Unexplained change to direct debits?

My DD has been raised without asking me, very not nice OVO! My balance is always in credit, even if I would stop paying that would cover whole winter including increased gas usage for heating. That kind behaviour is not customer oriented and that is sad, because I was always loyal to OVO. I have read all previous conversation on this topic and am aware of explanations, I’m just very not happy (politely saying). Despite, I haven’t been on the fixed contract and the only change happened is winter, which is no different to the winter last year.

I'm re-reding this thread trying to understand if there is anything I can do, and I see this. In my case it is approx. £200+ credit, and not lower than £100 this winter, but my DD was increased without my agreement. 

I really liked that I could keep some credit on my account and be in control of my spending. To have credit on my OVO energy account and pay less during this winter isn't the same than having this credit back to my bank account and pay the suggested DD. Even if looking at plain number it is the same. 

Is there an option to pay as you go, like exactly as mush as I used (not pre-paid)? It feel the only option I would find fair at the moment. 

You can always contact Customer Support and ask them to reduce your DD payment again.

They will generally agree to a reduction straight away, particularly if /when you are in credit.

Sometimes on your online account there will be an option/button where you can reduce it yourself by 10% for 3-months.
(I’ve used it myself more than once as my DD’s are generally calculated around 10% too high, I know why that happens for me but it’s a bit complicated and will take time to fix. I’ve just had a new gas meter which should help).

It isn’t always shown for you to DIY though, and if it isn’t showing for you (or if you want a more than 10% reduction) then talk to support.

Anyone affected badly by the change in the DD calculation, please see this thread and consider adding a vote:

I’m sorry to hear this, you’re meant to have several communications from OVO before a direct debit is increased. It’s worth checking on the online account that we have the correct contact details for you & your emails aren’t going into the spam folder ​@costeek.

Nukecad is quite right here. Please keep us posted with how you get on.

What kind communications do you mean? I have received an email suggesting to increase my DD amount. I disagreed with it,  so left the amount the same. Then, it was increased by the company. Is that a communication? Also, I’m certain about my email address and always aware about the spam folder, it’s not the case here. Right now your company reduced the satisfaction of your customers and put an additional pressure on your customer service phone lines. It was unnecessary. 

By “leaving it the same” it sounds like you responded by doing nothing, which means you would have agreed to the changes by way of deemed consent.

You need to actively contact OVO to raise such objections if you want the objection to be valid.

I understand what you mean. Phone call is not always the option for some people. 

It doesn’t make sense. I would agree if I would increase the amount. I didn’t increase, that meant “no”. Also, I don’t remember the letter saying something like “if you would like to keep your DD amount the same, please contact our customer service, otherwise it will automatically be increased by the amount mention in this letter”. That what I would call as communication.

That’s usually how these work though - it’s a prompt to get in touch if you want to talk about it. IIRC it does count as a communication about an impending change.

In the Core Terms and Conditions (§7.11, bullet 5), it says: “We can ask you to increase your Direct Debit amount anytime ... If you don’t do this by the date we give you, we can automatically increase your Direct Debit ... “

In other words, if you don’t do it, we will.

That’s probably fair enough, except that in your case - and presumably that of others grumbling in this thread - neither of the conditions required for this to happen applies:

“… if prices change (in line with this contract) or you’re using more energy than we estimated.“ 

All that’s changed is that they moved the goalposts by extending the calculation period. That doesn’t, in my view, entitle them to use this clause to increase your DD. 

It would be really helpful if someone were to submit a formal complaint and persevere with it for the eight weeks needed to be able to escalate it to the ombudsman, to find out what he would say about what I reckon to be an unfair change. I’d do it myself, but I’ve not been asked to change my DD, so I don’t have anything to complain about.

​@Firedog I understand what you mean. But it looks like “we suggest to increase your DD, if you won’t - we’ll do it anyways”. There is no choice given. And I agree with you saying: “All that’s changed is that they moved the goalposts by extending the calculation period”. 

Right now I don’t have a mental capacity for the formal complain. But if somebody would assist me in that, I would be happy to try.

Hey ​@costeek 

If phone calls aren’t the best option for you we also have a webchat option:

 

Our Support team’s web messaging and WhatsApp opening hours are:

• 8am - 6pm Monday to Friday 

• 9am - 2pm on Saturdays
   

You can see all open contact channels via our Help Centre. 

I am fuming this morning, after some long conversations with people at the helpdesk several times over the last few weeks. Originally (wrongly) thought and was advised that the suggested increase in my DD was down to having a smart meter installed and it not yet updating the usage. I have opted to change from an Economy 7 to an Economy 10 meter for electric, and a standard one for gas. 3-bed mid-terrace property with rubbish insulation and drafts. 

