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.
4 days later I got another email saying direct debit going up to £499. Account is still in credit. Annoying!
It’s really difficult for us to see what’s going on without some concrete data to go by. Assuming these details are available on your account pages, would you be willing to share here:
a screenshot of your Plan page (just the contract details and prices bit);
the current balance on your account;
the date your Direct Debit is taken;
The calculation shown under How we work it out on the Change DD amount page;
Your consumption in kWh for the past year. You can work this out by subtracting the meter reading(s) from a year ago from the latest one(s). The readings should be given on the corresponding bills.
We should then be able to work out why they’re trying to increase your DD to an unrealistic level.
I’m two months in as an OVO customer and following the first month of EV charging using standard rate vs Anytime, OVO are suggesting a rather inflated increase in our DD. I can understand why as the first month was clearly abnormal usage.
However, I *can* log into my account, but I’m immediately greeted with the old “Provide us with your starting meter readings” message. This was done Early February and up until about two weeks ago I had the correct access and was checking to ensure our new smart meters were also sending regular updates, they were.
I now have no visibility into our usage to even have the conversation with customer services about the excess DD increase. Any ideas how I go about resolving this or is a call to CS the only option?
This sounds account specific to me, so I can’t offer much advice here. However, try Live Chat via https://ovoenergy.com/help - it’s about 10x faster than calling. Just mention the keyword “Agent” to the bot (without quotes) and it’ll put you straight through. :)
This sounds account specific to me, so I can’t offer much advice here. However, try Live Chat via https://ovoenergy.com/help - it’s about 10x faster than calling. Just mention the keyword “Agent” to the bot (without quotes) and it’ll put you straight through. :)
I am doing now, however they seem to think I need to provide the sales documentation for my house, purchased 23 years ago. What on earth that has to do with the issue I have no idea!
Got this sorted, well I got it escalated to the engineering team as there’s seemingly a fault with my account. If I hear anything back I’ll respond accordingly.
CS did manage to sort out the DD issue whilst I was on with them as well actually. It would just be nice to be able to check the rest of the data in my account.
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