How can I correct a ghost "meter reading" which has lead to an unnecessary Direct Debit increase?

Thanks @maidbloke  - yes it’s embarrassing; I’ve experienced this situation myself, but not recently.

The Billing System is being developed in-house by OVO’s sister company, Kaluza. They continue to adjust the software in order to better cope with anomalies such as you have pointed out.

And I agree with you about a typo being the cause. I spotted the incorrect digit for 9th July.

When a similar situation occurred with my account I continued to send in regular meter readings by email for several months. Email is good for this because it retains a record of what information was given with a date/time stamp.

I don’t know how a correction is added to the current version of the Billing System for a non-Smart meter, but we can be sure that it’s not just a case of replacing the July reading with the correct one. That would lose the record of the error.

I can see how corrections are made for Smart Meters, and it’s messy. They seem to apply a negative reading for a day. Ie the true reading for that day has been splatted with another incorrect figure in order to ‘restore’ the balance. Yuch!

There are several other discussion topics here on the Forum (such as this one) in which us customers are delving deeply into the cumulative meter readings and analysing what’s gone wrong. So you are certainly not alone in this!

However, it remains the case that the formula for calculating a DD may still not apply ‘human logic’ when looking at your billing history, even once a manual correction has been applied. I just wanted to alert you that you should not be overly-hopeful of a new estimate immediately reverting the demand to £125 !

The key issues are

• keep your DD payments going, and challenge OVO if they attempt to change it whilst your complaint is still ‘live’
• keep supplying meter readings. You could even try doing it more regularly than once per month because this might force the DD-calculation to catch up with getting the trend analysed more quickly!

… and I still recommend a Smart Meter by the way

No. They are billing me for electricity I have not used. My bank happily reversed the £ 380 direct debit  they took last month.

I’m not necessarily expecting the monthly charge to return to £ 125. I am, however, expecting it to accurately reflect what I am using.

OVO shouldn’t be taking a different DD amount without first writing to state that it requires changing. That’s the time to challenge/complain.

The point I was trying to make was that you shouldn’t simply cancel the DD instruction to your bank. Having a DD Mandate in place is a requirement of your contract.

Hi,

While reviewing my monthly bill I found a massive mistake in my Electricity meter reading morning reading which displays as (day time) 45100 which is totally wrong as I entered it  on 26th October 2022 as 04600. Based on that error this reflects on my bills to be as £11,174 indebit which is redicules. Why this happened ?is it scammer issue? 

So please correct my Electricity day time reading to  04600

Hi @Nalattar ,

Please contact the Support Team for this one. Forum volunteers such as myself can’t access your account.

In November I mistakenly entered my gas reading as 46xxx when it should have been 45xxx. Based on this OVO have over estimated my bill and increased my DD. I’m finding it impossible to convey this simple message to them and to get them to recalculate. HELP PLEASE!!

Hi @AndyRWoods ,

If you enter a wrong reading, you can fix this yourself by entering the correct one by midnight the same day. Doing so will wipe out the first reading and replace it with the new one - OVO will then only process the latest reading for the day. You have unlimited attempts to get it right via this method as long as you put the right one in by midnight.

You’ll probably need to raise a read dispute in this case however. If you’re getting no luck via the normal routes, try https://ovoenergy.com/feedback .

Have you considered getting Smart Meters perhaps? It would eliminate this problem! https://smart-booking.ovoenergy.com .

Thanks for this. It was too late for me to use the same day correction and OVO have no system to allow later corrections although they do have a system to prevent lower readings being entered. They are very good at communicating issues/offers in their favour, but make it almost impossible for paying customers to make simple communications with them.

@maidbloke, first never ever do direct debit. You give control to them, they can then take (and frequently do) whatever they want. No help but learned rapidly OVO ignore their customers, I wouldn't advise anybody to go with them.

​@mikk you do realise thst this is a 4 year old thread don't you?

Things change a lot in 4 years