Why has OVO exaggerated my projected usage estimates after I got a new meter?

Sorry to hear about your experiences trying to communicate this Direct Debit recommendation issue to our Support team, @martinkressman. 

Jess_OVO has raised this, as it sounds like your ‘Projected usage’ figure is wrong and needs fixing. In the meantime whilst this request is in a queue to be worked, if you get any more payment changes as a result of this, the Support team will be able to help. I’d recommend going via web chat where you can quickly link to this thread, here.

Hope it gets sorted quickly! 

Why will OVO Energy not provide me with a manual calculation of my Direct Debit amount despite agreeing with me that the amount generated in early April by the automatic system was seriously wrong?

All my requests have been ignored.

Hiya @martinkressman !

Unfortunately, it’s now a bank holiday weekend so @Tim_OVO and @Jess_OVO might not be back until Tuesday, but I’ll let them know about this thread as they might be able to help further.

It’s possible that you might need to put some more readings in to help the billing platform re-calculate more accurate figures and give better suggestions. I don’t remember asking if you have a smart meter or not, but if you don’t have one or it’s set to Monthly mode, one of the tricks that can help is to put a reading in at least once a week. The more often you can put readings in, the faster and more accurate the suggestions become. You don’t have to have a smart meter to use this fix and it won’t work with one that’s actively submitting in Half-Hourly or Daily mode, but it will help with ones that are in Monthly mode or where you don’t have one at all.

If the data isn’t available, then I’m afraid the calculations can’t be number crunched and this will prevent you from getting accurate figures. 

The data is available. I have submitted readings religiously on the 13th of the month for the last 2 ¼ years. OVO Energy has all the information it needs to make the calculation manually. My meter was changed in November 2020 following the failure of the previous meter. It is a conventional 5 port meter. OVO Energy has acknowledged that there is a bug in the software and this meter change was responsible for the exaggeration of the estimate. The following formed part of a reply from OVO Energy earlier this month: “I can also see that we have raised a case on your account as since you had a meter exchange in late November, your EAC is around 7000 more than it was previously leading to the Direct Debit communications asking for erroneous figures. This is still ongoing and there is no timeframe for this issue to be resolved.”

As a result of this failing why will OVO Energy not provide me with a manual calculation despite repeated requests?

My calculations show that my Direct Debit is £84/month greater than it should be.

Thanks for the info.

It sounds as if your account might be in a Billing Suspension right now due to the issues, but I can’t say for sure as forum volunteers don’t have access to any of the systems outside of the forum itself. When a Billing Suspension is in effect, your payments still go in and get added to your account as usual, but certain billing related tasks are temporarily paused until the suspension is lifted. This is never considered as your fault and won’t affect things like your credit rating - it’s just a technical measure to help prevent the billing from generating invalid bills. From my understanding, manually recalculating Direct Debits isn’t possible while a Billing Suspension is active. 

The way that MyOVO works however means you can still see how much you’re spending and most of the features carry on working as usual - you just won’t get a proper statement in the post or via email for a while. It is also worth noting that even if your Direct Debit payments are higher than they should be, you’ll never actually pay for energy you don’t use and you can ask for a refund at anytime. If there’s an active Billing Suspension though, you may need to ask the Support Team to do a manual refund by overriding the system from their end. However, once OVO’s systems recognise that your usage is lower than estimated, this should force it to recalculate your recommended payments and will almost certainly cause them to drop.

Hang in there for now, and this should be sorted out. I’ve asked Tim and Jess to see if they might be able to help further with any ideas as to what’s happening, but they might not be back until Tuesday due to the bank holiday.

So, while this error, created by OVO Energy, goes on for an indefinite length of time, OVO Energy is taking £84/mth too much from my bank account which I can ill afford. This cannot be allowed to go on.

You say: “ This is never considered as your fault.” Whose fault will it be when my bank account becomes overdrawn?

If my account is in a Billing Suspension, through no fault of my own, why cannot OVO Energy be HONEST and not just fail to address my concerns or deflect them? All I have received is to have had my messages ignored or replies, like yours, that kick to can down an endless road.

My most recent statement from 18/5/21, more than five weeks into the process, was fine.

You say: “Hang in there for now, and this should be sorted out.” This is of no comfort to me and sounds like jam tomorrow. I have been waiting for seven weeks now and OVO Energy are no nearer to resolving the issue. They have even stated in a message dated 18/5/21 “This is still ongoing and there is no timeframe for this issue to be resolved.”

In the meantime, OVO Energy is draining my bank account by £84/mth. Nice one OVO. If I were employed by OVO Energy I would be ashamed of how this fiasco has been managed.

I’m sorry for the trouble, but as a forum volunteer I can’t make any changes to your account myself and I don’t have access to any internal systems.

I know Tim and Jess very well as a result of being here and I know that they are truly dedicated to making the forum a success. It’s actually more complicated than you might think and there’s a lot of back office processes that go into fixing billing related issues.

I’ve had a look back through previous threads and Jess has previously flagged up similar issues with the team on your behalf, I’ll see if she knows of any updates on progress once she’s back. Your Direct Debit payments can also be manually adjusted by the Support Team on request if needed. You don’t need to use the Coronavirus related 20% reduction option as there’s a way to manually force the regular payments to be reduced to more realistic levels in cases such as your own.

If you’re still unhappy with the service though, I would strongly recommend raising this as a formal complaint via the Complaints Process. If you’ve already done that and reached a deadlock, you may want to ask the Energy Ombudsman for further assistance and they’ll take a look. OVO does prefer to try to resolve complaints much earlier in the process and without having to have Ombudsman intervention, but OVO will fully co-operate if you do end up going down that route.

You say: “….. there’s a lot of back office processes that go into fixing billing related issues.”

Am I supposed to be sorry for these people? I wonder how sorry they are for me, a customer, who is the victim of OVO Energy’s software bugs and who kick the can down the road saying that “there is no timeframe for this issue to be resolved.”

In this situation OVO Energy should be doing their utmost to rectify the failure and to prevent my financial embarrassment.

This is yet another example of OVO Energy’s appalling customer service.

You may relay this message to the Support Team.

Unfortunately, I can’t relay messages to any teams on behalf of other members as I don’t have that ability. The best I can do is notify the Community Moderators about threads that may need further assistance and wait for someone to stop by. As it’s a bank holiday weekend, I don’t know if they’ll be around until Tuesday but I’ve already notified them about this thread.

This forum is volunteer led and I’m a forum volunteer rather than an OVO employee, so I don’t have access to internal systems. What I can say is that there’s usually a timeframe of around 45 days to resolve cases where possible at the very most, but that it’s usually much faster than that.

However, It appears that you might not be willing to accept my assistance, so I’ll be withdrawing from this thread for now. Other volunteers might stop by later though.

Thanks for your help.

Meanwhile my bank account is haemorrhaging money courtesy of OVO Energy.