Ways of paying Ovo

[whatthejuice]

Hi,
I've been switched over to Ovo after our energy company went bust.
We are now just paying for what we use at the end of each month.
Sorry to appear dim but what is the benefit of paying via DD? They keep pushing it on me.
Through the summer we have been paying around £100 gas and electric combined so we have been saving ready for much bigger winter bills.
Should I switch to DD payment?
Thanks!

Watching with interest as we're DD but considering only paying what we use

Don’t know about Ovo specifically but SSE would not allow us to fix a tariff unless we did DD. - that was a couple of years ago. So you may want to check whether there are hidden benefits to DD.
DD gives them more control, but DH watches it like a hawk and is on them instantly if it looks like they are hoarding our cash ( which right now they are not)

Direct debit means they try and smooth your payments over the year - so rather than low summer bills and Hugh winter ones, you pay something in between throughout the year. However if You've budgeted for higher bills in winter you may not feel that it's useful to have the smoothing of cost

Thanks everyone

@Run4it2 thanks for this. That's essentially the conclusion we've come to but wondered if we'd missed something as so many people I know pay DD.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is hoping for a mild September and October 🙏

DD means you're less likely to default on a high winter bill.

DD means they have a big pot of customer money over the summer months (free borrowing for them).

You get a small discount because of the above.

I refused DD when Scottish Power set it much higher than the highest cost month the previous year (before the crazy prices kicked in - I've still got 6 months of a fix left to go luckily). However I have to make sure I budget carefully for the expensive months and it does mean I'm paying slightly more than if I'd agreed for them to "look after" my money for me.

Thanks for this - and good for you re 6 months on a cheap fix.
Yes, my reasoning is I trust myself more than any of these companies with my money.

You get 3% interest on any credit you have with OVO so it's worth it if you can afford to keep those payments each month.