‘Total Charges’ don’t match the ‘New Balance’- Even though the starting balance was zero?

Looks like they’ve arrived at the subtotal for vat by only including one paper charge, then added the 24p vat for it on at the end - a bit of an oops at OVO HQ I’d say !! 

Is it an Oops by a person, or by a machine ?.

A person you can expect to make a mistake on one bill, but if this is a computer error then the mistake will be on thousands of bills.

Not a good first impression, OVO !.

Very strange 

A. 98.63 for electricity ex vat 

B. 4.76 for paper bill ex vat

C. 103.39 ex vat subtotal A + B

D. 5.17 vat

E. 108.56 inc vat C + D

F. 4.76 for another paper bill

G. 113.32  inc vat apart from vat on one paper bill E + F

H. 0.24 Vat on one paper bill

I. 113.56 inc vat on both paper bills. G + H

Perhaps OVO Energy need to find another IT supplier 😃

I’ve contacted OVO again about the Paper Charges, as I don’t get paper comms from OVO. They’re looking into it, again.

Just to be clear, I think my bill should be £98.63 + 4.93 VAT, = £103.56.

It looks like someone has added a bit of programming to deal with the extra charge of a paper bill, which is something I remember was part of OVO’s contract years ago. Is it even in the contract these days ? Let us know how they explain it - and what their reason is for applying it twice !!!

Yep, that makes sense.

For some strange reason they have added two lots of paper charges and applied them in two different ways.

@Tim_OVO I dread to say... it may be worth checking someone hasn't inadvertently done something while changing the Warm Home Discount code...

The cost of ‘paper communications’ is specified on the Charges page, and it’s £5 per quarter. It used to be something you could opt out of to help towards getting an ‘all online’ reward. Nowadays, I think you have to opt in, i.e. specifically request paper bills by post. It looks like you’ve been charged for two quarters’ worth of paper bills; if you didn’t ask for them, let alone get them, you should ask for your money back.

It’s interesting that VAT isn’t mentioned on the Charges page. Someone recently kicked over a VAT hornets’ nest, and the billing people are scrambling around trying to contain the beasts before too many people are stung. One of the measures they’ve taken is to find out which charges are VAT-liable, then present them on bills ex VAT before doing the tax calculation. That’s where the £4.76 for ‘paper communications’ comes from (£4.76 + 5% = £5.00. I wonder if it shouldn’t in fact be 20% 😉 - many of the charges on that list are specifically mentioned as being liable for the reduced rate of tax, but not ‘paper communications’.)

It looks like this is being done manually in a great hurry in many cases, so it’s not surprising that the occasional error slips all the way through to the customer. I’ve a feeling we’ll be seeing the repercussions of this disturbance for a long time yet.

It’s getting worse !.

Look at this statement …. There’s definately something wrong with their abacus.

You’d better find out what whoever produced that is smoking, so you know to stay well away from it. The best that can be said is that the first, second and last figures are probably correct, so you don’t appear to have been diddled - so long as the electricity charge is correct. You’d better check that, too.

It’s getting worse !.

Look at this statement …. There’s definately something wrong with their abacus.

 

It is strange but the new balance at the end looks correct. It may be the best they can do after the error occurred.

537.40 Electricity - assume this is correct.

26.87 VAT at 5%

564.27 New Balance.

Yes but … the VAT line on the bill reads £27.11. How much will OVO send to HMRC, I wonder.

At least it is more than the actual VAT

Interesting the delta is 24p again between "Total new charges" and "Your new balance" although reversed, the VAT on a single communication charge.

I wonder if what we see on screen now is not what is actually stored in a database. Whether it is a display issue on the report only. 

We may never know.

I’m sure that there are occasional disconnects between underlying data and what is displayed. They’re not usually very important, so long as we know that that’s what’s happening.

What is surprising is that the statement - an important document with legal implications - seems to be generated from the (apparently sometimes erroneous) website figures and not from the underlying data. The example above is a case in point: there’s a difference between the VAT OVO pays to HMRC and what it collects from the customer, who may then claim it back. OK, it’s small change in this case, but it could potentially be an awful lot more.

Firedog said, “ I’m sure that there are occasional disconnects between underlying data and what is displayed. They’re not usually very important, so long as we know that that’s what’s happening.”

