Why are OVO disabling the real-time smart usage features!?

The loss of this feature has really annoyed me, with price increases, it was the only reason I stayed with OVO but now they have removed the USP.

Shocking customer service, reinstate or say goodbye to loyal customers!

Pathetic doesn’t cover the excuses offered!

Hmm, as I was referred to Ovo via the MSE Energy club I guess it may be worth contacting them here as I've had no reply from Ovo

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Another disappointed customer. Feel really let down by Ovo. Promised several years ago that they were working on customer access to data (not displays but numbers). Now my patience has pretty much run out.

I haven't been notified by email, although I've just found a conversation begun 6 days ago by @chrissfoot, who has received such a notification, as have many of the people who commented on his post.
Why didn't I get an email?

If the organisation that you work for relies on digital data (like OVO does) and a "tech problem" arose - how long would it be allowed to go on before somebody got a kicking?

In the organisation that I worked in - it would have been counted in hours.

Why has the "tech problem" with usage data at OVO been going on for months now???

Poor form Ovo

I've emailed Ovo and had a swift response, for which I am grateful. I still think the guys answering the emails and manning the forums are trying to be helpful, but they are just not coming up with good enough answers so we are all left guessing what is actually going on within the software development team at Ovo. Rumours abound - there are security issues ahead of the May 25 deadline, they've run out of storage etc, and my twopennorth is that they may be having resourcing issues and can no longer afford to support a feature that only a minority, albeit a very enthusiastic minority, really use. But given that some of this enthusiastic minority are capable of writing software that would allow us to get our own personal usage data from the smart gateways, I fail to understand why Ovo's advice is to recycle the gateways, rather than giving us the information needed to access them directly.

So they've now turned it off, and my Gas history or costing isn't working at all, the only 'historical' values I can see relate to Electricity, I can't get anything back for Gas.

To me, they're now in breach of Ofgem licensing as mentioned earlier, specifically Condition 34.

I have taken Ovo at my London Home, my Suffolk holiday cottage and for my father in North London. This remote capacity is vital to me. I took Ovo because I liked the UK call centres and I loved the live portal. Yes it has started to get a bit hiccougyh but rather than give up, fix it. I have accepted that I may not be paying least but I am getting service.

I'm afraid that at the end of the year, I will look much more seriously at the offerings of other companies.

Please consider changing your mind. I have enjoyed the Ovo experience.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of your feedback. I’m the Head of Product for OVO Energy and I wanted to take the opportunity to respond directly and give a bit more context to our decision to turn off OVO’s real-time smart usage service.

We’ve been getting complaints about the service being incorrect or unreliable for a while now. You’re absolutely right; in the normal course of events we’d fix it rather than turning it off. However, there are other factors that influenced our decision. We’re in the process of building a new online experience for customers to manage their energy, and our aim is to roll this out to all smart meter customers before the end of the year. The existing OVO Live data service is incompatible with this, and it has built up what’s known in software development as technical debt. Additionally, it would have needed considerable extra work to be compatible with both SMETS1 and the new SMETS2 meters that are going to be installed starting later this year.

I appreciate that it is frustrating to receive the message that we’re turning this off “to bring you something better”, when we’re removing a service that you find useful and not immediately replacing it with anything else. Although OVO Live customers make up fewer than 1% of our users, you are some of our most engaged customers, and we did not take the decision to turn off this service lightly.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask for your help in shaping the product that we’re currently building. In the next couple of months, we’re looking for early adopters to try out the new online experience - which will provide an up-to-date view of your energy charges - and provide feedback. If you’re interested in this, please let me know either by PM or by commenting on this thread.

However, if the real-time service was the reason you chose OVO and you don’t want to stay with us without it, we’ll be sad to see you go, but we understand. We’ll gladly waive your exit fees and we hope that you may consider coming back to us when we have rebuilt the features that you value.

Finally, I’ve seen one or two comments from customers on this thread that have a Smart Gateway but don’t have a Pipit or Chameleon IHD. We’ll send you one free of charge if you send us a PM on Facebook with your full name, DoB and account number.

Thanks,

Cassie