Hi @Royp 

Unfortunately it is one of the conditions required for Power Move. Direct Debit has lower processing costs associated with customers compared with pay as you go because sometimes they forget and then someone has to then chase up the customer for payment and possibly begin debt recovery procedures. I don’t doubt that you have made every single payment on time over the past 55 years and have never needed chasing up but it does happen too often when customers don’t have a DD Mandate. Consequently more staff are required which increases costs. By getting a customer on DD costs are lower and the PM scheme is more affordable. It’s not about new customers. We have new customers joining who won’t agree to a DD so they are not eligible for the scheme either.

Peter

I wonder how much the people who don’t want to move to direct debit will cost the company more by using more expensive energy by abandoning their self-moderation during peak times.

Also the above reply seems to point the attitude of “You don’t pay by direct debit and some people who don’t do that are bad, so you’ve got to be punished.”

It may also be worth noting that this doesn’t technically fit the definition of “discrimination” either. Only the stuff under the Equality Act 2010 is seen as Discrimination if memory serves.

Your choice of payment method and energy usage patterns are not considered a Protected Characteristic, thus does not gain those protections.

Thanks for pointing that out.  Muddying the waters with definitions will really help this topic along.

If you have a dual tariff meter, you are also excluded from the “Power Move” initiative. No doubt there’s a good reason, but OVO aren’t confirming what this is. I have achieved the target for the last two seasons, but am no longer eligible. 

Probably because being on E7/E10 makes it too easy to “win” without really playing the game. Word on the street is that there’s plans to bring it back in the future though.

No more than they did before PM existed. Ultimately, tariffs are balanced so that it all flattens out in the end.

Ah - too easy to win. That’s an interesting concept.

@Tron Burgundy If my reply can be read as “You don’t pay by direct debit and some people who don’t do that are bad, so you’ve got to be punished.” then it wasn’t meant to.

It’s unfortunate that not everyone is as good at paying bills consistently over 55 years as @Royp is because that must amount to thousands of payments over that time and not one of them missed and although I’m good at paying bills, in the past before DD came along, I must admit to having missed a few here and there due to family circumstances / life getting in the way. Unfortunately paying manually is not a guaranteed payment and saying that you’ve paid consistently in the past doesn’t have the same level of guarantee as a DD does. Consequently OVO has to employ X number of staff per thousand people not on a DD to allow sufficient resources for payment reminders and possible recovery of a bad debt. It happens and that costs money.

Power Move is also an Add On which means that it’s a reward for meeting the entry conditions and moving sufficient power in the month according to the scheme rules. And as to whether people would ‘abandon their self-moderation’ if they are excluded from the scheme I don’t know. As far as OVO are concerned people use power as and when they want to with no penalty because it’s a fixed rate over the 24 hour period. Without an incentive I’m not sure what the self-moderation would be. Certainly before I joined PM I wasn’t aware of any particular need not to use power in the peak and just used power without any particular regard or self-moderation.

Peter

Hi Peter,
In my post I stated that I accepted that this is the way things are done with normal billing, and can see that processing costs would be higher for Pay as You Go because of debt chasing. However, I fail to see how there can be any difference in costs between a Direct Debit account and a Pay as You Go account, when analysing the amount of energy used and at what time it was used, when a positive outcome is a customer reward, while a negative or neutral outcome has no material effect on the customer bill. Your argument that more staff are required leading to increased costs falls over because those increased costs are already catered for in the tariff difference.  
 

Be careful - Pay As You Go is not the same as Pay On-Demand.

Pay As You Go is Prepayment where you pay before you use the energy by topping-up the meter. Pay On-Demand (what you’re on) is where you pay after you’ve used the energy by being sent a bill.

Please make sure to reference the right one!

Oops. I think I caused the confusion there. Pay On-Demand is what I meant.

It’s ok, everyone gets confused by it! :)

The DD process allows you to build up credit for use during the winter heating season. It could be POD fails after the peak winter month of January when the bills are highest and perhaps a family’s finances are at their worst after Christmas but I don’t have the data to support that.

The data’s out there somewhere - I just forgot where to find it again.

Likewise, for PAYG, Boost used to do an Opt-In based Winter Wallet thing where during the Summer months some of your credit would be sapped from your top-ups and placed into the “Winter Wallet” to help you save up, then during the Winter months it would be drip-fed back in alongside any regular top-ups to help see you through.

They were the only ones who ever did that and you HAD to have Smart Meters for it.

You can’t do these fancy tricks with POD!

