We’re updating some of our Charge Anytime T&Cs

your condescending and obtuse tone leaves me to think this isn't a forum for people to discuss or ask questions or raise concerns. what if OVO get 100k new customers then reduce the cap to 10kwh a month just seems a bizarre business and customer service move for those making the EV change. 

I very much doubt they’d lower the cap that much. If they did, I’d literally be the first to yell at OVO and I’d make SURE they felt my wrath. But what it does reveal is that I’m not sure you’re thinking that logic through - that’d be a terrible business decision for starters! OVO knows I have standards and won’t hesitate to speak my mind and call them out if I feel the need to do so.

Being neurodivergent (specifically, I am Autistic) means the stuff I post may seem different from what you’d expect. That’s core to who I am and there’s nothing I can do to change that. If you want to talk to OVO about this, 0330 175 9678 is your best bet. I’m giving you the direct number to the team responsible for this stuff, but please play nice with them as the agent you speak to  on that line won’t be the one who made the changes.

The Forum is open to everyone, but please remember what I said. We do get folks who are neurodivergent posting here and those folks - myself included - may have impaired social skills and may struggle to get the right meaning across. It’s not intentional, but we ask for your understanding as we can’t always adapt as much as we’d like to.

As for my volunteer status here? I literally get nothing in return and that’s a deliberate choice. The closest I get is more access to information - but that just makes me more helpful.

​@leebobbycastle Being another forum volunteer I wasn’t sure whether or not to add a bit of perspective here as I’m EV owner of four years and an ex-OVO customer. I spent quite a lot of time researching the type of EV to get and not a lot on the charger (charge point) which proved to be a bit short sighted but it worked out ok in the end but only by luck.

My car doesn’t support CA (Zoe ZE40) so I would have had to have spent about £1,000 getting a compatible charger but I wouldn’t saved enough each year to pay for it. It would have been cheaper to have the standard tariff even though that was expensive. I chose to leave OVO and go to Octopus Agile and I saved about £600 in the first year (for everything) because when the supply is cheap it is cheap for everything in the house. However, when it’s expensive it is eye-wateringly expensive at up to £1 a unit. I charge when it’s cheap. We studiously avoid the peak periods because we can cook/heat with gas when that happens. This year is not so good and you are always living on a knife edge wondering when cheap periods are going to happen. Doing a comparison for the past 365 days, CA is £11 cheaper over the year than Agile. Certainly not enough to buy a new charger.

The point is you can only go with what you think is best at the time. I do sympathise with you that OVO have changed the T&Cs for the Add On but any energy supplier can do that and if you have spent out on a charger specifically for your energy supplier a new potential supplier may not support that or your car. The whole thing with charging an EV is a complete minefield which I didn’t see with getting one but we have found something that works well for us and that is what you have to do.

Getting back to basics, the biggest saving with getting an EV is not optimising the method of charging but not having to pay the 50-55% tax on fuel and only paying 5% VAT on electricity. Simply doing that means I'm only paying 5p/mile instead of 13p/mile for a petrol car. A saving of £3,500 over nearly four years.

Peter

You are completely missing the point,  we chose to stay with OVO as CA at 7p was suitable for our needs. But we would never have fixed our tariff if we knew we’re going to be price capped and as for no conspiracy theory, look at it from our point of view, just over 2 weeks before everyone was being told to fix so did then just after the magic 14 day cooling off period they price capped CA, looks like a money grasping exercise if ever I seen one but on the surface a great short term business move to get money sadly they will lose a lot of custom over it 

Unrelated. You chose to get the fix deal when you did (and arguably it’s still available for a couple more days). I could do one right now and the magic 14 days would start today.

You could have also waited a few more days resulting in the CA changes being in the exit free window. That was your choice.

Gonna be honest here... I literally just got back from doing two scuba dives with a Surfacing Code of F as my last one was to 20m. I now need to rest for at least 16 hours for the purposes of decompression and off-gassing, so I don’t feel like discussing this any further tonight. At least not while my body is still full of dive gases (especially Nitrogen).

