A frugal life is an easy life!

Meter readings underpin all energy company charges to the customer. They have to. It’s standard practise for the industry.

So when Ovo and SSE are unable to account for the meter readings they have used, on their records and used to bill customers, it is a very strange state of affairs.

When Ovo’s senior resolutions manager explains what SSE have done and it can be proven that what is being claimed/they are saying, is clearly false, as a customer, I would expect Ovo’s senior resolution manager to go back to SSE and clear the matter up with them, before reporting back to the customer.
(Is this unreasonable?)

That Ovo’s senior resolution manager is unable or unwilling to do this, instead choosing to offer a token “goodwill gesture” to close the complaint and leave the customer facing a huge bill, without any explanation of the false meter readings, raises fundamental questions about the policies Ovo and SSE are following.

Here’s the meter readings, you judge for yourself.

• 27^th April 2021 – actual reading of 1847 (SSE confirmed)
• 21^st May 2021 – actual reading of 1414 (Ovo senior manager’s claim was “submitted by customer” after viewing “the online portal entry”) (SSE cannot confirm this)
• 25^th May 2021 – actual reading of 2148 (Ovo’s senior resolution manager and SSE confirmed)
• 12^th January 2022 – actual reading of 2422 (SSE and Ovo’s senior resolution manager confirmed)
• 19^th January 2022 – actual reading of 1644 (Ovo senior manager’s claim was “submitted via the online portal by the customer (web app or website)” SSE cannot confirm this)
• 30^th June 2022 – estimated reading of 1821 (final account reading sent by SSE to Ovo, prior to transfer of account to Ovo)
• 3^rd July 2022 – actual reading of 3833 taken from smart meter by Ovo advisor

After receiving this information from Ovo’s senior resolution manager, two readings stood out straight away.
I’ve highlighted them both in bold italic for you to see.

The meter readings claimed to be the case by Ovo’s senior manager, of 21^st May 2021 and 19^th January 2022, cannot be accurate.

Here’s why.

27^th April 2021 – meter reading of 1847 is an actual reading, confirmed by SSE and accepted by Ovo’s senior resolutions manager.
21^st May 2021 – meter reading of 1414 is claimed by Ovo’s senior manager, to have been submitted by the customer via the website or web app.

1. Customer has no internet device and is over 80 years old, so would not know how to submit a meter reading “online”.
2. Confirmed that family representing them had no access/registration to website and hadn’t downloaded SSE’s web app (no such account was set up on customer’s account)
3. If the customer had submitted a meter reading of 1414 (which is 433 metered units LOWER) SSE’s system would have rejected the reading.
   As confirmed by Ovo’s senior manager later and SSE staff, the meter reading submitted would have to follow on from the previous meter reading on SSE’s system, or it is rejected.

This immediately set alarm bells ringing for me.
I replied to Ovo’s senior manager and offered written copies as proof.
He didn’t want to see them.
I asked how could the customer or representative submit a LOWER reading via the online portal, when the system would have rejected it?

Ovo’s senior manager declined to answer.

All he stated was that, “The meter reading of 1414 was submitted by the customer or a 3^rd party via the online portal”

I contacted SSE staff.
“Can a 3^rd party, ie, a meter reader working on behalf of SSE, submit a lower meter reading than is currently on SSE’s billing system?”
The reply was an emphatic, “No.”
“To submit a lower meter reading than is on SSE’s billing system would require a manual over-ride, as the billing system cannot calculate for negative energy usage.”

So to have the meter reading of 1414 put on the customer’s account, would have required a manual over-ride by an SSE member of staff, which shows clearly that the customer/their representative/a 3^rd party, could not have submitted the lower meter reading via SSE’s online portal, as the Ovo senior resolutions manager had claimed.

I went back to Ovo’s senior manager, once again, he was unable to answer.

Instead, he stated, “you/customer/3rd party have provided via the online service, it is the online portal entry that I have viewed. This is not a point of debate, it absolutely happened.”

Sorry Mr Ovo senior manager, it absolutely did not.
The only way it could have been put on to the customer’s account, is by an SSE member of staff, over-riding their own billing system.

Then the question of why SSE stated in writing that the current meter reading on their billing system was 2148?
Why not the 1414 as claimed by Ovo’s senior manager?

I then questioned the other (highlighted) meter reading of 19^th January 2022, which I was told by Ovo’s senior resolutions manager, was a customer/representative/3^rd party actual reading of 1644.

I pointed out the same points as above, about not being possible to submit lower readings, but with additional points of fact, that the reading couldn’t have been submitted by the family or a 3^rd party.

Ovo’s senior manager claimed that the 1644 actual reading was submitted via the online portal on 19^th January 2022.
SSE have confirmed in writing that their billing system had on the 12^th January 2022 (7 days earlier) accepted an actual reading (that SSE based their billing upon) of 2422.

Discrepancies:

1. Why was the actual reading of 1644 not shown on any SSE billing?
2. How did the alleged meter reading of 1644, said to have been submitted the same day as the bill was generated, get used?
   (There is a 48 hour delay to meter readings, before they show on the billing account)
3. As SSE confirmed they were using the 2422 actual meter reading, why 7 days later did they supposedly use a reading of 1644?

I thought my questions were quite reasonable and were at least worthy of further investigation.

Ovo’s senior resolution manager thinks that “we are going around in circles” and these discrepancies in meter readings don’t require further investigation.

Bearing in mind that these alleged meter readings are the root cause of an extra £652 bill (already taken from customer’s credit), I’d say it was important that these questions were answered.

One final point on these mysterious meter readings:

Ovo’s senior resolution manager stated in one of his replies, that “There were no [meter] reading entries for January 12^th 2022.”

He then stated in the same reply to another point, “That [2422 actual meter reading] was a reading that was provided online on 12/01/2022”

Now when it’s factored in, that the bill being questioned, is the only bill in over two years covered, that SSE haven’t transferred over to Ovo, available on the customer’s online account to view, it’s a little odd, don’t you think?