Telephone call to OVO energy prices from today

murphyslaw2020

Hello

Been waiting an hour for OVO to answer the phone. 

I wanted the new prices from today’s date for working out how much a month to put aside.

I am on a Standard Variable Rate:

ELECTRIC- 29.39 per watt
standing charge: 56.13 per day

GAS - 7.72 per watt
standing charge: 32.03 per day

VAT @ 5%

My estimate for estimate for the years usage from Ovo online is:

Electric - 4485 watts

Gas - 5310.06 watts

On the calculator this worked out at £ 179.32 per month. Would somebody be so kind as to check this for me? 

MattMattMattUK

I make it £179.36, the 4p variance will be down to rounding.

murphyslaw2020

I was quite surprised by the stand charge prices I knew they were going up but not to that amount. Do you think that is a good price for an energy company or should I look elsewhere? I am in North Scotland.

MWT

murphyslaw2020 said:

I was quite surprised by the stand charge prices I knew they were going up but not to that amount. Do you think that is a good price for an energy company or should I look elsewhere? I am in North Scotland.

Part of the problem is you are not paying by Direct Debit, so that is making your standing charge higher than it needs to be. You'd save about £40 a year on the standing charges on DD. Also a little on the kWh charge as well.

Aside form that though there isn't really anywhere to go that will have lower standing charges right now as they are all going to charge a new customer about the same, and many will not take new customers on the capped tariff right now anyway.

murphyslaw2020

I’m paying monthly always have, but now, I have started getting a meter reading monthly then sent the amount used for that month.

 Ovo made the big mistake of increasing my direct debit without letting me know.

 I had paid both gas & electric bills and had £200 of credit on both accounts, at the time, the monthly payment was £100 per month. There was no reason for them to try and take £171.00 per month out for the future direct debit payments as I always kept the accounts in credit. I had been with SSE energy and everyone was transferred over when ovo bought the company. There was to be no change.
I was not on a fixed rate but standard rate, I could pay monthly or quarterly, it was my choice. I pay most of my bills by direct debit but that was the only company in 40 years that just made a change to my direct debit without my permission, no letter or phone call.

Mstty

@murphyslaw2020

Don't forget the following

1) if you live in band A-D you get a council tax rebate for energy of £150 this month

2) £200 loan to be paid back at approx £4 a month you get this October this year but start paying it back April 2023
3) the impending October price cap increase of approx 30% (maybe higher but this seems to be the concensus)

So you get a couple of months free nearly with the rebate and loan but in the worse winter months October 2022 the variable price capped rate will likely rise by 30%. Up to you but we are putting some extra money a month away for that.

Mstty

Just to add I missed your post on paying for what you use. 

We did our calculation on last year's usage and if paid for what we used and didn't pay our set DD/(our DD set to £177.70) 

This would be our Oct onwards payments taking into account another 30% added to the variable rate tariff Oct 1st

Oct £266.50

Nov £323.70

Dec £361.40

Jan £399.11

Feb £343.20

Mar £304.20

murphyslaw2020

Thank you so much for all your helpful ideas. I started paying and increased amount from February 2022, when the increase was mentioned to keep ahead when real bill was only £100 per month, I increased to £183.00 per month, the surplus I left in a bank account. Now I think I will increase what I have above (£179.36 plus 40%) that should give me surplus which I could keep in the account and have full control of. I hate the idea of these companies thinking that they can help theirselves to extra cash by increasing direct debits when there is not a need for it, and also not letting customers know.

murphyslaw2020

I was just reading the news and they think from October price will go up 42%.

I was thinking if I am paying now £180 per month if I add the 42% on now for the whole 12 months April 2022 to April 2023 then the pain of increase might be lessened.  

It works out at £226.50 per month from now for 12 months. Saves me paying a lower monthly payment from now to October and then the price shoots up for the last 6 months out of the 12 months ending in April 2023.

Am I doing this correctly or is this what a lot of other people are working towards?

ariarnia

we overpay to ovo by adjusting up our DD by about 50% whenever they try to drop it (which they haven't tried recently). still on a below cap fix and get 4% cashback on our balance (which is more than the bank would give us!) and it means we'll have a healthy amount of credit for when our fix ends and the prices go up in october. i get that people don't want energy companies having a 'free' loan from them but when they're paying more interest than anywhere else it only seems polite to let them hold it for us for a while. 

Mstty

murphyslaw2020 said:

I was just reading the news and they think from October price will go up 42%.

I was thinking if I am paying now £180 per month if I add the 42% on now for the whole 12 months April 2022 to April 2023 then the pain of increase might be lessened.  

It works out at £226.50 per month from now for 12 months. Saves me paying a lower monthly payment from now to October and then the price shoots up for the last 6 months out of the 12 months ending in April 2023.

Am I doing this correctly or is this what a lot of other people are working towards?

Sounds like you have it all in hand and are listening and planning👍

I'm having a discussion with another member of the board on another thread about the rise in October. It varies wildly from 25-50% depending who you talk to but personally I am planning for 30% rise