If I feel like it, maybe I’ll come back tomorrow or something and talk more then, but for now I need to endure my decompression cycle.

Hang on a minute, who was telling everyone to fix? OVO? Ed Milliband? Some bloke down the pub? 

The decision to change tariff, e.g. to a fixed-rate one, is a personal one only to be taken after you’ve carefully worked out the pros and cons for you. No-one can tell you to fix.
 

Hi ​@Dora29, ​@leebobbycastle and ​@heselectric.

Firstly, thanks for your posts, and thanks ​@Blastoise186, ​@Peter E and ​@Firedog for your replies here. I just want to remind everyone that our Forum is a safe place for members to voice their opinions and questions about all things OVO / Energy. This can cause debate, of course, but please do remember to keep things friendly towards other Forum members.

We’ve got a team of Moderators who work for OVO, and many other Forum members, namely our Plan Zero Heroes, who kindly share their extensive knowledge on a voluntary basis. The aim of the Forum is to help get questions answered, however no Forum members have the power to change any business decision that OVO may take. Some decisions may cause dissatisfaction, which can be discussed on the Forum, but it can only remain a discussion. If you’re being negatively affected by any business change, or anything else relating to your OVO account, then this needs to be logged with our Support Team, who will always log a complaint where applicable.

​@Dora29, ​@leebobbycastle, ​@heselectric - I really do empathise with the fact you’ve taken out fixed plans only to then see the Charge Anytime T’s and C’s change - very frustrating! As ​@Blastoise186 has said: 

Charge Anytime is NOT a tariff and is not a Fixed Rate deal either. It’s an Add-On that comes with its own set of terms and conditions which runs independently of your supply contract.

There’s no conspiracy in place here and we, along with the wider business, appreciate that this will have caused frustration for some customers. I want to share a statement from our Charge Anytime team that I hope should prove this, however I understand that it’s not what you’d want to hear:

If you’re unhappy with these changes you can remove the Charge Anytime add-on from your account. If you would like to leave OVO and you’re on a fixed tariff we can waiver any exit fees that may apply if you contact us via chargeanytime@ovo.com once the fees have been applied we can reverse these for you

This Forum is a place to have open and honest discussions, but any complaints need to be directed into our Customer Services. In this case, the Charge Anytime team as shown above. We do also have an Ideas section on the Forum where members can share their ideas for change, and these can be voted on and passed to the wider business. Any ideas posted must remain constructive and in line with our Forum guidelines and house rules:

I'd just started the process of looking at if an EV was worth it for me. This change means even if it is I probably won't use OVO for the plan to charge it.

Firstly, these chargers are supposed to be smart. As in, internet connected. They can surely report actual usage in realtime so we could actually be charged 7p/kWh at source rather than credit back?

A 60kWh EV would cost £4.20 to fully charge at 7p/kWh. Even capping EV charging use to £100/month would be around 24 full charges, 1440kWh, or about 5500mi per month. More than enough for anyone I'd have thought. You could probably cap it at £50/month for EV charge usage (12 full charges, 720kWh, or 2750mi) and most people would probably not notice.

With tariff prices going up as the year goes on, there could be almost a 19p difference between the CA price and the standard price per kWh by October. Which at £100 max credit per month is only around 525kWh or 8.75 full charges of a 60kWh EV. Huge difference.

Like the removal of parity rates for selling solar energy back to the grid, cheap home charging for EVs is just something else that will be taken away, and it's starting to look like sooner rather than later. I bet give it another couple of years, and definitely by the time EVs are the only option for new vehicles, and everyone will be on full rate to charge an EV. I can see it coming.

I suspect the max credits would be adjusted if needed to maintain a reasonable balance, especially if it would otherwise get too heavily de-valued. The limit is intended to prevent abuse, not punish legitimate usage of the system.

As for the real-time stuff? The system also requires the Half-Hourly data from your Smart Meter, which can’t be provided in real-time due to DCC limitations. That’s why it has to run the way it does.