One plus point for OVO was when your waiting speak to someone, "press 1 to turn off the music". Now I don't need the Economy 10 tarrif, I don't think sitting in silence is a good enough reason to stay with them when I was on the phone for 46 minutes yesterday.

On a previous occasion I requested my DD was reduced to £20pm, which they had no issues with.

I have found them (Octopus) very fair and quick to respond to customer queries - err… do you want my referral code! 😉 Regards, Toodles.

With a huge over winter usage, my direct debit has always left a hefty credit balance in my account at the end of summer, ready for it to be munched away over winter.

I phoned them yesterday to get a refund, because I don't think £1112 credit and a £144 per month direct debit will be required to cover this winter season when the new heatpump has a heating COP* of 5.01 and combined COP* of 4.7 over the past 11 days. * COP calculated from the HP controller output/usage data and may not be completely accurate.

So they are sending me a cheque for £963 🙂. BUT... because their system uses historic usage to calculate the DD amounts and there's no way to fundamentally change the predicted usage and my DD is set to go up in December to £309 😩 so I'll need to phone them again in the near future.

The chap on the phone was nice and helpful, but the company is a dinosaur. So I'm looking for an alternative provider. 

Personally, I agree with @batpred. We also use Octopus and can vary the amount as we see fit.

However, in the short term I'd be inclined to make it as costly as possible for Scottish Hydro Electric to do business with you under their self-imposed rules. The FCA mandates that the customer must be given advance notice before any payment is taken from their account, and that they should also be notified in advance of any changes to the direct debit agreement including a change in the payment amount. Typically, that notice period is 10 working days. If Scottish Hydro don't typically notify you, they are in breach of FCA rules. If they do notify you, you have that notice period to disagree with the amount and require them to amend it. Doing so will involve them in manual work which is costly but they must comply if you're demonstrating the payment amount is unreasonable.

The FCA also have plenty of regulations covering the general topic of "Treating Customers Fairly". Overcharging you because their algorithm doesn't fit your use case is not treating you fairly and you could ask the FCA to investigate Scottish Hydro's compliance.

In your position, though, I'd personally drop Scottish Hydro like a hot potato and move to a supplier that has a range of time of use tariffs so you can make the most of the smart meter. Unsurprisingly, I'd put Octopus at the top of the list since they have the best range of those kinds of tariffs and we've had a decade of good customer service from them.

I am with octopus and if a large credit starts building up, i just go online and lower the direct debut amount. I think that option is not available on the octopus app. I do not remember them pushing back when I adjust it.

With a huge over winter usage, my direct debit has always left a hefty credit balance in my account at the end of summer, ready for it to be munched away over winter.

I phoned them yesterday to get a refund, because I don't think £1112 credit and a £144 per month direct debit will be required to cover this winter season when the new heatpump has a heating COP* of 5.01 and combined COP* of 4.7 over the past 11 days. * COP calculated from the HP controller output/usage data and may not be completely accurate.

So they are sending me a cheque for £963 🙂. BUT... because their system uses historic usage to calculate the DD amounts and there's no way to fundamentally change the predicted usage and my DD is set to go up in December to £309 😩 so I'll need to phone them again in the near future.

The chap on the phone was nice and helpful, but the company is a dinosaur. So I'm looking for an alternative provider. 

We moved to our current house four years ago (again with Octopus) and I resisted a smart meter for the first couple of years. We finally moved across (a couple of years ago) and Octopus installed the meter (a painless process). We then moved to Agile (again, easy) and have been with it pretty much ever since. With the imminent arrival of a heat pump our tariff of choice is Cosy (no EV here) and have no concerns about the ease of transition from Agile to Cosy .

Our generation based FIT is with Scottish Power. If I could rate them as hopeless, I would : unresponsive, slow to pay, daft rules of when to submit readings and no feedback if a reading is unsuccessful. I'd move if I could be bothered, but now I have a better grasp of their shortcomings, I'm just sticking with them.