I will copy/paste my sent email here..... (sent 2nd July 2022)
Hello,
I would like to request a review and reduction to calculations for my Direct Debit amount.
I currently pay £107 per month (I have always chosen to pay a little more than the minimum requested amount) , and I have been informed today that OVO will be changing my monthly payment to £255.
Thats a 238% increase.
I would like to request an 'estimation' that accurately reflects my actual usage as I a) live alone and work 6 days a week (ie: reduced usage) and b) an increase to £255 per month is both unattainable and excessive to say the least for a single occupancy, lower usage dwelling.
My current account balance is +£696.05
I am on the 2 year fixed energy plan for both Gas and Electricity.
The OVO email estimates that my account will be -£2,959.51 at contract end on 7th Feb 2024 (end of contract).
Regards
Leigh Foster
I really would appreciate a response from people as I am really concerned with how I can afford this Increase.
Many thanks
Leigh.
Best answer by Tim_OVO
Updated on 17/12/24 by Abby_OVO
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I’ve just caught up on this thread, fantastic support on offer.
@Mallakye thank you for your patience and the level of detail that you provided. Everyone has spent their own time helping and advising each other and now it’s our turn to back this up into some action.
I agree with Jeffus that the Future annual consumption figure for electricity might be wrong. If it is, I think this is the likely cause of the over inflated Direct Debit recommendations. Mine is 5489 kWh and I live with 4 others. We’ll be looking for and collecting examples of this on the forum and passing it on to the relevant team if we see more than one.
What to do now?
Please discuss this with our Support team, as they are best placed to raise a ‘case’ to the billing platform teams that can fix any issues with the way this works. We'll be contacting them as well if we see more examples on the forum, but it won’t be linked to your account.
I can’t see an answer from you, @Mallakye, to whether you have a smart meter or not. if you do, ask our Support team to make sure the meters are set to send us your readings every half an hour.
I would also recommend that you request a Direct Debit review exemption be put in place on your account. This lasts for 3 months and will allow any issues that might be affecting your account to be resolved.
To save you having to explain all of this to our Support team, feel free to link them to my comment. I’ll copy the URL for this below once I’ve posted it. You can then share that URL with our online chat team and sit back whilst they read it and get up to speed.
I hope this helps and that we can take it from here and get this sorted for you.
Cancel direct debit and set up a standing order or pay bill when it comes in hope that helps
That’s not the correct solution and doesn’t help anyone out. By doing that on OVO, you’ll lose the safety of a fixed rate deal and be forced onto Simpler Energy unless you re-instate the Direct Debit.
@Mallakye I do agree that increase seems unusual and I’ve not seen that level before. I’d recommend getting in touch with the Support Team to challenge the increase and ask for it to be reviewed again manually. You can do that here.
Hope this helps! If you still get stuck, feel free to stop by this thread again.
Some great advice from our community superuser, @Blastoise186.
We’re here to help if you’re worried about an unaffordable increase to your monthly payment, so as a first step we’d recommend getting in touch with our Support Team, @Mallakye . They’ll be able to help check that this payment amount is accurate and based on actual meter readings rather than estimates as well as being able to signpost additional support.
Just to double-check, have you been logging in to your online account to keep an eye on things? This is the best place to submit your meter readings or check the readings we’ve received from any smart meters. We’ve also got a helpful Direct Debit calculator which can help to break down how your monthly payment amount is calculated.
We got in touch recently to ask you to increase your Direct Debit, so that your monthly payments match your energy use and costs - and you wont have to pay a lump sum at the end of your contract.
Because you havent increased your Direct Debit, we’re now doing it automatically for you.”
This is before I’ve even had a reply from the email in post#1 sent to OVO Energy Customer Care on 2nd July.
Cancel direct debit and set up a standing order or pay bill when it comes in hope that helps
That’s not the correct solution and doesn’t help anyone out. By doing that on OVO, you’ll lose the safety of a fixed rate deal and be forced onto Simpler Energy unless you re-instate the Direct Debit.
@Mallakye I do agree that increase seems unusual and I’ve not seen that level before. I’d recommend getting in touch with the Support Team to challenge the increase and ask for it to be reviewed again manually. You can do that here.
Hope this helps! If you still get stuck, feel free to stop by this thread again.
OK so the SSE estimates are very different to the OVO estimates unfortunately. We have seen this before with some other SSE customers. Where did you find the SSE estimates in the end?
OVO gas annual estimate 3536
SSE gas annual estimate 2680
OVO electricity annual estimate 9495
SSE electricity annual estimate 2863
It is the annual OVO estimates that are driving the bills.
So lets look at your actual usage since joining OVO.
OK so the OVO gas estimate looks very reasonable. I think as an estimate that is correct. That one is fine i think.
The OVO electricity estimate is in fact wildly out based on not only your actual usage but also the figures ofgem the regulator uses for typical consumption (2900 a year). The 9495 is enough electricity for 3 typical homes..… i am surprised this isn't picked up by OVO automatically. This is what is causing the issues I think. The OVO system is meant to gradually refine this figure over time but it looks like something has gone wrong again as we have seen before unfortunately.
Keep an eye on what happens to the OVO estimates on the plan page.
I have to admit that Jeffus is waaaaay more experienced than me when it comes to solving usage related questions!
There’s a lot of volunteers on this forum these days and we all specialise in different things. Jeffus is definitely one of the number crunchers and he’s always on the ball with questions like yours. Some of the others love to help out with green tech questions while my own specialisms are in things like smart meters, technical stuff, massively overpowered and overengineered solutions, bug hunting and to a certain extent OVO’s rules, policies and the way OVO does things.
We’re all learning though! But I have to hand it to Jeffus for being way better than me at threads like this one.
OK so the OVO gas estimate looks very reasonable. I think as an estimate that is correct. That one is fine.
The OVO electricity estimate is in fact wildly out based on not only your actual usage but also the figures ofgem the regulator uses for typical consumption (2900 a year). The 9495 is enough electricity for 3 typical homes..… i am surprised this isn't picked up by OVO automatically. This is what is causing the issues I think. The OVO system is meant to gradually refine this figure over time but it looks like something has gone wrong again as we have seen before unfortunately.
How far back do the readings go and do they all say "smart"
Agreed, the Gas estimate seems pretty much spot on.
Readings go back to what looks like the start of my SSE account, 8th July 2020.
The SSE ones (pre-Feb 2022) are a mixture of manual and smart.
Every one from the start of the OVO plan are smart, for both Gas and Electric (a reading for every day) additionally I see no spikes or dodgy readings))
I obviously expect increases, this is natural.
I just saw that massive DD increase and thought….nope….theres been a mistake.
At least….I really hope theres been a mistake.
I feel this wont get sorted until I spend some quality time on the phone, which is actually my least preferable form of contact these days.
I understand there will be a massive increase to OVO’s email and messaging traffic right now but its been 10 days and no reply.
But the automated emails informing me of Direct Debit increases get to me just fine lol.
Rest assured you guys have at least put me to ease a little because it seems obvious there is a mistake/issue that needs to be rectified.
If you have some advice on how to present this information to OVO, please feel free 👍
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