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

Hi @SJM 

Out of curiosity who are you switching to?

HI @Hadders52 are you going to switch supplier once you get access to your account?

As mentioned already : - “Februarys task is to move supplier as there’s no incentive now to keep me with OVO” - it is still very much January.

Also, I have already had the maiximum back they / the rules / OfGem / OVO are allowed / prepared to give (how does that work if you stil have a massive balace left and they mare aiming for ZERO??) so i might have to wait a further 2 to 3 months to get rid of the positive balance I’ll still have left.

If you are on a variable rate, you can request all your credit back by phoning collections. Although you can't do that after the switch has started.

The number is 0800 069 9831. They’re open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm.

Best to leave some as there is a risk your transfer will be blocked if there isn't enough credit to cover the final bill.

Your final bill has to be issued within 6 weeks of the switch and any credit returned within another 10 working days.

I’ve had the maximum back already and I’m not permitted to request more despite its my money and my amount in credit. So if I stayed with OVO they have failed to get my account to zero and failed to answer how the idea was suposed to work to get to zero if my account was already in more credit than they were allowed to refund back to me.

Did you phone up and ask collections? There is a limit on the website when trying to claim but you can phone up

This is what ofgem say, you can request a refund which is in line with what ovo say on their website

If Collections refuse, come back to the forum and I will tag one of the ovo moderators to see if they can offer some advice on next steps

@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 I have asked the OVO moderators 

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. 

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 ...

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.