Issue with Ovo Post Smart Meter Installation

PoppyPastGo · 14 April at 10:18AM

We (husband and I) currently going though a situation with Ovo that is increasingly bizzare and I believe others may have encountered this problem.

Background

We live in Scotland and have Economy 10. We are one of the customers that was originally with SSE Hydro, but got moved to Ovo when they took over. We have been with SSE/Ovo for about 10 years, paying a mix of estimated bills and giving readings via phone. Since Ovo took over, we pay monthly by phone receiving bills by post.

We have been increasingly unhappy with Ovo and had been looking to switch providers. Because of the signal switch off we were told we had to get a Smart Meter fitted.

In December ’24 a Smart Meter was installed by a Ovo engineer.

On to the issue

December ’24 we didn’t receive a bill

January ’25 Still no bill. We called and were told that our account was on hold while it was upgraded to a Smart Meter one, but that they could see they were receiving the signal from the meter.

February ’25 Still no bill

March ’25 Still no bill. Another call with a variation of what was said in January.

We talked about it and decided that we weren’t happy. The money would be mounting up and we didn’t want to be hit with a massive bill which would prevent us from changing supplier, so we decided to make a complaint to Ovo. We decided to call them to let them know this before following up with an email.

This phone call lasted approximately 1 hour.

The Customer Service Adviser who picked up my call was extremely helpful and went above and beyond to help sort it out. It was during this call that we found out that our account had been put on hold about a week after the Smart Meter had been fitted. This was due to a discrepancy with the final reading that had been supplied by the engineer and what they believed it should have been based on previous readings. The adviser I spoke to had managed to get someone in the department that worked with the Smart Meters to look into it and said that a final reading had been entered incorrectly by the engineer who installed the meter. The mater was now rectified and we would start receiving bills. They were not able to provide us with an amount of what we now owed, but estimated it would be about £1000. We were surprised by this, as our annual estimated amount was under £1500.

When the meter was fitted, the engineer left us a leaflet about the smart meter which contained the final reading figures. We had also taken a photograph of the final reading before the meter was removed. Had we known this was the issue, we could have provided them with this reading.

We emailed a complaint to Ovo about this, stating- among other points- that they did not inform us that this was happening. The onus had been placed onto us to contact them. Nor did they inform us of the known issue when did we contacted them. In fact, the only correspondence we did receive from Ovo during this time was a letter informing us that energy prices were going up in April.

In the complaint, we also questioned whey they didn’t bill us for the interim period using the readings that they were receiving from our Smart Meter which they had confirmed was transmitting and working properly.

So far, we have only received an automated receipt of email response from Ovo regarding our complaint- which they have appeared to have ignored.

Which leads me on to the next development.

We received a letter from Ovo this week, stating that their latest meter reading has shown that they have been underestimating our energy usage since August 2023. They are not back billing us for this, but have now recalculated our energy use for the last 12 months and as of 3rd April 2025 we owe them just under £900. It does not contain the meter readings they have used to reach this conclusion, so we do not know if they are the correct or incorrect ones. This also runs contrary to previous correspondence where they have claimed they have overestimated our energy usage. Furthermore, at their request over a period of over 12 months we have provided them with meter readings which they accepted. We still have photographs of some of these readings.

We will be challenging them on all of this.

We are just baffled and distressed by this point. We have still not received any bills and can only assume that the amount is going up all the time.

In Summary

They have not responded to our formal complaint.

They have failed to issue a bill for the past 4 months although they could have

They are claiming inaccuracy in meter readings presumably supplied by us despite having accepted them and had a final reading by one of their engineers.

Their actions are preventing us from switching supplier due to unknown arrears that are mounting

They are also putting us into debt and damaging our credit rating

MWT · 14 April at 10:28AM

I may have missed it in your post, but if there have been no bills how are they putting you into debt and damaging your credit rating?

Fortunately you have the closing meter readings and you have the readings on your new meter so there should be no question of estimated readings being used.

On the last bill that you received prior to the meter swap, were the end of period readings actual or estimated?

Also, given you were on Economy 10 and presumably still are, have you verified that your use of power is being correctly recorded on the appropriate registers as some have had issues with the meter not using the same times for switching on a heating circuit as they are using to switch the register used to record the consumption.

PoppyPastGo · 14 April at 6:03PM

Thank you for the reply

We will check the Smart Meter switching times and see if that can shed any light on anything.

We received the bill through the post today. There is a lot of paper to go though, but we've found a few things already that are not making sense. My husband also spoke with them on the phone today. It was quite an odd conversation during which the customer service adviser claimed that we have never provided them with a meter reading, but then backtracked when we said we had photographic evidence of readings we submitted.

From what we can gather from both the phone call and the bills, it seems they have based everything on estimates until they received the final reading from the meter, failing to amend their estimates based on readings we have supplied.

We have been in touch with a local agency who are going to look through everything with us and give us some advice.

We have also already started making enquiries with other energy companies about switching, but we have to get our meter registered to the correct address first (another ongoing issue we have had with them)

We still haven't received a response to our original complaint so will be following it up. We also have a bit more to add after today's conversations with them.

We hoped having a smart meter would be the end of any issues, but it seems to have been the start of something instead.

Kenzosnan · 7 May at 8:14PM

My mother had a smart meter installed 5 years ago that has never worked. Ovo know this but have not fixed it. She now lacks capacity and is in a care home. I have deputyship and am trying to get a final bill. They are saying that they can estimate the bill with no readings. They have been estimating bills for the past 2 years for an empty property (the boiler is turned off). When I pointed this out to them they said they only have my word but they can still charge what they like with no meter readings.