Correction. Hidden in the terms and conditions it actually changes from 1st October. Subscription services start November.

 

From the email: > If you don't choose a monthly plan, your pay as you go rate will update on 4 November.

 

So what are the best alternatives? Over to Octopus? I need something that'll play nice with an Ioniq 6 and an Ohme charger...

 

I use Octopus IOG, they have confirmed the low rate will remain at 7p.

If you use my referral code you get £50

Gaz

 

Can somebody post something which makes sense of any of these claims, it just seems like nonsense to me.

Gaz

 

OVO are doubling their price and introducing a subscription at a similarly terrible rate. That's all.

 

Note that they are advertising the subscription in "miles" but obviously pricing in kWh, and using a 4 miles per kWh conversion rate. So your £27.50 gets you 175kWh of at-home charging, or 15.7p/kWh if you don't make use of the away-from home voucher. That is worth £120, so even if you spend all of that it amounts to making at-home charging cost 10p/kWh. And that assumes you aren't stuck using some other network for your public charging - bp pulse is notably not on there.

 

The only one that are consistent with prices seems to be EON. I am not saying that will last forever, but for now they are. Yes, the reduced the hours from 7 to 6 at night and bumped to 7.5p/kW, but they still steady. You don't even need a charger, you can use 3 pin plug if you want and still get the rate for the whole house

 

Yep, simplest is often best

 

I got this email a few hours ago, and have been trying to make sense of it...

So if I'm understanding this correctly: a monthly subscription, which if you don't use the 'allowance' you lose it.
We have two EVs, so we would need two subscriptions... my mileage fluctuates so the monthly subscription wouldn't be worth my while.

Which leaves us to 'pay as you go', which yes, doubles the cost from 7p to 14p.

Crikey, that's not good.

So what happens now? We have just locked in with OVO for our gas and electricity which both have a £50 exit fee.

Have any of the other suppliers that offer 7p (ish) tariffs making any noises about increasing the cost? This from OVO seems to have come out of the blue.

 

At least as an existing Octopus customer my 7p has been confirmed to remain unchanged the marginal increase in peak rate and standing charge is supposedly cheaper than many other suppliers.

Whatever OVO charge it should be easy enough to work out hiw much more could be saved by switching to Octopus with a referral of £50 reducing the overall OVO exit fee to £50.

Probably not too many miles needed to break even with savings thereafter assuming compatible EVSE or car.

Gaz

 

Having just bought a Cupra, I was about to switch to make use of this offer. I wonder if the 30,000 miles still stands?

Up to 30,000 free miles thanks to our partnership offer with CUPRA

Buy or lease a fully-electric CUPRA from a registered dealership and add Charge Anytime to your OVO energy tariff to enjoy up to 30,000 free EV miles over 3 years.

www.ovoenergy.com

 

Thanks, guys.
Very useful. I was wondering if I would be able to leave without fees as this seems like a huge change.

Gaz, I followed your referral link and had a quote through. The only difficulty in trying to work out the calculations, is that Octopuss' standing charge are half that of OVO (£1 a day with OVO), but my current electricity plan is 23p kW/h, compared with Octopuss at 27p.

I guess I'll have to work out exactly how much energy we have used charging the EVs etc. SIGH!

 

Thanks, guys.
Very useful. I was wondering if I would be able to leave without fees as this seems like a huge change.

Gaz, I followed your referral link and had a quote through. The only difficulty in trying to work out the calculations, is that Octopuss' standing charge are half that of OVO (£1 a day with OVO), but my current electricity plan is 23p kW/h, compared with Octopuss at 27p.

I guess I'll have to work out exactly how much energy we have used charging the EVs etc. SIGH!

Shoving a few numbers into a spreadsheet is worthwhile if you can see how much power was used over 12 months with the amount refunded enabling a suitable reduction to differentiate between normal and car charging.

The big benefit with Octopus is that the 7p rate applies to the whole house.
I have a battery which charges overnight so I never pay my higher rate of 27.77p for anything, it's all 7p.

Without a battery people can run some things over night to move things into the cheaper period.

You might do tumble drying over night and run the dish washer for example.

Yes, you pay more for day time and peak power but charging the EV for half as much should make a big difference without any further fiddling.
The standing charge for gas has been reduced for me as I moved from an 18 month fix to a cheaper 12 month fix FOC so I find Octopus seem to do their best to help me save money.

I'd been pro OVO for many years but with everything they have stripped back over the past few years I rarely recommend them any longer.

From what you say you'd be saving well over £100 a year on standing charges alone so that's a tick in a box for Octopus.

