SSE supply taken over by OVO

Alcosunup

I had confirmation that OVO would be taking over both my gas and electric supplies.  I pay my invoices quarterly in full.  When the transfer too place I was advised by SSE that there was a balance on my account!! Not sure why.  I then received an invoice for OVO wanting to charge me foe the privilege of transferring to them.  It was not my decision to transfer my accounts so why should I be charged an admin fee.  It may only be a small amount but if they are charging all their incoming customers this amount the fat cats are getting fatter.   Has only else experienced this?

ariarnia

a balance on your account could be that the quarterly invoices aren't exact payments but are one quarter of your estimated annual bill? that would mean you would have credit on your account this time of year ready for the winter higher usage. 

is that the £4 monthly fee for paying by anything other than monthly DD? if so thats standard for anyone with ovo and you could always think about moving to monthly DD for the discount or to octopus or one of the other suppliers that are still taking new customers (but i don't know if any of them let people pay quarterly or not). 

if it's not that then it would be good to now what was actually said in the email about what the admin fee was actually for. 

EssexHebridean

Could the balance on the account be because the supplier you're transferring to works things out monthly, so they are looking at the past couple of months use a being "outstanding" and their system flags them up as needing payment? 

BUFF

Are you sure that you are understanding correctly?
OVO bought SSE energy services. You say that you had an oustanding balance, could OVOs invoice be for the outstanding balance that was previously with SSE?

Jonboy_1984

What is the precise wording of the charge on your bill?

If it says “balance adjustment” it is simply them moving your credit or debit balance over as they raise a final bill on the SSE account, and then move the remaining balance over to OVO.

Note if you have given a meter reading close to the move date (less than a week) they may have ignored it and used an estimate. If they get another reading they may adjust both the SSE final bill and the OVO balance but it took almost a week for both platforms to reflect the change when they moved my property last year.

They did under-estimate my final quarterly bill on SSE by around a third and then wouldn’t take a meter reading on ovo for around 6 weeks. When they did take a reading and adjust back their calculations worked out to within  around 20pence of mine.

(They do also have their own forum with people familiar with all their terms and the recurring issues.)