Charge Anytime and Ohme integration update: important information for our customers

Then you can always just leave. That’s always an option - there are other tariffs still out there that support Ohme directly if that’s what you really want.

OVO added support for Ohme in the early days of Charge Anytime - but Indra came first - back when the plan was just offer a cheap EV Charging rate without any advanced features. Things have changed since then however and the system has evolved to reflect that.

The new method fixes many issues from the legacy methods and Ohme were invited to come along for the ride - but unlike Indra, they refused to play ball and that’s their decision. As soon as OVO realised this, they pulled Ohme from the online store and stopped selling Ohme products. That’s as much as they could do while they continued to try and figure things out.

If you want out, you can leave - the Charge Anytime team on 0330 175 9678 will waive any exit fees but you can ONLY get them to do this if your EV is not compatible.

This is your offer. If you have a suitable EV, you can migrate to the Charge Anytime app and use that. Or you can buy another charger - OVO’s store already offers discounted rates for those but there will be no further discount on the table. If you don’t like either option, you can leave OVO fee-free (ONLY if your EV isn’t compatible) and go somewhere else. That’s more than generous to be frank.

Just to manage expectations… The team did want me to mention that no refunds will be offered if you originally bought the Charger via OVO and they also won’t reimburse additional work that you had done e.g. drop kerbs as those are completely beyond their remit. At least one person has already tried the latter and had it explained that OVO never covered that work in the first place.

No-one is forcing your hand. It’s your decision at the end of the day.

Avoiding answering THE direct questions!

Are OVO going to add Cost to Anytime users ? And When are the changes going to be delivered? 

OVO break a working system with a charger they pushed, promise improvements will come but won't say what they are or when they'll happen, then turn around and say you're free to leave or spend more money on another charger they're pushing, with no guarantee they'll maintain that integration either. Fabulous! 

Look, I get it. Changes like this one are horrible. But there’s nothing OVO can do if the integration partners pull the plug from their side. That’s the risk you take with ANY consumer grade smart stuff - the support for the smart features will ONLY continue to work for as long as the original manufacturer deems it worthy of their time. Unlike Ohme, just about all the others (currently Indra, Hypervolt, Andersen, evec, NexBlue and Zappi) are in it for the long run and have shown a clear intent to provide long-term support for as long as they can keep it going.

As it so happens, my contacts at both Indra and Hypervolt have informed me that they’ve both recently taken on a large number of ex-Ohme customers between them. They were surprised by it, but apparently quite a few folks have decided they wanted to replace the Charger rather than leave OVO. That is, of course, the decision of the individual customers but it does potentially indicate who those folks trust more.

With that in mind, I’ve not recommended Ohme to anyone on the Forum for a while now. I don’t want to go into much detail as to why, but signals I monitor started showing indications some time ago that it was better for me to recommend other options. Thus, I changed my strategy based on those signals.

I do not work for OVO myself - my answers here are my own. You would have been reminded of this when you first signed up to the OVO Forum and from various clues we’ve placed everywhere.

As for the answers you seek...

As myself and others have already made clear in this thread, any planned improvements do not get announced until they’re ready. This is done to manage expectations in case of delays, setbacks or cancellations but it also to avoid putting excessive and unnecessary pressure on the teams. Just look at all the hype (and nagging!) surrounding the upcoming release of Samsung One UI 8 and you’ll soon see what I mean. Publicly announcing a release date before the stable release is ready will just put more pressure on Samsung, so they deliberately hold that back until there is actually a stable release they’re happy with. What OVO is doing is fundamentally no different. When it’s ready, it’ll be unveiled. This strategy not only results in a better product, but also improved mental health for the teams. Maintaining the latter is considered absolutely critical as causing them to burnout means they’re unable to work at all - which is obviously not a good position to be in.

Your question of Are OVO going to add Cost to Anytime users ? is poorly written in that it doesn’t make it clear what you’re asking. Please re-phrase your question to something with better clarity in order to get an answer to it.

Otherwise… I’ve provided you with your options. There are no other options on the cards at this time.

There are no plans to change the Unit Rate for the Charge Anytime add-on at this time that I know of - it currently stands at 7p/kWh at the time of writing (24th July 2025).

Neurodiversity and mental health matters are becoming very widely recognised these days. I am Neurodiverse myself (Autism/ADHD) which is known to OVO and the Forum Moderators. They’ve made reasonable adjustments that make my experience easier, but in return I also recognise that others may need them too - it’s the entire reason I’m considered an Expert by Experience. If you don’t look after your team, they will quit or have other adverse effects which are undesirable. Regardless of your views, it’s an unfortunate and uncomfortable truth that cannot be ignored these days unless you want to take serious risks that aren’t worth exploring.

For these reasons and others, I take a dim view towards any one who disrespects or discriminates others because of Neurodiversity or Mental Health related matters.