Gaz

 

OK

I looked at what's going on and it's quite simple.

Cgarge Anytime as we know it is dead.
The new option gas three tiers.
One hives 14p oer jWh car charging.
One adds a voucher fir charging away from home up to a certain value otherwise no different.
The top tier is more of the same.

The reality is that a cast number of Charge Anytime customers joined because they don't do a lot of charging and those who did may have left when they kntroduced their £100 oer household restriction.
Nobody wants to cgarge away from home so their vouchers will have very little value to many of their customers leaving them facing 14p per kWh cgarging at a point where mileage oer kWh is decreasing due to the onset of winter.

Restrictions might be slightly different from one tier to the other but it doesn't make any sense for a majority of customers to stick with it.

The only customers really stuck woukd be those who have no choice other tgan daytime charging.

As to everyone else there are numerous options where they can oay 7p per kWh or marginally less or marginally more.

The fee to leave of £50 oer tariff can be heavily reduced if taking up a referral and netting £50 for joining Octopus or Eon among others.

Perhaps for those who recently joined OVO they coukd complain and gave the fees reduced ir cancelled for leaving as some have similarly been rewarded after buying an Ohme which was recently dropped by OVO.

My recommendation would be for Octopus.


Gaz

 

My recommendation would be for Octopus AND USE MY REFERRAL CODE PLEASE

Fixed that for you 😜

 

It makes it even more complicated if you have solar and a battery. Trying to calculate the difference 😡
Will I get power move a flex which is £7 off a month.
This month so far I have used £3.70 of charge anytime.

 

The hardest thing to swallow is that for quite some time you had to swap your chargepoint for an Indra Pro to use Anytime with OVO and solar panels. Quite an expense for some of us.

What you do get though is the discount partially eaten up by the running costs of the chargepoint itself which was fine until they limited the refund to £100 per month.
With their latest update to the plan it seems oay double or spend time sat at expensive chargers you'd rather not use.

I'm sure some people might do just about the right amount of charging and hone ysage for OVOs 14p offering to work out a better deal than paying 7p per kWh but maybe 40 odd p extra a day in peak home usage. However if the OVO standing charge is 40 odd p more than Octopus it cancels out.

Use this link to sign up to Octopus - Friend referral | Octopus Energy



Gaz

 

Towards the bottom of their email in the terms and conditions, OVO do say

"We hope you'll stay with us, but you can switch energy suppliers at any time. If you're on a fixed-rate tariff, you can switch without "exit fees" by completing this form."

 

I've not had any emails from OVO.
It would be a pain to have to move away as it needs all setting back up, schedules etc. and it's been working fine for 6 months of ownership.
OVO talk direct to my Cupra Born and not the "dumb" charger, but if they're going to double my fuel costs when others aren't then so be it.

 

I've not had any emails from OVO.
It would be a pain to have to move away as it needs all setting back up, schedules etc. and it's been working fine for 6 months of ownership.
OVO talk direct to my Cupra Born and not the "dumb" charger, but if they're going to double my fuel costs when others aren't then so be it.

From what I've read the options might be worth banging into spreadsheet to see if any of the three OVO tiers work for you when compared to Octopus as an example.

As a former OVO customer who previously stuck with them I can say I'm now saving a fortune with Octopus but the figures will be entirely unique to you.

It's worth projecting things for the next 12 months based on mileages and refunds for x kWh from the previous year but even if there's only £100 difference it might be worth jumping ship as there could be extra hidden savings for overnight usage.
I felt very badly let down by OVO a couple of years back, their latest move would probably seem much worse to me now.

IIRC you can easily find the number of kWh OVO refunded you for so using that as the 7p rate for a comparison with Octopus is pretty simple.
Any extra for the peak cost per kWh might be cancelled out by the difference in standing charge if OVO was significantly more than Octopus.

Blow the dust off an old PC and get a spreadsheet running, should help make for an easy decision one way or the other.

Gaz

 

One of the hidden details is that charging outside of the plan is at your normal rate, not the 14p PAYG rate.
So, for example, if you do 900 miles a month and subscribe to the '700 miles package', you end up paying for those final 200 miles (50kWh) at your normal 23.32p/kWh or whatever rate. If you have some months where you have usage peaks then PAYG can suddenly become better value than the plans.

 

It seems a bit like OVO just don't want EV customers any more, as that sounds like a terrible deal all around.

Is there anything redeeming about it?

 

Hmm, well my calculations have uncovered something fishy.
According to my OCO charge app, both our EVs have apparently used (year to date) 508kWh
BUT, according to the OHME app, that states that Ytd is 1700kwh.

