OVO over-estimated my usage - Will I be refunded now I've submitted meter readings?

Hi there @Davie1969 .

Sorry to hear about that. This is only usually likely to happen if you’ve either missed multiple readings or it’s been a very long time since you put a reading in. But there is a fix for this.

Please submit a meter reading as soon as possible either by phone or via MyOVO, and this should force the system to recalculate your billing and hopefully correct the account balance. If that fails to fix the issue, the Support Team can investigate and manually force the system to correct itself. You’ll never be liable to pay for any energy you didn’t actually use, but issues like this can crop up if there's either a lack of readings, or if you’ve gotten multi-rate readings mixed up. If the Support Team agrees with you - which I suspect is extremely likely - they’ll be able to fix your account balance and put you back into credit.

As for a possible smart meter upgrade, that might be possible depending on what kind of off-peak meter you’ve got. Please could you share some photos of the meter in your next reply if possible, along with what tariff your parents are currently on. I can try to figure out what you can do next from that information.

If you need a hand with anything else, I’ll be right here. I can’t access your account, but I can definitely offer advice. :)

I typed in readings on app next day.It’s only the 3rd time in 4 years I’ve been late.They’ve had 3 visits from installation team,last one last month with the promise “we can do it this time”!Still couldn’t do it.What annoys me is their highest bill ever was £300ish in December/January 2 years ago.This ridiculous figure has been plucked out from the sky.Not great for two 80 yr old folks!

Top one is storage and below is the estimated bill

Thanks for the photos.

Something doesn’t add up here and this might be a clue. It looks like the top reading from your screenshot of the bill matches up reasonably closely to what I believe is the off-peak meter for the storage heaters, but the other reading doesn’t match up at all with the main meter. Have you ever known it go round the clock and back to zero by any chance? I begin to wonder if there’s either a meter fault of some kind, a bug in the billing platform or something at your parents house is gobbling up a LOT more electricity than you’re expecting.

There is a solution though and it can definitely be investigated, so if it does turn out the estimated bill was way higher than it should have been, the Support Team can override the system and regenerate a new bill after running the numbers again.

As for that smart meter upgrade… This is a bit of a tricky one. It definitely is clear that the current meters were installed by Scottish Power and they’re probably a Complex Meter of some kind. Do you know of any kind of Timeswitch or Teleswitch that is connected to either meter? If so, a photo of that too along with a wider shot of the entire setup would be extremely useful alongside the ones you’ve provided so far.

Upgrading these setups to Smart Meters isn’t completely impossible, but it’s also not as simple as a straightforward swap either. I’ll see if @Transparent is around as he knows more about these setups than I do. Tim and Jess should be back tomorrow, so I can also ask them to help out with some advice if needed. You may want to ask the Support Team why the upgrade has failed as well on previous attempts - knowing this information will definitely help us to figure out what to do next.

There’s two meters.Daytime and off peak.OP went around the clock years ago.There’s no fault in the meter,it’s just a ridiculous estimate when OVO can clearly see they’ve never used 2763 kw in their lives!They have a teleswiitch controlling the OP meter.

The main meter is fine.The 3371 reading was the one I gave last month ,the 3443 is this month so they’ve used 72 units.The estimate is way out!No justification for it

Thanks. This helps a lot.

Yeah, it looks like a few thousand kWh needs to be knocked off the bill and this might not be possible to fix with a manual reading that you submit yourself. But what I do know is that manual submissions via the Support Team override almost everything else. This may take some time to investigate, but once you make them aware, someone will get on the case.

I’ve just looked up some information about the meter setup you’ve got there and I recognise it now. It’s one of those rather complicated ones with a whole bunch of spiderwebs all over the place between the two meters and the Radio Teleswitch that’s hooked up to the OP meter. It doesn’t quite look like the most complicated setup possible as there are some setups which are even more complex. But it’s still not ideal to be stuck like this.

In actual fact, your meters are so old that it’s extremely difficult to find information about them on the internet. ABB seems to have sold off parts of their business to Elster which is muddying the trail a bit as well, but I did have some success. While yours are labelled as ABB E200 (alternatively the ABB J11B2A), there are matching identical meters under the Elster brand as well - the Elster E200 (alternatively the Elster J11B2A). And I thought Landis+Gyr were bad enough! It’s been years since I’ve seen anything like these.

To make things worse, it doesn’t even seem as if these models were designed to have any kind of Timeswitches or Radio Teleswitches hooked up to them either...

Upgrading these isn’t easy, not least because it requires some level of re-wiring in your house that OVO can’t do because it’s beyond the remit of the supplier. A friendly local electrician should be able to help though - they’ll need to handle everything that’s beyond the point where the supply reaches your Consumer Unit/Fusebox and also certain segments of the cabling between the meters and Consumer Unit. Most likely, they’ll need to re-organise everything to a less complex setup before the Meter Exchange can go ahead.

However, you’re in luck here. If you can post some more photos of your meters, the Radio Teleswitch and the Consumer Unit (along with a wide angle shot showing all the wiring between them), this will give us a very good picture of what’s going on. Transparent loves these sorts of questions.

I can also ask @Jess_OVO to see whether OVO’s Smart Meter experts can offer any advice on how to get an upgrade sorted out so that it works as smoothly as possible before another attempt is made. That might help to prevent another aborted upgrade as I can appreciate that it’s frustrating to be let down repeatedly. With the right advice however, there can be a higher chance of a successful attempt.

So sorry to hear about that out-of-line estimated statement you received on your parents account, @Davie1969.

I’ve moved your post over to a similar topic as the best answer may help to shed some light on why this might have happened. Occasionally if the EAC (Estimated Annual Consumption) figure that we have for the account is wrong, this will mean that anytime we estimate the usage this won’t reflect what’s actually been used. It’s worth checking in with the Support Team to see if they can check the EAC figure on the account.

The good news is that if you’ve already submitted an actual reading, this will correct any over-estimated readings,  and the balance should right itself before the next scheduled statement.

In terms of a meter replacement - understandably a smart meter exchange would be really helpful in ensuring we wouldn’t need to rely on estimated readings in future. Really sorry to hear that it hasn’t been possible to install one during your previous appointments. Without seeing the details of the account it’s difficult for us to advise on why this wasn’t possible here, our Support Team will be able to request the notes from the previous engineers visits, which can help us advise on the possibility of completing the installation in future. 

Let us know how you get on - we’re always on hand here to give advice where we can. 

Now been 2 weeks(10 working days)since I emailed to discuss this issue.Still no reply.I put a complaint in.No reply.Shocking service