Skip to main content

 During the early periods of high energy prices I was continually bombarded with emails to increase my DD as I “would not have enough money in my account to cover a 12 month plan’ and needed to ensure my account had a positive balance to cover any high bills” .  Considering that I wasn’t on any fixed plan, I really couldn’t understand OVO’s thinking.  Thankfully that particular period is over and everything has been good to this point.

I have, for many years received an interest payment monthly on my bill for keeping a positive balance on my account.  This wasn’t a great amount - but it was now nice to have. Today, I have received an email informing me of the following: 

 
“You’ll no longer get Interest Rewards from February 2024
 This won’t affect your energy plan and our terms are staying the same. 

 Direct Debit payments need to be as accurate as possible
 
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.”

You can’t win - can you?

I’ve just pulled out £500 and halved my monthly DD down to £50 to use up the remaining £200. At times I did have closer to £1k in there. 

It’s a shame its ended, but I can see why. 

It was one thing that kept me with OVO, now its just another perk of the past (such as the referral bonus) and if the power-move £15 disappears I’ll be more keen to jump to another supplier. 

I predict it’ll be → jump to a cheaper/ promotion supplier → get reward → supplier goes bust → government bails out → get moved somewhere else → EVERYONES’ standing charge goes up to pay for my initial reward… 🙄 

There’s £50 referral reward with octopus of course… mines. https://share.octopus.energy/oak-guppy-770. 😬

Hey @SJM,

 

Sorry to hear this,

 

If you’re on a variable tariff you should be able to request all of the credit in your account. It might be worth contacting the support team via webchat. 

@Jeffus yes I phoned, I didn’t apply online. They told me on the phone that the amount I was asking for was the maximum which makes a mockery of the whole thing. The maximum should be whatever I’m in credit by otherwise they can’t get accounts to zero if there’s stil a balance left in the account. I have now altered our DD to £5 a month and this should see the balance used up after 2 to 3 months.

OK  @SJM see the post from @Emmanuelle_OVO 

If you try again and they refuse again, then post another update.

Obviously I don't know why they have refused you, but on the face of it OVO need to stop this behavior

@Jeffus yes I phoned, I didn’t apply online. They told me on the phone that the amount I was asking for was the maximum which makes a mockery of the whole thing. The maximum should be whatever I’m in credit by otherwise they can’t get accounts to zero if there’s stil a balance left in the account. I have now altered our DD to £5 a month and this should see the balance used up after 2 to 3 months.

OK  @SJM see the post from @Emmanuelle_OVO 

If you try again and they refuse again, then post another update.

Obviously I don't know why they have refused you, but on the face of it OVO need to stop this behavior

@Jeffus what do you mean they refused me? I asked for the maximum and its being sent to me, in fact it’s already now in my bank account. No refusal invloved. What I cant get is anything above the maximum because, wait for it, it’s the maximum. It means that people who had more than the maximum in credit cant get to zero as their account will still be in credit which makes a mockery of the whole idea of zero balance.

@Jeffus yes I phoned, I didn’t apply online. They told me on the phone that the amount I was asking for was the maximum which makes a mockery of the whole thing. The maximum should be whatever I’m in credit by otherwise they can’t get accounts to zero if there’s stil a balance left in the account. I have now altered our DD to £5 a month and this should see the balance used up after 2 to 3 months.

OK  @SJM see the post from @Emmanuelle_OVO 

If you try again and they refuse again, then post another update.

Obviously I don't know why they have refused you, but on the face of it OVO need to stop this behavior

@Jeffus what do you mean they refused me? I asked for the maximum and its being sent to me, in fact it’s already now in my bank account. No refusal invloved. What I cant get is anything above the maximum because, wait for it, it’s the maximum. It means that people who had more than the maximum in credit cant get to zero as their account will still be in credit which makes a mockery of the whole idea of zero balance.

There is no maximum, you should be able to ask for all your credit back as @Emmanuelle_OVO said.

You should be able to have zero credit. That is the rule.

That has always been the case.

 

There’s maximum, and then there’s maximum. One is the highest amount you can request bearing in mind the rules about not emptying the account unless there’s a DD in place. The other is an absolute figure, I think £2000, that a support agent can handle. More than that needs higher authority. 

There’s no ‘maximum in credit’ - you can keep as much as you like in your account. OVO would probably raise an eyebrow, though, if the credit balance appeared excessive, and urge you to reduce it.

I think it’s stretching it a bit to expect that you could request a refund of more than the current credit balance on the grounds that upcoming DDs will wipe out the deficit. Perhaps this isn’t what SJM meant ...

@Jeffus yes I phoned, I didn’t apply online. They told me on the phone that the amount I was asking for was the maximum which makes a mockery of the whole thing. The maximum should be whatever I’m in credit by otherwise they can’t get accounts to zero if there’s stil a balance left in the account. I have now altered our DD to £5 a month and this should see the balance used up after 2 to 3 months.

OK  @SJM see the post from @Emmanuelle_OVO 

If you try again and they refuse again, then post another update.

Obviously I don't know why they have refused you, but on the face of it OVO need to stop this behavior

@Jeffus what do you mean they refused me? I asked for the maximum and its being sent to me, in fact it’s already now in my bank account. No refusal invloved. What I cant get is anything above the maximum because, wait for it, it’s the maximum. It means that people who had more than the maximum in credit cant get to zero as their account will still be in credit which makes a mockery of the whole idea of zero balance.

There is no maximum, you should be able to ask for all your credit back as @Emmanuelle_OVO said.

You should be able to have zero credit. That is the rule.

That has always been the case.

 

What’s your source? There is a maximum as I was informed that £1500 is the maximum by the call handler that you can request when I asked for it. There’s two things going on here, firstly prior to this new regualtion or whatever you want to call it came in you could always ask for your entire balance to be returned that was in credit and there were things in place to enable this but you could wait up to 8 weeks for the money. The second and recent way was via the new regualation to enable zero balance in the account, this had a maximum of £1500 an could take up to 10 working days (it was faster than that). If I want to now request the balance that’s still in my account after getting the £1500 then the first and origianl way would have to kick in. But rather than wait upto 8 weeks I’ve just reduced the DD to £5 a month which will clear it anyway in the same amount of time. In other words I’ve had to do the work to get to zero balance not the new regualtion, which as I’ve said many times now makes a mockery of the whole idea.

My preffered option was to reduce my DD until the credit was reduced however as this was not an option I have had a £500 refund paid yesterday. In a month or two I will have another refund as well. |This reward was the only thing keeping me here.

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings