OVO Energy - anyone else tried to use these?

Catslovelycats

Hi. Reading through this thread I can't work out smart meters. Are people saying that if you switch to Ovo you have to have a smart meter installed? TIA

victor2

catslovelycats wrote: »

Hi. Reading through this thread I can't work out smart meters. Are people saying that if you switch to Ovo you have to have a smart meter installed? TIA

Not at all. I'm with OVO, don't have smart meters and they haven't suggested fitting some.
What can be a small issue is if you already have smart meters and are switching to somebody like OVO, the meters may no longer be treated as smart. There's a lack of standardisation and what is smart for one supplier is dumb to another...

Catslovelycats

Thanks victor2.

Robin9

I look after my MIL's utilities and OVO are just about to fit Smart metets.

Hooray

No more asking her to crawl into the cupboard under the stairs.

carljfree

We have been with OVO for over a year and are generally happy with them but the infrastructure behind the smart meter scheme is clearly not up to the task. We had smart meters installed at the end of December 2014. We were already OVO customers and still are. Our assumption was that we would not have to submit meter readings. Wrong! We were not billed at all in January, February or March and no readings were uploaded onto our account. This has nothing to do with the smart meter being installed by another energy supplier. It was installed by OVO (or rather, by a Siemens engineer working for OVO). A couple of days ago OVO emailed me asking me to confirm the serial number on my smart meters. I provided the numbers and am hoping that at last these smart meters will start living up to the promises that were made about them. But despite the failure of the new meters to do what we were told to do - OVO are still good value and we are sticking with them.

Edwardgdee

I've used OVO for almost 3 years. I've found them efficient, particularly when they handled a house move where there was an overlap of some months and they merged the two separate accounts into one, carrying over a credit balance at my request.

A month or so back they phoned me to offer to install a smart meter. I said no thanks as I consider it an over-complicated immature bit of kit at the moment and I would derive little or no benefit from using it.. They were surprised at my rejection but accepter it.

Walker_woman

I have to say that ovo is the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.
Had to dispute initial reading as they didn't like it. Took 6 weeks to sort during which time previous supplier wanted payment
Wanted to pay on a card as a one off . . The system wouldn't allow it
Phoning them a nightmare
Tweeting them equally bad
Have to take monthly readings
Altered my dd without asking me could get in touch with them to continue overpayment

Seriously wouldn't touch with a barge pole

Walker_woman

I have to say that ovo is the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.
Had to dispute initial reading as they didn't like it. Took 6 weeks to sort during which time previous supplier wanted payment
Wanted to pay on a card as a one off . . The system wouldn't allow it
Phoning them a nightmare
Tweeting them equally bad
Have to take monthly readings
Altered my dd without asking me could get in touch with them to continue overpayment

Seriously wouldn't touch with a barge pole

Gloomendoom

Have you ever had dealings with Npower?

colin206

I had the pleasure of OVO for a year. OVOs customer service is wonderfully pleasant to deal with but are absolutely useless at their jobs.
I joined to get Smart meters and a good fixed deal. The deal turned out not to be as good as the unfixed prices fell like a stone just after I signed up. Just my luck.
The smart meters took a few months to install and was painless. however the back office could not get readings form the meters for over 9 months. Multiple calls to OVO customer service failed to get any benefit. My credit amount grew and I could not get bills. OVO had a large amount of my money with them earning a tiny bonus interest which was sort of nice.
Eventually I decided to switch from OVO when the deal was over.
I did the research and found out that the best deal for me was First Utility and FU customer service said they could take over the smart meters.
One month into the new contract - FU now say that OVO meters are not compatible with FU and FU will reinstall an FU Electric Smart meter in about a months time and surprise..... FU don't do Gas smart meters so I will have to give gas meter readings after all.
It seems to me that the Smart meter market is not joined up. If you need to change your meter every time you change supplier switching will be less popular.
I have no idea how to read the smart meter manually. The method I was shown and researched on the interweb does not agree with OVO's readings.:T