As for legacy support, the problem with that is that over time it builds technical debt and divergence in the codebase as the new codebase continues to leave the old codebase behind. There’s a reason why WordPress has a strict policy about only officially supporting the latest version and that older versions are supported with security fix backports on a courtesy basis only - and only while volunteers are willing to put in the time and effort required to backport critical fixes. This approach limits technical debt and frees up more time to work on new features - and most importantly allows critical matters to be dealt with more rapidly.

On the other hand, you have Microsoft Windows where there’s over 25 years worth of technical debt in the Windows NT Kernel alone. It’s only in the last five years or so that Microsoft has finally started ripping out vast amounts of legacy code from the Microsoft Windows codebase, but they’ve put themselves in a position where they’ll never be able to get rid of all that bloat - it’s too deeply rooted at this point and the only fix is to break backwards compatibility that will cause massive collateral damage.

OVO can easily argue that preventing this bloat in the first place is the best cure to the problem. Code maintenance for just one is a beast of a chore in itself. Trying to maintain a second codebase just for a single charger brand when everyone else uses the other - more stable - codebase just isn’t worth the time nor effort, especially when said charger brand could have just as easily migrated to the new method.

OVO wants ALL Charge Anytime users to get the same features. The way Ohme wanted to keep it operating would have given Ohme users a massively inferior experience compared to everyone else. The way it ended up is ultimately the lesser of two evils, but there was no perfect solution since Ohme was adamant they were never going to update their code.

Ultimately, OVO had a plan to communicate the sunset with customers and it was agreed with Ohme that OVO would go first by sending the emails out in batches. Ohme ended up blasting every single customer at once and broke the agreed plan by doing so. If anything, that should be a clue as to why I feel Ohme has acted unfairly in this matter.

The references I made to neurodiversity and mental health were in reference to your questions about why upcoming features haven’t been announced yet. I did make that clear that it wasn’t because of the Ohme disablement.

I know OVO well enough to know they would have done a controlled/phased shutdown if they were able to. But alas, that was not possible not only because of the integration being turned off, but also the contracts/agreements that granted access to Ohme customer data being revoked. Without those in place, it’s a dead tool regardless of the code.

What you want and what you actually get are, unfortunately, often two different things. If you look at Belkin Wemo, they recently pulled the plug on a TON of products which is over 95% of all Wemo stuff they ever sold… Or 100% of stuff if you don’t have Apple HomeKit. In that situation, your stuff is basically a brick - at least with the EV Chargers you can still do something with it i.e. charge an EV as all the manufacturers have committed to never bricking the core functionality of their stuff being an EV Charger.

Belkin is not offering any way to continue using Wemo via their cloud service at all which renders the devices basically useless, outside of the few that can connect to Apple HomeKit and run locally.

Another recent example came to my attention - Futurehome. They went bankrupt recently and the new owners are forcing users to either pay a subscription or have ALL their devices remotely bricked, making them virtually useless outside of basic manual controls.

What I’m basically saying is that this stuff relies on manufacturer support quite heavily. If the manufacturer pulls the plug (as Ohme has done for OVO Charge Anytime), then it’s game over.

So...I've just been charging my car for a couple of weeks blissfully unaware that my charge anytime account doesn't work with ohme charger. It looks like it was also removed from my actual OVO account. My questions are : how do I go about claiming my credit for the time between 15th July and now. I've downloaded the OVO charge anytime app and linked the car ...do I uninstall ohme app, charge anytime app never worked for me previously (I have a Skoda enyaq which is compatible) and why wasn't informed of this change. 

Hi ​@cyrustom ,

Notifications were sent out a couple of months ago - are you sure you didn’t miss them somehow? I’m afraid you won’t be eligible for credits where Smart Charging didn’t occur if you didn’t migrate before the 15th July - you’ll have to pay full rate for those days between the 15th July and whenever you migrated to the Charge Anytime app.

You should keep the Ohme app as you’ll want it for other functions - but I do recommend you delete and rebuild your Ohme account and reconnect the new account to the Charger to avoid conflicts. DO NOT add the vehicle back to the Ohme app though! You can then just set a random tariff in the Ohme settings - it doesn’t matter what you pick.

It must have went to my junk but never showed in the app. Only discovered because I opened ohme app. I've done as you've said and the charge anytime app hasn't worked last night. There's not even an urgent charge option. I've tried rebuilding ohme because I thought that would be the problem....it won't allow me into the app without connecting a car ....so I didn't pair I chose from the drop down...still charge anytime still not working. 

I see. In that case you may need to check with the team - 0330 175 9678 gets you straight through,

​@cyrustom sorry to see what’s happened here. Please do let us know how you get on when speaking to the Charge Anytime team following ​@Blastoise186’s advice. They can also be reached by email at chargeanytime@ovo.com.