Now I have received an email telling me they have increased my DD to almost double what it was from £116 to £221. I am in credit by 2x my previous DD (almost £300!). Without checking with me - made me very cross and I do apologise if any of you had to dealt with me being irate this morning!! 

Gentleman on the phone went away and said actually. yes, that was their fault that they hadn’t contacted me first to ask me to manually review it, and that they should have got in touch to ask me to look at it. Then offered to raise and then close a complaint for me about it, and £15 apology money - I am not sure how raising it and then closing it again will solve any problems? 

Anyway, I was on the phone to him for a good 40 mins, going round in circles about how they got figures and where the kwh figure was pulled from - turns out he couldn’t help me. Put me through to a lovely Scottish gentleman who has been more useful. My DD has been changed back to where it was, fixed for 3 months now, and then we will review it again in 3 months. Still no clearer about how they calculate my usage going forward (in kWhs) but this gentleman will raise the issue for me higher up again. 

So my advice is call them and query it. Mine clearly didn’t need to be raised to keep me in credit, I can’t see how I am going to go from £1740 worth of electricity and gas usage a year to £3600 by using the same amounts, even with the price increases that may or may not happen - and no-one can tell me why that value is there, beyond telling me that the computer came up with the calculation/prediction. 

An aside, they keep having to estimate my usage as my meter keeps stopping sending readings, and they are estimating double the usage on average from the last several months. ie, actual usage sitting at 33-42kwh per day, but days when they have estimated usage are around 70kwh. Can easily see which days my gas meter wasn’t sending readings!!! Finally catches up once I call OVO and they poke my meter from their end….  

OVO need to sort this out, I am becoming very tempted to leave after using them since we moved in here 13 years ago. 

It’s not easy with an Economy 10 tariff, but most of the numbers you need are on your Plan page. The first to look at is the Future Annual Consumption (FAC). This is supposed to be the same as your actual consumption over the previous 12 months. You’ll have to check your bills or meter readings to see just what this was. Find your latest bill and note down the meter readings used to calculate it. Then find the bill for the same period last year and note its readings. Subtract last year’s from the latest to get the annual consumption. For electricity, do this for peak and offpeak, then add them together to get the total for electricity. Do the same for gas.

• Are the numbers you get anything like what it says on your Plan page?  

The change from Economy 7 to Economy 10 will have a major influence on your costs unless you’re very careful to use your power-hungriest appliances (e.g. space and water heaters) only during offpeak hours. Your meter should have been configured to switch on power to the heating equipment at the start of each offpeak period and off again at the end.

• Have you seen that this is what is happening? 

That’s a nuisance, but any estimates will come out in the wash when actual readings are received. To be sure that you’re billed correctly, submit meter readings in the morning of the first day of each  billing period. If your bills cover a calendar month, you’d send in readings on the first. If it runs from, say, 16th to 15th, send them in on the 16th, and also on the first day of each quarter when the tariff changes (next will be 1 January 2025). This won’t affect anything if smart readings are also received for the same day, but it will avoid silly estimates if they’re not.

Please reply with answers to the questions I’ve posed, and tell us too where you are in the world so we can see what rates and offpeak times you should be getting. The first part of your postcode is enough to nail your region down. It would also help to know what equipment you’re running at offpeak times. As always, a couple of clear photos of your meter (touch a button to light up the screen) and of the meter backboard/box/cupboard so we can see all the cables to and from the meter would be useful.

Thanks Firedog - I couldn’t find my FAC and the link is super helpful for that.

Looks like my plan is listing my FAC for electricity as a tad under 8000 kwh - this is where its all going wrong with the predicted forward planning then.  My current yearly usage is averaging 2500-2600 kwh over the last 3 years, increasing slightly further back (during covid years 2020, 2021) to 3400 in the year. (pulling this data from my usage stats for last few years)

 - I would be very interested to know if other people with this issue have got daft estimates for their future electricity use please! 

Water heaters are set to go on during off-peak, and off again before on-peak times. 

The estimates are frustrating me, but yes, they are a different matter and I will be taking readings to match up with the smart meter readings - have been advised not to submit them until they have sorted out the meter, might need a new one, so waiting for it to tick past the 32 days of not working so they can replace it.  

I’m based in Northampton, and the meters aren’t worrying me too much, more the stupid estimates. 

Like others here I’m not happy. What rubs salt in the wound is that, from my own calculations and implied by ​@Emmanuelle_OVO, it would appear that no allowance is made for “add ons” such as charge anytime. 
Going by the cost calculator it assumes all power used is charged at the full rate.

