Is my Direct Debit increase accurate?

Yes - account is in credit.

Yes - I have a smart meter.

The account was in debit a couple of weeks ago because they previously miscalculated my bill and paid a large refund which I then gave back to them once they noticed the miscalculation.

But the increased direct debit request is entirely off the basis of their calculator, which calculates I will spend ~£700-800/month for Jan/Feb/March… even though my December bill was £150 and I’ve never even spent half that in a month.

I think if you go into debit, it triggers actions. I fell into £29 debt in July for reasons that aren’t important but were not because my DD wasn’t right. They immediately doubled my DD from £110 to £203. I created a big stink, and though I could never get them to understand what happened, they lowered it to £182 then £155. They also gave me £75 to shut up, which more than covered my August bill. Then I claimed a refund of £200 and changed the DD to £128. I keep dropping it, and  just now I changed it from £18 to £10. So all in all it worked out for me, though they did overcharge me and when I first looked at the page where you can change your DD, they were happily telling  me they were going to keep taking over £100 and expect my balance to be £375 in March!

If you haven’t found that page, https://account.ovoenergy.com/payments maybe you can sort out your DD yourself.

It may well be the same thing that I suspect in the other post then, it they have calculated yours as still including that debit balance.

OVO are attempting to have all Direct Debit accounts aligned to have a zero balance on 31st of March each year.
(Except for those on fixed tariffs who have their own end date).

Which means that for anyone who currently has a debit on their account the DD calculator is now going to suggest a high payment for the next 3 months to get it to zero by 31st March.

If they have used your previous debit balance when doing the calculation that will explain why they want to set it so high for the Jan/Feb/March payments, to recover the now non-existant debit by 31st March

The best I can suggest is to phone support and ask them to look again and recalculate it with the credit and not a debit balance.

Of course it could also be an over estimation of future use, those are know to happen (to say the least), but again the only way to talk it down is to, well, talk it down.

This current situation with trying to get to zero balance by 31st March is a one off as they try to get the accounts aligned to all have 31st March as the year end.
To my thinking they could have avoided it simply by aiming for 31st March 2025 rather than 2024, thus giving everyone more chance to get down to zero by then.

I think you’ll find that the calculator works in real time, that is it’s the account balance at the time that is added to the projected costs to calculate the DD. It’s unlikely that the current suggestion will be anything like the one in the threatening letter if there’s been a large credit to the account in the interim. Support should be able to sort it out if this is the case.

That’s not what I was told. I was told that because my account had been in debit, it meant my direct debit was not enough to cover and they insisted on increasing it even though I was now in credit, and (as I now understand) my DD was enough to cover my projected usage. That didn’t matter to anyone I spoke to; as it had been in debit, that was proof it wasn’t high enough.

In case anyone is curious how I ended up in debit. I was with SSE and just after I paid my last 3 month bill in May, I set up a direct debit, with first payment 3 weeks later. 5 days after setting it up before my first payment, my account migrated to Ovo, and I got a final bill of £29. I didn’t pay it because I had a DD set up, so they would obviously just take it from my bank, like all my other DD (eg mobile phone, internet etc). Once I finally understood it, I tried to explain that, yes my previous DD amount with SSE wasn’t high enough, but that’s because it was zero. None of the droids on the phone could grasp this, despite them saying “I hear you”. 

Good news!

After talking to a few people who kept repeating they had done a careful calculation,  I got through to someone who could help and this nice South African sounding guy sorted it.

Direct debit will stay unchanged.

@RayKk Good to hear that.

Did he say what had caused the increased DD in the first place?

Sorry, cross-purposes. I didn’t gather that you were talking to somebody; I was referring to the online calculator that can be used to adjust the DD if it gets out of line. How come you ended up talking to someone? Did they call you? Did you find out which department it was (there are so many, it’s a complete jungle)?

That said, mine has steadfastly refused to make a suggestion for months now. But its calculations are the same as they’ve always been, with the exception of the 31 March 2024 reset which may be confusing many customers who don’t bother to learn more. 

Could it have been an out of line meter read or another issue causing and incorrect Estimated Annual Consumption @RayKk?

No he didn’t say what the problem was.

I guess it helped that I put the account back into credit before calling.

I just called the normal direct debit number.

Calculator is still incorrect - but as long as they don’t change the direct debit I don’t care.