What on earth is going on here?
Both our EVs connect directly to OVO, bypassing the OHME app.
If this is true, then I feel royally ripped off!

 

500 kW on 4 m/kWh are 2000 miles, no way you've done this in two cars

 

And right on cue I have received the email too.
I'm not happy with this subscription nonsense for the occasional round trip beyond my car's range and will be looking at moving.
I'm also on a fix, but this is a significant change to the Terms and Conditions and as mentioned upthread is grounds for a free switch.

 

And right on cue I have received the email too.
I'm not happy with this subscription nonsense for the occasional round trip beyond my car's range and will be looking at moving.
I'm also on a fix, but this is a significant change to the Terms and Conditions and as mentioned upthread is grounds for a free switch.

With a change this big I am not sure how legal it if with a £75 per supply so £150 if your dual fuel charge for leaving.

 

This is the pricing given if you go to the sign up page. I am at a total loss to understand how any of the paid subscriptions save money. With the monthly home charging allowance you have to basically use all of it to any money compared to Pay as you go... and the public charging allowance of £120 a year is a laughable joke for anyone that does a lot of public charging (given it costs £27.50 per month!).

 

500kWh at 7p is £35.
If they allowed you to charge from this allowance at chargers their app supports or from home then to some it represents a worthwhile saving.
At 80p it's £400.

Even if they split it 50/50 it would be a useful saving to some but nasser of people only ever charge from home and many more only charge away occasionally.

You have to wonder if they hired a new tea-boy who's gone way above his station and this is all a huge mistake.

500kWh at 14p is obviously £70 so you'd pay only £9.50 more per month or £114 per year for the voucher which could net you £240 worth of charge on the road so even using things to the limit you'd barely make a dent in the 14p standard charge.

Something is very very wrong with their thought processes behind this.

Gaz

 

Seems they've decided their experiment with an EV charging tariff has failed and they're going to cut their losses. Anyone they can get to stay on or sign up due to ignorance will pay some change to make them feel better, and meanwhile they can pretend they have an EV tariff in case anyone from the government asks.

 

I suspect the accounts department has got involved and the bosses want to make the same margins as a regular customer and clearly they haven't been.
So guess between 10p-12p includes enough margin to make the required margin.

 

FYI - The exit fee removal form link is near the bottom of the email.
Boy oh boy, the OVO forum is not a happy place!

 

Quick question for the Octopus users here.
Do they 'average' out your usage over the year so you pay the same monthly DD? Ovo do that which obviously means you end up with a credit in the account to make top for heavy winter gas usage.

Checking mine with Ovo shows I have over £800 in there, be certainly useful to get that back!

 

I pay £100 per month then get them to refund me.
With solar export they often owe me much more than I have just paid and they are happy to refund as much as I want, even taking my balance down to zero. It could differ without PV but they seem pretty much OK as long as you never owe them anything.

I have a £200 refund on it's way right now.

Gaz

 

All seems very confusing being with OVO.
With octopus and it's easy to understand. 7p for 6 hrs plus extra hours occasionally. With my home battery I'm averaging 9p kWh average whole house Could get that down nearer 7.5-8p if I paid more attention.

 

Same direct debit over the year. But since having an EV I'm ironically using more energy but bills are less than before. So built up £900 credit. I shall request some of that back which is easy to do to.

 

This Ovo forum page discusses it

Meet the new Charge Anytime! | The OVO Forum

Charge Anytime is evolving - we’re introducing monthly plans You can now choose a new, easy way of paying for your EV charging. One simple monthly payment, whether you’re smart charging at home, or out and about.* Existing OVO customers are first in line to try it out. Pick a plan now and it...

forum.ovoenergy.com

 

This is terrible news, firstly they are honouring the special scheme for purchasers of VW, SEAT & Skoda and the will retain the 7p a KWh under the new Pay as you go arrangement, I have read this in the small print.

The Plans are utterly useless, the so called perks like home charger insurance requires a payment to be made to cover a electrical survey of the defective charger. The 15% off Kwik Fit tyres is actually 15% off the Kwik fit club subscription so that will end up costing you more money for the crap the Kwik fit sells.

The devils in the small print, they have seem to have forgotten that if customers switch supplier for a better EV charging deal, they are taking their energy account with them, makes no business sense, they will find out big time.

 

There's mention of Volvo owners being treated in some preferable way too.
Everyone else have a month to jiggle about on a spreadsheet but with prices going up they might do better to jump early and get a fix. It's probably very bad timing for a reason.

Gaz

 

Give it a month and OVO will back track and it will settle at 10p per KWh. That’s my gut feeling.