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

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

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).