£66 government energy bills support scheme deducted from my OVO account balance not added?

It took me a while but now I get it. Ovo take the government money off our total charges (see this on your full bill) They then take the completely unnecessary and totally confusing step of putting the £67 back into our bank accounts from our own balance which makes it look like they are refunding us out of our own money.

Hi everyone 

I'm having trouble with my statements.

 Every month mu cost of living payment is refunded back into my account (which is fine) so that shows a debit to my balance however I never see this payment being credited to my account.

Has anyone else had this issue.?

Basically if its not going in then my bills are too high with the refunded money

Can you show us screenshots from MyOVO please?

@Karen mc have a read of what’s in this link… does it answer your question?

Jullmac

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately it's what I know already.

I want to know why I can see my cost of living payment refunded but I cant see it coming into my account first.

You would expect to see it going in and out but on my statement it just shows it being refunded. 

You do need to look at the detailed bill @Karen mc not just a summary. Unfortunately because the payment is a reduction on your energy bill it’s not always obvious. 
To complicate it even more, the payments can span months - I’ve had two payments in a month and none in others so you need to look back if you want to check. 

This is exactly what I see in my bill. They are taking the government money but not giving us this money. They are actually refunding our own money by taking away £66 from our credit / balance. Someone needs to get Ofstead involved on them. 

Have you contacted OVO and asked them about your specific account?

No one here can access your account

https://help.ovoenergy.com/#contact_us_container

I haven’t had a chance yet but have you?

@Ovo ripping us off Gov support have a look at the charges detail in the six bills from October to March. There should be six payments in total and they are a Reduction of your charges. 

HI thanks for your reply.

I deliberately get my bills sent to me in a hard copy. However there is no sign of the £66/67 going in. Only the refunded amount reducing my credit balance.

This is the section of my bill showing Energy Bill Support Scheme, a deduction of £67 under Summary of charges, ie reducing the charges. Some months there are two entries, other months no entries. There should be six over the months from October to March.

Thank God it’s not just me that’s been scratching my head.  I’ve just spent an hour on a chat with someone from Ovo who imply kept parroting the line that the £67 is credited back to your bank account but couldn’t explain why if it’s a refund my debit increases.  

Having got nowhere other than going round in circles I looked under the bonnet of my account and it’s clear.  What should be a credit towards your bill ISN’T being treated as a credit, just a reduction in your monthly payment.  So in effect the charges aren’t being reduced, just your monthy payment and the £67 just gets added to your overall debit.

Which seems to run counter to the Government’s own statement that this money is not to be paid back. And yet by adding it to the debit side of your account, we are paying it back. Ovo are simply defering payment of £67 each month to a later date rather than actually reducing your bill.

Can anyone from Ovo actually explain this discrepancy between Government intent and Ovo practice? 

I’m not from OVO, however the process is: government money goes into your account in the form of a reduction of your charges, then (if you pay by direct debit) OVO send that money on to your bank. If you pay on receipt of the bill the amount of the bill is reduced accordingly.

The government gave energy companies the choice of paying back or reducing the bill. 

Could someone explain please. I have had £66 paid in to my account by OVO which is money from  the government to help with my energy bills. When I receive my monthly bill it shows that I have paid a direct debit of £180 and then from this amount I have had £66 deducted which means I have only paid £114 towards my bill. It seems as though I have been given £66 towards my bill  paid into my account by OVO on behalf of the government and then OVO have taken the money back. So financially I have not received any help. 

Your energy bill will also have a reduction of the same amount. 
 

I agree that the bills are confusing in the way the EBSS is described. I suspect they obscure a simple accounting error which results in OVO erroneously benefiting from the government’s monthly EBSS payments, rather than their customers.
 

To work out if you have been overcharged by OVO or not this winter, simply calculate whether there is any difference between what you have actually paid to OVO and the cost of the energy you consumed - for this you need your bank statements, the energy rates and standing charges, add VAT at 5% then any extra charges. You should ignore the EBSS payments paid into your bank account, as well as most of the information in the bills, just get the relevant meter readings for October to March (inclusive, in kWh). When I did this I found we had been overcharged by £239 up to 20th Feb 23.
 

I informed OVO by registered delivery letter but the company did not reply, so I took my case to the Energy Ombudsman. The online complaints procedure is very straightforward, I recommend it. OVO has not disputed the substance of my complaint and I expect a favourable judgement imminently. If more people complain in this way then OVO may eventually accept there has been a systematic error in the way they have handled the EBSS payments. 
 

Good luck 

Out of curiosity 

1. Have you worked out exactly where on the bills your specific simple accounting issue occurred?

2. Was it on one or multiple bills?

3. Gas, electricity, standing charge, vat, or something else? 

I checked mine and they were fine, so i assume this is something specific to your account? 

1. No. I think more information would be needed.
2. Having established that recent bills have a tenuous relationship with reality, I cannot answer this without more information.
3. What is the question?

From just two observations, it is no more reasonable to conclude that our experience was specific to us, than it would be to conclude that it happened to everyone except you. More data is needed.

3. Where  is the error roughly, does it look like the gas portion, electricity portion etc?

There is a breakdown on the bills so i just assumed, perhaps wrongly, it would be easy to spot any differences with your separate detailed calculations. 

I only ask in case it helps others. 

If anyone cares to check (I just did), there are some 36 acknowledgements on this thread alone that the process albeit confusing is correct. There may be a handful of accounts which need intervention but given that the majority of people who have no problem don’t post here, that suggests that the system worked out in the end.

I think that OVO have learned a lesson regarding presenting this type of support package but thankfully it is finished.

I have read this thread and seems that the moderators are saying that the EBSS payments are supposed to be subtracted from the electricity charges, refunded to the account holders bank account and subtracted from the direct debit amount that has been paid.. Correct? 

No, that’s not quite right. Those payments (seems a while ago now) were simply deducted from your energy charges and then refunded to your bank (if paying by direct debit). There was no reduction of direct debit in that case.

Well in my case the money was refunded to my account but then applied against my direct debit payment. I paid £107.15 then -£67.00 was applied to it and OVO now says that I only made a £40.15 payment. So I called in to the call centre and they told me that is exactly what is supposed to happen and wouldn’t even let me lodge a complaint to contest this.

I had to call citizen advice just so that I could even get to the complaints department.. They then proceeded to tell me that this was exactly what the government had in mind for the discount. To essentially just transfer £67.00 of the money I just paid to OVO back and not apply any of it to my actual energy bill. Now I’m just trying to switch providers before OVO finds some new way to extort money from me but they are objecting to the switch because I have this balance of all of these EBSS payments that were subtracted from my direct debit payments without my knowledge.