The end of the interest payment to help the customers pay the right amount through direct debit

So just had an email saying no more interest on credit balances after this month.☹️

This is a real shame this was one of the reasons I joined OVO in the first place.

Agree completely. This is a joke. And not a funny one. Not only is the interest reward ending, reading between the lines they're going to make me either get a refund or get me to lower my payments so I'm not keeping more in my account than needed. How the heck do I know what's needed when prices keep changing every 3 months?  I deliberately keep a lot of credit in my OVO account so that I know the money is there if we have cold snap like recently so I can put my heating on and not worry about finding the money.

If I only have one month worth if credit like they propose, that might not cover me for 2 months of bad weather then they'll home the payments that I probably can't afford to do.

It's my money, if I want to keep it in my OVO account so I don't spend it that should be my choice not OVO's, or the government's, or Martin Lewis (who has been a big campaigner on this stuff).

@Lucky2 you 

You can leave as much in your account as you wish and don't have to change the DD.

Is it completely up to you.

And wasn't a condition of receiving the interest that you didn't contact OVO customer service? Guess we can contact them now without repercussion. So when more of us are contacting them it will inevitably result in higher prices to maintained the service. All good things come to an end.

That was something different called the self service reward which is already gone.

Another one here who liked the £500 interest as it made it simpler to build up some credit in the summer to cover the winter gas prices and at least get some interest on it rather than having to take the money out into an interest paying account.

To compound this change, the automatic direct debit system does not seem to take into account the charge anytime rates as it is trying to set the direct debit to the normal rate price - this will mean I am forced to have a lot of credit in my account, which reading up on the expectations will likely mean by direct debit will change frequently as the system tries to get the amount of credit down.

This change is definitely one for the worse!

@Jeffus That's what I do I have the same DD all through the year so I know I have the money in my Ovo account when it comes to the winter months.

Not quite how the email reads.

The aim is to make sure customers are paying the right amount for their energy. We don’t want you to have more in your energy account than you need to.

Extra credit in your OVO account? Here’s what to do

The choice on what you do with any extra credit is completely up to you. You just need to leave one payment’s worth of credit in your energy account.

The phrasing of that seems to imply they'll prefer it. (and probably keep pestering) if we only had one or two month's DD amount in our account. I'd rather my money he there so I can't spend it and then not have it when I need it.

Myself and a few friends with Ovo have used Ovo to store our savings for the past few years as the 5% interest was more than most savings accounts.

Given how suddenly this scheme is ending, Ovo are going to have to refund a considerable amount of funds all at once. Probably the vast majority of customer funds they hold…

The title of this thread is misleading. It sounds like it’s the Interest on credit that’s ending. That’s a shame but it has no bearing on whether customers choose to leave plenty of credit in their account. Lots of people have complained that OVO asked for too much credit to build up, that requirement is now apparently being relaxed.