Getting to grips with the Direct Debit Calculator on your online account

I have had a Solar PV and home battery system installed and my electricity consumption over the past 28 days since installation has dropped 93%. This was noted on my portal page suggesting I was on track to be over £1,100 in credit at the end of the billing year. This sum is way too high because it is based on a short period of analysis, but does reflect the reduction in my usage.

Now I know that I will not get such big reductions in the Autumn and Winter months and I still have to charge my EV, but even allowing for the benefits in the months of April to August I am overpaying.

No, says Ovo, because when I try to adjust my Direct Debit online I am told I can only INCREASE my payment!

Is this a glitch, or do you really predict an overspend but not allow customers to reduce their payment? What is OFGEM policy on energy suppliers overcharging customers?

OVO has suspended all increases to Direct Debit payments and reviews for now. There’ll be an announcement soon so I’d wait for that before doing anything else.

You can’t lower it yourself below the recommended level as a safety measure. If you really need to do that, the Support Team can assist.

Fine, but why didn’t Ovo simply put a message on the website as they must have modified the web page’s coding to disable the facility? Rhetorical question that so no need to answer!

I've just had another email saying my direct debit is going up by nearly £30 a month because OVO don't think my current payment will cover my monthly usage. This is an email that comes a couple of times a year, and to be fair, in the spring and summer is the opposite as they reduce my monthly payment. 

The trouble is though that I'm over £800 in credit. 

What's the point in over paying during the warmer, low energy usage months to build up a credit if that isn't going to be used when the colder, higher energy usage months start coming in? 

I thought that was the whole point of a credit balance and it would mean I can keep my monthly payment pretty consistent throughout the year.

This sounds odd. Two things to check:

1. On your Plan page, note the Future annual consumption (FAC) figure(s) and the Prices and unit rates.
2. On the Direct Debit calculator page, see what difference it makes to the closing balance if you change the amount from the current figure to what they want to increase it to.
   Click on Change Direct Debit amount.
   On the next page, be very careful not to click on that attractive Change amount button: it acts instantaneously and it can be awkward to reverse the effect.
   Click on How we work it out. The first figure shown there is the result of doing the sums using the numbers from (1) above, adding the VAT and any other add-ons you may be subscribed to, then subtracting your current credit balance to find out what the total cost would be to the end of term. 

A common reason for apparently unreasonable DD demands is that the FACs are inaccurate. You would have to check your bills for, say, last month and the same month a year ago to find how much energy you actually used over the year. If this is very different from what the FACs say, you have an explanation.

It would help to know (a) whether you’re on a fixed-rate or variable (‘Simpler’) tariff, and (b) whether you have a smart meter or not.    

Thanks for the reply. 

Using that calculator at the amount set before the most recent email has me at -£312 by the end of my contract. Upping it to OVO's recommended amount has me at £0 by the end of the contract. 

The thing is though, they are always writing to change the DDR, and most of the time I ignore it and just let them change to whatever they recommend, but my balance has always been around the £800 mark for a couple of years now! That would suggest their calculator is wrong. 

I'm now on a 1 year fixed contract prior to the October price rises, previously on a variable tariff, and I do have a "smart" meter

Thank you. The system is a bit different for those on standard variable tariffs. Because your rates are now fixed, there should be no need for the regular demands for a change to the DD unless your usage varies significantly from previous years.

I understand, but I can’t quite see why the balance should remain more or less constant. It will reduce day by day until DDDay, at which point it will rise again - but not to the same level as it was at the start of the period. The calculator shows how it reduces over the contract term.

You’ll see from my earlier post that the current credit balance is deducted from the predicted costs before being divided by the number of DDs left during your contract. This is to my mind a fault with the calculator, because it means that the credit balance is only whittled down over the months left. In other words, only - say - 1/12 of the balance is used each month to cover that month’s costs - the rest is carried over to the next month. 

If you feel that the balance is too large, you could ask for some of it back. You’re required to leave the value of one month’s DD in the account, so timing any refund request is important. Any refund that is taken will prompt a corresponding increase in the DD, but you may prefer to have the excess funds in your bank account rather than OVO’s. Three months’-worth of costs isn’t too much to have in credit in the account. 

One last thought: 1 October is the date at which OVO reckon your balance should be highest, because the following semester is usually more expensive than the previous one. For electricity, they calculate usaget to be about 40% higher. I don’t have the figure for gas, but it will be a lot more than that.