🙋🏻 Been there, done that! 

In my case, I learnt that having a new meter installed removed historical user data from the calculation. This meant that the FAC was initially set at a high ‘industry standard’, but it would allegedly gradually come down as usage data were received. This is an established system based on a national database recording every meter’s consumption figures. My FAC did indeed come down, but it took a whole year to reach a level matching that year’s consumption. 

I can’t imagine why you’re in this situation, so I suggest you ask Support. If you don’t get a satisfactory answer, submit a formal written complaint saying that your FAC is unnaturally high and asking for it to be reduced to a sensible level matching your past year’s consumption.

I have a suspicion that the FAC is also used to calculate the estimates you see on usage charts, which is why they’re unreasonably high. As I said, this doesn’t matter much because billing will fall into line when readings are available. I don’t understand why you’re asked not to submit readings when the meter isn’t doing so. I suggest you keep records of all three readings (gas, and peak and offpeak electricity) at least monthly, preferably with date-stamped photos as concrete evidence. 

Yes, I have had a new meter installed in late October 2024. I have asked 3 times for an escalation, and todays call was to check that they are including my query about the FAC being so high. No-one seems able to edit this value on the phones, or know why they picked a stupidly high figure.

This makes sense re:the estimates being high. 

It was suggested that I keep date-stamped timed photos for all 3 readings as you have suggested too - I am not submitting readings of them as I need to be able to see (for me) accurately when the meter stopped working, and I will be doing weekly readings and keeping records. I shouldn’t have to, but I am going to anyway! 

Thanks for the suggestions of the FAC, it seems a new meter and a change of contract have caused me no end of issues already this month. 

Contact them and check they had actually sent it out. If not, that is their mistake and they should be able to change it and maybe offer a small credit as a gesture of goodwill….

FWIW the system works both ways. OVO actually tried to force my DD DOWN recently by quite a significant amount based on the new March 2026 thing. They didn’t wait 10 days - they just did it immediately because a wait period and/or my consent isn’t required for that. I just suddenly received two emails one morning. The first was a DD update confirmation that my payments had been successfully reduced, the second being an alert from OVO notifying me that my payments were eligible to be automatically reduced and this had been actioned - but that I could also opt to put them back to what they were if I wanted to.

I decided to override the system and force it back to my preferred amount anyway - I find it better to keep the credit available. If it gets too high, I’ll just dump some credit back out and fling it back to the bank.

As I’ve said before, that stuff pretty much never gets sent out “by mistake”. If it was, we’d know on the Forum already.

From the conversation I had yesterday with a customer service rep on the phone, they admitted that they should have sent a “Check your direct debit because we think its wrong” email, and that they had fallen short of their own standards by not doing so. I was offered £15 credit on my account as an apology. 

Like Firedog I have also had too high FAC issues.
At one point it was over 3x higher than it should be.

Mine was a pretty unusual cause, ultimately also due to a meter exchange, but mine was a partially failed exchange so the electricity meter was changed, but the old gas meter was left in place.

Long story short but it later transpired that the Central Data Provider (Xoserve) then had the wrong serial number for my gas meter.
They had the new one that was never fitted and so of course there was no usage being recorded cetrally, which meant that they were using ‘Industry Standard’ figures rather than actual usage when caculating my estimated future gas use.

Once that error was eventually spoted and  that meter number corrected then things settled down again, although my Gas FAC is still currently about 20% too high. (Meaning that my Recommended DDs are 10% too high).

It isn’t just meter exchanges though, both myself and Firedog identified a number of different reasons why an FAC can be too high, which then causes estimates and recommended DD’s to be too high.
I’m sure that there will be others as well that we didn’t spot or think of.
Some have already been fixed.
Some of them are pretty complicated and rare, but can and do happen.

One practical tip that I did find can work to reduce a too high FAC if you smart meter isn’t communicating properly, or if you don’t have a smart meter, is to send in regular and frequent manual meter readings to mimic what a smart meter does - send them at least once a week
It’s that lack of frequent, regular, readings that can cause things to slip.

Of course in my case that didn’t work at first because Xoserve had the wrong meter number anyway, but once that had been corrected I could see my incorrect gas FAC reducing each time I sent in a new meter reading.

PS.

… about the FAC being so high. No-one seems able to edit this value on the phones, or know why they picked a stupidly high figure.

The support agents can’t change it.
We found from our previous investigations that it is calculated automatically and input from 4 different organisations is involved in that calculation, Elexon. Xoserve, Kaluza, and OVO.
That’s one reason why issues with it can be complicated to find and fix.
Even if the support agents could change it manually then it would just change back again when the automatic calculation was next run (every 3-months).