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Wiseman65
Rank 2
September 23, 2023
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Sudden change in account balance. Smart meter reads out of line?

  • September 23, 2023
  • 15 replies
  • 1424 views

A couple of days ago I requested a credit of £500.00 as I was nearly £1000.00 in credit. I just looked at the app and it now says that I am just over £2000.00 in arrears

Best answer by Firedog

Updated on 27/08/25 by Ben_OVO

If you’ve noticed a big balance change on your online account or app then your previous billing may have been adjusted due to a billing error on our side, or because you’ve submitted a meter reading that’s out of line with previous estimates. To discuss a balance adjustment please contact our Support Team.

Thanks. 

Yes here is the most up to date meter reading .. 

 

Thanks. That looks like crossed wires somewhere, but if the readings in the 200s are a natural progression from the ones before the 7000 readings appeared, you should be OK. The drop from 7753 to 224 will have raised a red flag for those monitoring smart readings; they should have checked, realized that the 7000 readings were anomalous and probably taken no further action other than to remove the flag, because they shouldn’t have any effect on your bill.

Does billing for the current period now look more sensible? It should show the actual readings used to calculate the balance, the one at the start of the period and today’s. If there are no others shown on the billing page, you’re in the clear. 

If I were you, I’d use webchat to contact the support team and ask them to find out from the metering team what went wrong. If you do find out, please come back here and tell us what they said. 
  

[Bonus tip: with the price cap drop imminent, some customers have noticed that no smart reading is recorded for the first day of the quarter. We don’t know whether this is intentional or simply a result of the data communications system being overwhelmed by the traffic generated by the tariff changes. It means, though, that the September bill is based on an estimate; it will be pretty accurate, but a blemish on the bill nonetheless. To avoid this, users have found that a reading manually submitted on the 1st is used to calculate the bill. If you’re back home by then, use the app to send a reading early on Sunday morning and watch what happens. It won’t do any harm either way.]  

 

15 replies

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Emmanuelle_OVO
Retired Moderator
Emmanuelle_OVO
Retired Moderator
October 4, 2023

Hey @Wiseman65,

 

If the Support Team are able to get to the bottom of this, it would be really helpful if you’re able to pop back and let us know! It might help other Community Members in a similar position 🙂

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Newcomer
DEC87
Newcomer
March 3, 2024

My account debt has took a significant leap in 4 weeks from an estimated £809 in debt to  £2,095 in debt.. my bills have changed for both october to November and november to December's billing period, this has occurred in the last 4 weeks. Now to be precises, we are a family of 3/4 that are out alot through the week, appliances are switched off when not in use, and heating is used frugally but these two billing periods state i have used over £1000 in energy between them, where at the billing period end date I was roughly £300, around £60 more than my direct debt. All of these issues have occurred since changing to a smart meter. Anyone else had a similar issue?

Abby_OVO
Community Manager
Abby_OVO
Community Manager
March 4, 2024

Hi @DEC87 

 

I’m sorry to hear about the issue you’re having with your billing.

 

If the balance and readings are estimated, but you’ve got a smart meter, it sounds like the smart meter might not be communicating with us. It might be worth submitting an actual meter reading to get that balance corrected. You can submit a smart meter health check to the Support Team so they can check the communication status and check if we’re able to get readings from the meter. I’ve linked below to our smart meter health checks, just fill out the one that matches your meter:

 

 

Let us know how you get on.

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Newcomer
VicPlum
Newcomer
March 4, 2024

So....wtf has just gone on with my account!! I check every month, have a smart meter and pay DD. I checked last month and I was still slightly in credit. I've just checked today and all pay past bills now have a whopping £0000 debit on them!!! Ovo emailed me my last bill and said we were £300 in credit so wtf have they done??? Has anyone else's done this overnight, is there an IT issue or something today....??

Abby_OVO
Community Manager
Abby_OVO
Community Manager
March 5, 2024

Hi @VicPlum 

 

I’m really sorry to hear about this.

 

We don’t have access to accounts here at the Forum so it can be tricky sometimes to know exactly what’s gone wrong. Would you be able to share a screenshot of the meter readings page with us, this should help us provide more advice here.

 

 

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