OVO Energy - system flaw. £6000+ overcharge given an actual reading following a lot of estimates

LCMSEAcct

My house had a smart gas meter which had ,as far as I am aware, never given a smart reading since it was installed. All the non estimated readings were my own customer readings, so it was decided to be replaced.

The last customer reading I gave was on the 12th December 2022 and from that time until the meter was removed all bills were generated using estimated readings.  Having paid for all the gas up to and including the estimated reading of 10821.61 my original bill, for the month ending 3rd August 2024, showed a closing balance of £382.32 in credit.

Four days after that bill, on the 7th August 2024 the faulty meter was removed and a final, actual, reading of 11267 was taken by the engineer before removal, essentially leaving a deficit of 445.39m^3 of gas between the last paid estimate on the 3rd Aug 2024 and the, engineer read, final meter reading on removal.

The OVO system took the final meter reading and then went back in history to alter the online historical estimates and balances of every one of my bills since the 12th December 2022 to come up with new bill and, more importantly, a new closing balance for the month ending the 3rd Aug 2024 of £5951.17 in debit .

Keep in mind, I had paid for all gas up to and including the original bills estimated units, so the OVO system had effectively charged me £6,333.49 (£382.32 credit to £5951.17 in debit) for 445.39m^3 of gas. By my estimation, those 445.39 units would have had to cost around £1.277 per kWh or, the final engineer read meter reading would have to have been around 21279 (at 5.18p/kWh) to justify a £6,333.49 difference.

To make matters worse, the new bills the system produces replace the previous bills within the paperless, online, account and gives no indication that they have been replaced or altered to the customer. If it wasn't for the fact that I had a previously downloaded bill it would have been significantly harder for me to put across the nature of the error their system produced because, the three people who have been involved in my complaint (even an "Advanced Resolution Specialists"), they primarily refer to the new bills within the system and seem to think that what these new bills are telling them is the whole story.

Any system of computers and people which can charge £6,333.49 for 445.39m^3 of gas and then, after having this pointed out to three company representatives, still think that this is reasonable is obviously seriously flawed.

Take copies of your OVO bills (or make sure they're not deleted by your email system) and check that their system has not over-charged you for the difference between the last paid balance and the new non-estimated reading following a string of bills based on estimates.

Ildhund

Am I to understand that you paid estimated bills for more than a year and a half? And you submitted no meter readings during the period from December 2022 to August 2024? If so, why?

Did you have had access to your online account during this period? OVO's account website is very detailed, with figures for billing, meter readings, usage figures (actual or estimated) and much more; my own account records go back almost five years, with bills recorded ab ovo (sorry about that!). If you were using more gas than OVO were estimating, then of course there would be a recalculation of your charges as soon as a reading became available. If you subtract the reading you took in December 2022 from the installation engineer's reading in August, you can see exactly how much gas you used in that period. Working out what you should have paid for it is not so easy, because there have been seven price changes in the interim, and so someone will have to estimate how much you used in each quarter to arrive at a sensible amount to charge. You can do your own estimate, of course, and confront them with that if it differs widely from theirs, but you'd better have a credible explanation for that difference. I expect they would examine previous years' consumption to see what proportion of a year's usage was consumed in each quarter, so that would be a good starting point. I agree that the debt they're claiming seems high, but I haven't been following gas price changes, so I can't say whether it's too high. I see that the Ofgem's capped price for 2023Q2 was up to ~18p/kWh, a far cry from today's ~6.5p.

What were you expecting OVO to do?

I agree that it's annoying that the website only makes the latest version of a bill available for download, which is why they send a copy (to me by email) every month. Each one has the date it was prepared at the top of it. What did you do with those 19 bills other than pay them?

Each bill consists of an opening balance, a summary of charges and credits and a closing balance. If it transpires that a bill couldn't have been correct, all the following ones will have to change to reflect the new opening balance from the corrected one. Again, what would you expect?
 

LCMSEAcct

Ildhund said:

Am I to understand that you paid estimated bills for more than a year and a half? And you submitted no meter readings during the period from December 2022 to August 2024? If so, why?

Did you have had access to your online account during this period? OVO's account website is very detailed, with figures for billing, meter readings, usage figures (actual or estimated) and much more; my own account records go back almost five years, with bills recorded ab ovo (sorry about that!). If you were using more gas than OVO were estimating, then of course there would be a recalculation of your charges as soon as a reading became available. If you subtract the reading you took in December 2022 from the installation engineer's reading in August, you can see exactly how much gas you used in that period. Working out what you should have paid for it is not so easy, because there have been seven price changes in the interim, and so someone will have to estimate how much you used in each quarter to arrive at a sensible amount to charge. You can do your own estimate, of course, and confront them with that if it differs widely from theirs, but you'd better have a credible explanation for that difference. I expect they would examine previous years' consumption to see what proportion of a year's usage was consumed in each quarter, so that would be a good starting point. I agree that the debt they're claiming seems high, but I haven't been following gas price changes, so I can't say whether it's too high. I see that the < link removed> for 2023Q2 was up to ~18p/kWh, a far cry from today's ~6.5p.

What were you expecting OVO to do?

I agree that it's annoying that the website only makes the latest version of a bill available for download, which is why they send a copy (to me by email) every month. Each one has the date it was prepared at the top of it. What did you do with those 19 bills other than pay them?

