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

@Firedog Sure, why not, if you think you can help? I’ve done my best with the screenshots, sorry if they are not great quality, and it’s 3 months so you can see the overall picture. September didn’t ring any alarm bells, it was Oct/Nov where the issue started.

@Firedog After trawling through all 19 pages of this thread and another middle of the night thinking session, I've worked it out. My October bill was definitely wrong but they have corrected it in November and the penny has finally dropped. Very confusing though! Thanks for replying to me and getting me thinking again. 

@GnomeG Thanks for posting the screenshots; I’m glad to hear you worked it out in the end. The problem seems to have been one of timings, with EBSS credits to the OVO account and the corresponding refunds to your bank account straddling the billing period end/start. It’s a widespread cause of confusion. Another one is simply not noticing that the Total charges in the balance is unexpectedly low, because it incorporates the EBSS credit and is no longer a true representation of the period’s energy cost.

I am trying to get through to an advisor but not having any luck. I’m not seeing any refund to my account just money going out. There is a refund there but it is coming out of my own credit. I have had it double checked and triple checked. OVO customer services is very hard to get hold of and my bill this month has changed three times already luckily I have screen shot them 

Please look at your Charges in detail there is a separate section of the bill where the breakdown of electricity/gas/ VAT is and there should be an entry for Energy Bill Support Scheme of £66 or £67 deducted from your charges

Can you see you monthly summary online @Mocha ?

You should see a heading

Then details of your energy charges

Then another part 

and under that a line for the government payment 

Which is an amount taken off your bill. 
You might need to look at the last few months to see it all

Should I be able to see this on the app? 

@Mocha yes, click on 

—Payments

—See charges and payments 

(Scroll down to see each recent monthly period)

—See details

Have a look at each month back to the beginning of October as there may be two £66 or £67 in one month depending on the date it goes in or out.

I was moved from SSE to OVO 1/12/2022. As with many of the commentators I found it confusing at first but reading Blastoise 186 did help. At one point I think he says this is the best system that OVO is using. Prior to migrating to OVO, SSE used to put the Energy Support payment directly into my bank account, leaving no cause for ambiguity. I would suggest OVO use that same method, as in my migration information it does state I would need to do nothing and everything would stay the same. Well it appears that is not the case.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for any energy supplier to change strategy now. Between the fact there’s only three/four payments left to make and the effort involved in switching the strategy and the additional chaos it’d cause… It’s not worth doing this time around.

It’s possible that lessons will be learned for the future though.

In fairness to OVO, that guidance and advice was written something like two years ago and was well before anyone had even dreamed up the EBSS Scheme. It would have been impossible to predict the future at the time and the spirit of what it said and meant still holds true.