Oops Me too, I also confused it - I really meant Pay on Demand.
As to meeting 55 years of payments month by month, without a slip - yes, because in my generation there were four most important principles - Roof over the head (pay your rent on time), Heating and cooking (pay for your coal, gas, electricity, oil etc on time), Food in the belly (pay your grocery bill on time) and finally go to work every day on time to make sure the money for the bills keeps coming in.

The way I see it is that how you pay your bill, DD, POD, or PAYG its your choice.

(Well not always with PAYG, but there's laws about ‘forcing’ someone onto PAYG).

Overall it's a question of if you choose not to pay by Direct Debit then you are also choosing not to take part in Power Move and possibly earn a reward.

I do sympathise slightly with those on E7/E10 who for the moment at least are also ruled out of PM. (Of course they could choose to switch to a standard or fixed tarrif too, but I doubt it would be worth it just for PM).

However in the end it's all ultimately the customers choice, (and having that choice means that it can't  be discrimination).

My whole point is I signed up early to be part of the trial and even though my account is Pay on Demand, I was perfectly acceptable. My achievement in power shifting was within the top 10% during this period. Now the trial is over, I am no longer acceptable, so yes, I do feel I am being discriminated against (irrespective of whether it can be officially categorised as discrimination). What was just a carrot to move energy consumption away from peak times, now has a secondary role (or is that primary role) to “persuade” customers to switch to Direct Debit. If I had been unacceptable and ineligible from the start, this post would never have happened.  

Pay on demand by Direct Debit was my method of payment before we moved to OVO Energy. This was withdrawn so I now pay the bill monthly manually. OVO and several other energy providers only allow for Direct Debit spread across the year and not debited per bill. Clearly this needs to change and might just persuade a few more to go on or back to Direct Debit. Better for OVO, better for some customers so its win-win.

I’m now missing out on Power Move as have a dual tariff meter but was doing this up until last month without a Direct Debit in place.

In addition to the answers I've already given I firmly believe it is up to individuals to decide how they pay for their energy. In looking around to see why people prefer to pay in particular ways I came across this piece by Martin Lewis which is impartial advice on payment methods and what you can do if a DD goes wrong etc. I've quoted Martin before and it is generally very good advice.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/lower-energy-direct-debits/#variable

Personally I've never had any problems with DDs and the one time that I thought my credit level was too high I applied for and got a refund without any problems. I do appreciate that others have had problems in this respect.

Peter

I think this conversation misses the main point @Royp made. He agreed to pay more when he deliberately chosen not to use DD. I assume the cost difference is explained that the company needs more resources to process that kind payment. There is no question with that. The question is why he has to pay twice for his choice? The point of the Power Move is how consumers use the energy, so, why he cannot participate in that? 

Hey @costeek, 

Power Move has been combined into OVO Beyond for this challenge and the terms for the challenge are aligned with the eligibility criteria for OVO Beyond. I’ll link the criteria below and the specific section that covers what’s needed to participate. Under the third point it does say that a Direct Debit is required.

OVO Beyond app user terms

3. Eligibility Criteria

3.1 To be eligible for OVO Beyond you must:

1. be an OVO customer; 
2. be the primary account holder and bill payer of a registered account with OVO (please note that customers of other OVO group brands such as Boost will not be eligible for OVO Beyond);
3. pay your bills by Direct Debit;
4. have a credit meter, Pay As You Go customers are not currently eligible for OVO Beyond;
5. have a working smart meter;
6. have either both your gas and electricity or just your electricity supplied by OVO (customers of other OVO Group brands such as Boost will not be eligible); 
7. opt in to half-hourly meter readings. If your meter does not currently submit readings every half hour, we will change this to collect readings on a half-hourly basis. You can always change this later, though if you do, you won’t be eligible for OVO Beyond; 
8. not be in debt to us, be subject to a debt repayment plan with us or otherwise have a prepayment meter with outstanding debt; and
9. not be in the process of switching your energy supply away from OVO to another provider 

3.2 You won’t be eligible for OVO Beyond if you do not meet all of the eligibility criteria as set out in section 3.1 above.

I hope this helps! 

My question was why the point 3? What was the reason to include point 3?

Point 3 is something I’d say is probably a business decision. You can pay however you want but you have to accept that using certain payment methods means you can’t have certain products.

Same goes for Smart Meters - refusing them means you lock yourself out of the best deals on the market.

That’s how it’s always been across the entire market.

As I said earlier:
Originally Power Move was simply a carrot to move power consumption away from peak times - very laudable.
Now it takes on a secondary (or primary) role to “persuade” customer to move to Direct Debit. This leaves a bitter taste - give us Pay On Demand customers a sweetener, then take it away again...