 of gas even though 2 of the days I weren't there, and I've only had the heating on for a total of 2 hours over the whole week, the oven is electric and I've had 4 showers less than 5 mins a time, I rung ovo and they asked me to provide the meter readings so I checked and gave them the reading I saw 003206 they said no it's not wrong which I didn't understand how I can use that much in 5 days basically with hardly touching it, I've come to realise today that the readings I got from the estate agent and the the one I gave was the Kwh reading and not the M3 reading how do I fix this as I don't know what the M3 reading was when I moved in, please help