Each bill consists of an opening balance, a summary of charges and credits and a closing balance. If it transpires that a bill couldn't have been correct, all the following ones will have to change to reflect the new opening balance from the corrected one. Again, what would you expect?
 

Wow, I write an post telling people to watch for a flaw in in the Ovo system on a forum which is meant to help people and I get trolled from someone who has only partially read my post.

The meter is in an really awkward place to get to on the outside of the house and, quite frankly, it's not my job to read the meter every month for them - especially when they often request that you also photograph the thing as though you're lying to them!

Yes, OVO's website bills are very detailed, and it does go back right to the start of your billing with them - and those bills change, so they're meaningless when trying to make comparisons.  Which was the entire point of my original post.

For info, todays price per kWh is 5.18p, with (in the past year) long period of around 6-7p per kWh and a max of 9.83p per kWh at the start, a far cry from the 18p per kWh.  Even if they had charged me at maximum price 9.83p for the 445 units it should still have only been £511.90 - nowhere near £6k+.

Finally, and to put your entire troll to bed, my reading in Dec 2022 was 8063 with a final read before removal of 11267.  If I had paid nothing for all that gas, and then they charged me at the maximum price in that period for all of the difference, it still only comes in at a total of around £3,750.

Perhaps, rather then trolling with irrelevant questions about why I should do OVOs job for them, and figures which do not apply (unless you think I should be paying £0.18 per kWh for all my gas for a year and a half, just because I didn't do customer readings for a broken meter?) you should post somewhere where you can be useful as a "Forumite".

superkoopauk

Can you post a redacted bill as that doesn't seem right.  The bill should also detail the ppkWh used for each consumption period so it should be possible to work out how the £6,333.49 was calculated.

In other OVO news

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/ovo-pay-ps237-million-customer-complaint-failures

LCMSEAcct

superkoopauk said:

Can you post a redacted bill as that doesn't seem right.  The bill should also detail the ppkWh used for each consumption period so it should be possible to work out how the £6,333.49 was calculated.

In other OVO news

<link removed>

I can't post links etc (I can't even quote without removing links) as I'm a new user, but here are the price change points (in p per kWh) over the course of my bills:

Dec-2022       9.83p

Apr-2023        9.74p

Jul-2023         7.07p

Oct-2023        6.49p

Jan-2024        6.99p

Apr-2024        5.71p

Jul-2024         5.18p

As I said in my reply to Ildhund, it's impossible to get to the amount they over charged me (especially when you take in to account their estimates were not far off the actual usage and I'd paid for all the gas apart from 445m^3) given the consumption and the prices above.

Ildhund

I'm sorry if you thought of me as a troll. I admit I get a bit hot under the collar when I see someone complaining about suddenly receiving a large bill after having being content with the supplier's estimates for a long period, but I was really trying to help.

It certainly looks as if the bill you say you've received is too high, bearing in mind your later comments. I can only suggest you do your own realistic, detailed estimate to compare with theirs. Advanced Resolution Specialists normally only get involved after a complaint has been entered; if their final word was that they stand by the bill they submitted, you can take the case to the Ombudsman after eight weeks have elapsed from the date you submitted that complaint (or it was submitted on your behalf, e.g. by a support agent).

There can really be no excuse for not submitting readings regularly, since you were aware that OVO were operating on estimates. It's not their job to read your meter for you. They do have to take 'reasonable steps' to obtain a reading once a year: a 'reasonable step' might be a line in a letter or email asking you to take and submit a reading. Is it really so difficult to do that, say on the first of each month or at the very least each quarter?

Last, about prices: the 18p/kWh example I gave was taken straight from Ofgem's price cap details: £2193.62/year ex VAT for 12,000 kWh in the London region. I just checked, and I see that I got the charge restriction period wrong and mistakenly read the table for 9b, which was April-September 2022. Sorry about that. It looks as if OVO have been generous, charging less than the capped price: you say the current price is 5.18p, while the lowest current capped price is as far as I can tell 6.4p/kWh (£764.37 p.a.), for 12,000 kWh in the East Midlands region. 

LCMSEAcct

Ildhund said:

I'm sorry if you thought of me as a troll. I admit I get a bit hot under the collar when I see someone complaining about suddenly receiving a large bill after having being content with the supplier's estimates for a long period, but I was really trying to help.

There is an ongoing complaint with them and, given that I do have previous bills, I'm not really expecting to be charged more than 445 units at an energy price somewhere between the minimum and the maximum ppkWh over the period.  In reality, I would expect those units to be spread over the year in a similar fashion to the way the original estimates were calculated because, as you said in your original reply, they should use historical values to predict the estimates and all they have are my readings from before 12th Dec 2022.

The final reading should do nothing to alter the historical usage profile, only to define that there an unaccounted 445 units to distribute following the existing profile.

Just to reiterate, my original post was more of a warning OVO customers to:
 / Check whether the balances are reasonable whenever there is an actual reading taken after a number of estimates
 / do not trust online versions of bills (and along with this make sure that when OVO email you a bill ensure it is for the correct period - 2 of the emailed bills in this period had the correct generation date but were for the previous month)
 / do not be fobbed off by OVO customer service reps pointing to the new set of bills if you think there is an error because, in my experience, they're just following some kind of manual process without understanding the figures they're talking about

My experience of the OVO billing system is that it is not transparent.  In the days of paper bills your previous bill would be the starting point and then, if an adjustment was necessary, it would be explicitly outlined on your current bill along with how that adjustment was generated.