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

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.

Sounds frustrating but if you check (like the rest of the thread) you should see that that amount was also deducted from your energy charges

I have checked, and it wasn’t deducted from my energy charges.. and yes I have looked at the full detail bills to confirm. It has only been deducted from my direct debits.

Keep an eye out for a message from ovo 

It’s taken me literally 7 months to get my broken gas meter replaced with 3 no shows and a couple appointment cancellations. The whole time I had to keep calling over back and waiting on hold for hours at a time to keep re-explaining my entire situation. I kept expressing my concern at not knowing what my bill was going to be but reps just kept telling me not to worry. Finally, when I’d had enough, I tried to lodge a complaint and the rep said I’d get a call back in 48 hours which unsurprisingly didn’t happen.. making me have to call in again and wait on hold. When I asked why I didn’t get a call back they said they had no record of a complaint. I then spent a couple hours just trying to log a complaint but I have always gotten hung up on before reaching the complaints department... after trying multiple times the exact same result.. always ended in getting hung up on. I've had agents tell me three different conflicting stories on how complaints are logged. I was transferred to people that told me they were managers to later find out from another agent that they weren't managers so I was lied to multiple times throughout the course of the day. I have wasted days of my life on hold to try to resolve just the gas meter issue.. and I finally broke down and started crying while on with an agent. As a grown man I can't remember the last time I've cried so it's very very significant to note that I was pushed to this point. So it seems I had to get to the point of a total break down just to get a complaint lodged. To say that I am done with OVO is a complete understatement. 

And yet OVO finds new and inventive ways to hold me hostage and continue to lie to me.. Saying I can switch if my balance is under £300(I only have a balance because I had NO IDEA what my gas usage was for 7 months along with the EBSS payment problems) only to change the story when I do get it under £300. I’m tired of waiting on hold, I’m tired of getting transferred to someone else where I have to explain everything over again, I’m tired of things not working, I’m tired of being lied to over and over, I AM TIRED OF OVO!!!!!

Hey @letmego,

Really sorry for the experiences you’ve had, 

Our Forum_Support Team will reach out to you.