Ovo billed me £33k for a month of energy use in a two-bed flat

My problem is with Ovo Energy. I used to be with SSE, which was great – I’d get meter readings for gas and electricity every few months, and it would send me a bill and take the money out of my bank account.

But when Ovo acquired SSE, it insisted that I pay a monthly direct debit, and it would determine the amount.

I wanted to change supplier. But before I could do that, Ovo sent me an email in December 2022 saying I owed it £32,975.25. Yes, you read that right.

I have a two bedroom apartment that is mostly empty because I am abroad a lot. My daughter stayed there for a while while looking for a job in London, but she kept her power consumption to a minimum.

We normally pay around £150 a month for gas and electricity, so it would take us 18 years to run up a bill of £32,975.

I think it’s because my meter only has four digits, instead of the usual five. Ovo’s last estimated value was over 9999 and in the 10,000s. At that point my meter would go back to 0000.

After this estimate was made, but before I realized it, I submitted a manual value that was lower than Ovo’s estimate of 10105, of 9882. I think Ovo’s estimate was read as 0105, and this caused the Ovo system to think that I went from there to my meter reading of 9882 in a few days.

I thought it would be easy to fix once Ovo saw the obvious error but I can’t get through it on the phone and when I messaged someone through their Facebook page they said it was SSE’s error and that it could take three months to correct.

The £30,000 debt is still in my account. While I know it’s a mistake, it’s so easy for a simple computer error to lead to a lawsuit and the bailiffs, ruining my credit forever.

This almost happened to me years ago when the council made a mistake when calculating my council tax, so you can understand why I’m stressed. SL, London.

Helen Crane from This is Money replies: Energy companies, at it again. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t have an email from a reader telling me they’ve been billed incorrectly for their gas or electricity, and I still don’t understand why businesses find it so hard to just get it right.

Ovo’s mistake in your case may seem silly or even slightly funny at first. It’s clearly utterly ridiculous that you’ve been paid £33,000 for a month’s gas and electricity in your humble flat – especially when you consider no one was staying there for a while.

But I suspect that many people would view it differently if they logged into their energy bill every day and still saw that crazy amount with a minus sign in front of it.

You’re also right in saying that a silly mistake all too easily turns into a letter or visit from a collection agency, and I’ve heard from readers who’ve experienced just that before.

You told me it was even more frustrating to see your utility bill calculated in such a wildly inaccurate way because you – like many people – have really gone out of your way to cut back on what you use.

Although you say you didn’t follow Ovo boss Stephen Fitzpatrick’s earlier suggestion to hug pets and do star jumps, you did turn off your central heating and traded the gas oven for the microwave when energy prices skyrocketed.

Mistakes happen. But this should have been easy to correct as Ovo had all the necessary information about your ownership and past usage.

Electricity bills are high at the moment, but I don’t think it would be possible to make £33,000 in a month in a two bedroom flat unless you were doing something highly illegal.

But it turned out to be anything but a simple fix as you couldn’t reach Ovo on the phone and had some frustrating experiences trying to sort things out via online messaging.

Whoever you spoke to was simply told it would take three months to correct, and not much else.

You think the problem was with your energy meter. It’s an older model with no digital display – and unlike most old meters it only has four digits, not five.

Your theory, which made sense to me, was that Ovo’s previously estimated meter reading was therefore recorded in his computer system as 0105, not 10105 – meaning when you later took your actual 9886 reading a few days later, that was calculated as a huge amount of energy consumption.

You think the power company decided you went from 0105 to 9886 on the meter.

From what you told me, the numbers seemed to add up for a possible explanation.

But Ovo told me your meter wasn’t actually the problem. It urged me, as it did to you before, that you received this huge bill because the ‘industry agreed’ gas meter reading taken when your account was transferred from SSE was massively incorrect.

It said it has raised a dispute with the parties involved, but did not say when.

However, a few days after I contacted Ovo, that three-month wait seemed to be dwindling pretty quickly.

Ovo said the dispute is “now settled,” meaning the measurement has been corrected and your account is now fully settled between SSE and Ovo.

Instead of £33,000 in debt, you now have £27 in credit – and Ovo also paid you £100 as a gesture of goodwill.

It has also assured me and you that this will not happen again when your meter finally crosses that 9999 and returns to zero.

Here’s to hoping.