I’ve not been on here for a while, I’ve had bigger problems than trying to fathom OVO maths. Anyway, I’m eventually leaving OVO. So before leaving I thought I’d check my balance.

Not bad, £242 in credit !. 

But then I saw why. My direct debit according to OVO is £90 pm, but my bank shows £126 pm. It’s been showing this since November 2025. At that time I was ‘only’ £115 in credit, but for some reason not explained on the bill my October 2025 DD was £193. It then settled at £126.

I’m not too bothered about this, but it does beg the question ’can we trust what we see on screen ?’

Cheers,

Buzby

Firedog said, “ I’m sure that there are occasional disconnects between underlying data and what is displayed. They’re not usually very important, so long as we know that that’s what’s happening.”

I’ve not been on here for a while, I’ve had bigger problems than trying to fathom OVO maths. Anyway, I’m eventually leaving OVO. So before leaving I thought I’d check my balance.

 

Not bad, £242 in credit !. 

But then I saw why. My direct debit according to OVO is £90 pm, but my bank shows £126 pm. It’s been showing this since November 2025. At that time I was ‘only’ £115 in credit, but for some reason not explained on the bill my October 2025 DD was £193. It then settled at £126.

I’m not too bothered about this, but it does beg the question ’can we trust what we see on screen ?’

Cheers,

Buzby

I would check to see if you have received an email recently reducing your Direct Debit from the next payment. OVO review our accounts and DD every three months. 

Your most recent bill is the best place to check on your payments. This is the summary page of my most recent bill. I have highlighted my Direct Debit details.

Nice to hear from you again ​@Buzby - I hope you’re well, and ​@Bendog thanks for your help here.

​@Buzby I’ve noticed similar with my online banking before, where the Direct Debit amounts displayed don’t match what I’m paying to the utility provider. If your Direct Debit is coming out at the amount specified by OVO then it’d be worth contacting your bank to see what’s the issue on their side.

Here is a bill showing DD of £126 was taken. This is not what the info on the ‘Home’ page is showing.
 

The home screen shows OVO know they are supposed to take £90 by DD, but the bill shows they actually took £126 by DD.  ( This bill is from Feb, but the situation goes back to last year. )

I don’t think my bank could explain this, they just pay what OVO ask for. ( I like my bank. They are very good at spotting scammers, but I think they missed this one. )

OVO have not put up a good show from day one. As you can see from the start of this thread, my very first bill was wrong !.

I don’t think OVO are really scammers, I think they just have a broken IT system with no-one to fix it.

It’s been all over the news that EON are likely to buy OVO soon. ( What they’ll pay for OVO is unknown. It could be as much as £400 million, or as little as the price of a Happy Meal. ) Either way, they will need to integrate or migrate their IT systems and data.  I don’t hold out much hope of this going smoothly.

Cheers,

Buzby

Hi again ​@Buzby - the bill you’ve shared is for February - you should have had another two Direct Debits taken out since then. What amount have they come out at?

£126, same as February.

​@Buzby it could just be the case that your Direct Debit was lowered to £90 following April’s payment. We do lower Direct Debits as well to avoid customers building up too much credit. OVO lower mine automatically about three times a year, and I go and increase it again manually.

In my experience, every change in the DD amount triggers an email notification (sometimes two or three over a weekend if I’m being creative and gaming the system¹). I wonder if Buzby has had any such notification? Here’s a recent one of mine for reference:
 

1. Gaming the system, me?
   Some customers have been frustrated to discover that applying for a  refund online requires them to leave an unreasonably high  balance of three DD amounts + £25 after the refund. While it’s usually possible to work around this limitation by contacting Support (whose job is then to explain the risks involved with running the balance down too far), that isn’t always convenient.
   
   My DD was at (I reckoned) about the right amount, but the allowed refund just wasn’t big enough for me. The large credit balance meant that the recommended DD from the calculator was ridiculously low, so I just opted for that low figure, then (after receiving the confirmation above a few minutes later) ran the Apply for a refund wizard again and got a more reasonable result. The next confirmation (We’re working on your refund) arrived pretty swiftly, so the next day I just put my DD back up to where it ought to be. All quite seamless even at the weekend, and the refund was boosting my bank account before the end of the week.