When will I get access to my online account?

Hi @JEL 

We’re very sorry that you can’t log in to your account at the moment. We’re working on fixing things and will be back in touch in the near future with an update. In the meantime, you’ll continue to get your bill every month by email or post as usual. If you have any questions or need help with anything, please chat, call, or email our support team.

When we have more information on this from the team, we will update all related threads.

Does anyone have any update on hen we I’ll have account online access

Hi @garystokey 

We’re very sorry that you can’t log in to your account at the moment. We’re working on fixing things and will be back in touch in the near future with an update. In the meantime, you’ll continue to get your bill every month by email or post as usual. If you have any questions or need help with anything, please chat, call, or email our support team.

When we have more information on this from the team, we will update all related threads.

The big issue I have with having no online account I have a electric car and need to link my online account to the charge anytime app so I can get reduced rates when I charge my car had no online access since last March so I am paying twice as much to charge my car than if I had the app running. Over so nearly a year now you can imagine how much I have lost in over payed. Charging rates

Hi @garystokey 

I can definitely understand why it’s even more annoying for yourself in this circumstance, so I’m really sorry that you’ve been kept waiting for so long. 

I did get in touch with the Charge Anytime team to check if there’s anything they can do, but unfortunately there’s nothing they can do to bypass it, and you will have to wait until the account has been made possible to migrate over to the new billing system. This is being worked on and as soon as possible it will be changed over and Charge Anytime will be available to you. 

We’re really sorry to keep you waiting for Charge Anytime and the online account access for so long.

I too am an IT specialist of over 40 years.  The “correct” way to implement a new system is to build it then acceptance test it in a sandboxed environment with anonymous data. After that a phased migration should be carried out.  Start off with say 10% of accounts followed (if all is OK) by the rest of the accounts in a phased approach probably over a weekend.  That way, customers keep their access until the weekend of their migration & only suffer minimal downtime.

Many comments here about lack of communication by OVO.  Not read a lot of replies, but my angle is that by not providing online access & only monthly bills OVO are preventing those affected from saving energy and thus reducing their bills.  Customers cannot see detailed usage on a monthly bill, we could, therefore be paying this awful company more than we need to.  I took this to the ombudsman last year & won compensation. Perhaps if everybody affected by this issue did the same it might encourage OVO to hurry up.  Personally I've had enough.  I can switch in early April (I have a fix that I can leave without penalty then) & will do so as soon as I can.  I MAY reconsider IF I get access before then, but with the deadline of Q1 I doubt that will happen.  Its such a shame as OVO used to be a really good company when they first started.

While you are right about how the correct way to migrate works - and OVO did in fact do this - what you don’t have is the last piece of the puzzle, which is why online access was turned off early. Only OVO and the Forum Volunteers here have access to that information as it’s still under NDA at this time.

For the rest, all you need to do is dig through the forum history to find many clues as to how this was otherwise done as a phased migration over many years. I found traces ranging back to 2017 about the new system being on the way!

On a personal level however, I don’t necessarily run migrations that way myself. Given the nature of the migrations I undertake and the use cases they’re for, I’m able to be a LOT more agile about doing things than just about anyone else in the IT industry would even dream of doing. Not everything has to follow the usual rules - and as many who know me are aware, I’m well known for breaking conventions and pulling off unique magic tricks.

Ridiculous, isn’t it. I don’t know any other IT professional who’d agree that it’s normal to leave customers without online accounts for a year. I’m sure OVO will receive “guidance” from the ombudsman for that at some stage.

Actually, I know a few who would agree because they know the reason why it happened. Ultimately, without knowing the full story you can never make a truly informed decision with these things.

Chances are Ofgem probably already knows about it and has accepted the explanation.