OVO have sent an email about my Direct Debit - Why are you increasing my monthly payment when I’m already in credit?

So - I had an email yesterday casually informing me that my DD was going up by about £35 a month to ensure that I was going to be in a good place in March 2026 - 12 months away.

My issue is that I'm about £320 in credit and my contract expires in 90 days.

My existing DD is (was) £156 pcm - and we are now coming into the time of the year when my solar panels and battery storage systems will effectively mean that I will draw from the grid (on good days) from about 0200hrs to around 0900 hrs when the house is at rest and not using much energy.

I managed to get through to a human on the ‘chat’ system who informed me that their little robot (their words) automatically adjusted my DD based on predicted usage through to March 2026. No human involvement required - until, that is, I complained.

A ‘human’ review revealed that my £156 pcm (the existing DD) was sufficient to cover my predicted costs for the next 90 days and so the DD increase was reversed.

How crazy is it to employ a robotic system that cannot take into account a customers contractual elements to correctly set a D value - and then have to waste time, effort, energy and money by having someone sort it out manually???

Morning ​@marichardson535 and thanks for your post 😁

Sorry to hear of the confusion surrounding your Direct Debit, and the fact you had to contact Support to get this sorted. I’m happy that they could sort it for you, and it sounds like they’ve put your Direct Debit on suspension so that it won’t be automatically reviewed for the next three months. The Direct Debit reviews on your account may seem too high at this moment in time - that’ll be because you’re nearly at the end of your contract. Our systems will be taking into account the price increase as of 01/04/2025 at the moment, and of course our computers can’t tell what contract you’ll go for at the end of your current plan, or whether you’ll stay with OVO etc etc. 

We’re regulated to review Direct Debits by Ofgem as a safeguarding measure and, sometimes, the reviews might not be quite right as it’s a one-size-fits-all approach. On these occasions a chat with our Support Team is necessary to make sure your Direct Debit stays where it is. In your case, your Direct Debit is now on suspension until the end of your plan, giving you time to pick a new plan when you enter your ‘renewal window’ (you’ll receive an email in the coming weeks telling you you’re up for renewal and what plans we can offer you). Once you take out a new plan, our systems will review the Direct Debit based upon the new rates, and everything will fall in line again. 

I hope this helps, and I just wanted to direct you to some previous Forum topics you might find useful 👇

I’m sick to death of dealing with OVO energy. They are constantly trying to increase my DD even though I am actually in credit by over £250 GBP . The smart meter ( which is a comical name seeing that they don’t use it) clearly demonstrates that for the past 6 winter months my energy consumption has been under £70, so as we go into late spring/early summer, would I now be using 50% more. I would suggest that the greedy dividend seeking shareholders use the actual smart meters to calculate the cost and not the enumerate people they currently employ. I will now be contacting Off-Gen to see if it is possible to do something about this company 

Two things to check in your online account:

1. The Future Annual Consumption (FAC) figure(s) on your Plan page: are they anything like the number of kWh you have actually used in the past year? These are the figures (one for electricity, one for gas if you use it) that are used to calculate your recommended Direct Debit (DD).
     
2. The Direct Debit calculator: this will show what your balance would be at the end of next winter (31 March 2026) using current rates and the monthly Direct Debit shown. This balance should be about zero. If it’s below zero, the calculator will show what the DD should be to reach zero. You can enter different DD figures to see what effect it would have on the final balance.
   
   If you click Continue on that page, you’ll see the recommendation. There is also a link How we work out the minimum monthly payment explaining how the recommendation is arrived at.

The usual reason why the recommended DD seems higher than it ought to be is that the FAC is unrealistically high. This can happen if, for example, it’s not long since you joined OVO or you’ve had a new meter installed in the past year.

Either way, Support can help, e.g. by reducing the DD amount for a time, if you explain why you think the recommendation is too high. 

Why do you say ‘they don’t use the smart meter’?

Hi ​@richierocket And if, after taking the steps that ​@Firedog suggests above, you still find the suggested DD amount is a bit steep, you could then think about asking for a refund of some of your credit amount; if a refund were to leave your account short by some amount when the entire year to March 2026 is taken into consideration, then a refund might not happen, of course, nor indeed might you want it to.  Customer support could definitely advise. 
 

Although it’s not necessarily the role of consumers on the forum to comment on the specifics of each others’ bills, it sounds to me from your post as though you’re being asked to consider increasing your existing monthly DD to around £100 (which would equate to a monthly increase of 50% of “under £70” per winter month, around £1200 annually)? So even with a monthly DD of around £100, a credit of £250 seems quite a chunky amount to leave in your account. I might have misunderstood the figures (wouldn’t be the first time!), if so please forgive my sums!

All the best, let us know how you decide things….bills are more and more a major deal with us consumers nowadays…

Ovo is proving very difficult to deal with in order to get my Direct Debit at a level where I do not build up a huge credit through the Summer months …. we also hear that energy costs will decrease shortly.

I have decided to cancel my direct debit and pay monthly by bank transfer/card payment on receipt of a bill. This means I only pay for the energy I have actually used …. if you speak to Ovo they try and encourage you to have a Smart meter installed which I certainly do NOT want. 

I would rather pay a small additional amount and have control over my finances ….

David Spinks

You seem to miss the whole point of a Direct Debit based setup…

The whole idea is that you build up credit during the Summer and burn it through the Winter so that you’re even at the end of the year. I note that this would be the third time we’ve mentioned this to you via the Forum:

What you’ve potentially just done is shot yourself in the foot by losing that stability. You might want to reconsider...

You may be misunderstanding the fixed-Direct-Debit scheme. For a start, you agree to keep your account in credit. This means that if you pay the same amount each month, it will have to be big enough to ensure that the account doesn’t go into debt. I just checked with my own rates and found that if I started the ‘DD year’ with a zero balance on 1 April, by the end of summer (30 September) I would have built up a credit of about three weeks’ worth of consumption. I wouldn’t call that ‘huge’.

The ‘small additional amount’ you pay to be free of the DD yoke is of the order of £10 a month for a typical household. I hope you find it worth the extra expense.
  

Here are some comments I made in another thread on the same topic:

Once next quarter’s prices have been announced (on Friday 23 May this week, I think) I expect the DD calculator to be updated so that its recommendations reflect the change for customers on variable tariffs. 

Hey ​@dspinks41 

I can see our community members have already given some helpful advice here,

I just wanted to add the following topics which you may find helpful:
 

Has anyone else had a sensible reply from OVO explaining why they now calculate the direct debit so that we are a month in credit on 31.03.2026 i.e. just before the period where the direct debit will exceed the usage anyway .

I thought they were supposed to ask customers to increase, not demand and then threaten to remove me from the fixed tariff if I cancel my DD and pay the same amount as a lump each month.

BTW I am around £75 in credit as of today, which is about a month and a quarter DD.