Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Telegraph_Sam

With your permission I will not stray into the complexities of multi meter registers which are way above my pay grade.
In the recent past I have been able with Go Faster to get the total of the half hourly consumption readings to tally with the readings displayed in my monthly invoices. Brilliant. Far preferable for Octopus to continue to display the monthly readings in the invoices than for me to use my own calculated readings instead. Those were the days ...

Telegraph_Sam

Topic: Govt Price cap(s).
I have been having a  surprising amt of difficulty in getting Octopus Help to give me an unambiguous and authoritative clarification of this very topical point.
For gas I will shortly be faced with a choice between the following (ignoring the S/C which seems to be uniform).
Northern Region:
Variable Tariffs
Octopus Flexible Apl 22 v1: 7.22 p ;/ kWh
Tracker v3:  9.48p latest reading. Was yesterday 7.48
SO Energy Std Variable 7.22 p

Fixed tariffs
Octopus 1 yr fix: 15.34p
Octopus Loyalty 14.88p
SO Energy 1 yr Iris 12.53p

Immediate conclusion: I would be paying approx twice the flex cost for the security of a 1 year fix. SO Energy would seem to have the edge

HOWEVER - crucial to these figures is / are the underlying  govt price cap(s). Much general literature has been published online on these but I am still trying to establish how they (would) work on the ground in practice in my situation in LSD.

1. What cap is currently applicable to each of the flexible tariffs above, even if the latest price is below the tariff?
2.  Tracker being Tracker is it somehow exempt from a price cap?
3. Is the price cap a one-size-fits-all or does it vary by
a. supplier,
b. individual tariff,
c. region as well as
time scale,
d. now,
e. October,
f. January?
One could understand reluctance to predict what it might be in Jan 23 but Oct 22 is not unrealistic.
4. OR is it - as I was given to understand by the man from Octopus this afternoon - not a price cap at but an "annual spend cap"? I would find this hard to swallow if it had come from any other source.
In a strategic sense the crystal ball choice is between a "good" price capped flexible and a fixed tariff.
Anyone who can see through the complexity and is willing to share the secrets I'd be grateful if he would shout.

Consumerist

Telegraph_Sam said:

. . .
1. What cap is currently applicable to each of the flexible tariffs above, even if the latest price is below the tariff?
2.  Tracker being Tracker is it somehow exempt from a price cap?
3. Is the price cap a one-size-fits-all or does it vary by
a. supplier,
b. individual tariff,
c. region as well as
time scale,
d. now,
e. October,
f. January?
One could understand reluctance to predict what it might be in Jan 23 but Oct 22 is not unrealistic.
4. OR is it - as I was given to understand by the man from Octopus this afternoon - not a price cap at but an "annual spend cap"? I would find this hard to swallow if it had come from any other source.
In a strategic sense the crystal ball choice is between a "good" price capped flexible and a fixed tariff.
Anyone who can see through the complexity and is willing to share the secrets I'd be grateful if he would shout.

Well, I'll do my best:-

The rate cap applies to all standard variable tariffs. It varies by region and by payment method; the cap is a little more expensive if you pay by a prepayment meter or you don't pay by DD.

The rate cap is the maximum unit rate / standing charge combination which can be charged for a standard variable tariff by any supplier but suppliers can charge below this if they wish.

Octopus standard variable rate annual charges come in at £2 under the cap for typical annual consumption. If you were an existing Octopus customer in April 2022 then they have applied a further discount of £48 per annum (but only until Oct 2022 - so £24 discount until then).

It doesn't seem likely that a Tracker tariff is a standard variable tariff.

Hope this helps.

Telegraph_Sam

Tks for your night shift efforts.
If I switch my gas also then it will be from SO Energy back to Octopus. Monthly D/D.. I have been with Octopus Electricity for over a year.
It must be possible, or may be not, to translate the capping theory into an  actual price p kWh for those that have difficulty with basic maths? Or perhaps the price itself is not capped after all? "Typical" annual consumption would seem to leave considerable room for divergence.
We are definitely in the kingdom of the blind.

QrizB

Telegraph_Sam said

It must be possible, or may be not, to translate the capping theory into an  actual price p kWh for those that have difficulty with basic maths?

Yes, it's not only possible but it's been done. See the links that have been in my signature for the past five months or so.

wild666

I keep a spreadsheet of my electric and gas usage and each morning I get the usage for the previous day off my app, in my case thew previous reading is two days old, so the previous reading will be the 10th. I went to input the data into the spreadsheet today, the 12th and the online reading is different to the reading from the app, but only by 0.004 of a kWh. The latest reading from the app stated 3.769 kWh but online it says 3.77 kWh. 
If it is a difference of 0.04 each day then that is 1.46 kWh over the year, or just under 40p per year, not a lot but I just wish the app and online readings would be the same.

k_man

Telegraph_Sam said:

Topic: Govt Price cap(s).
I have been having a  surprising amt of difficulty in getting Octopus Help to give me an unambiguous and authoritative clarification of this very topical point.
For gas I will shortly be faced with a choice between the following (ignoring the S/C which seems to be uniform).
Northern Region:
Variable Tariffs
Octopus Flexible Apl 22 v1: 7.22 p ;/ kWh
Tracker v3:  9.48p latest reading. Was yesterday 7.48
SO Energy Std Variable 7.22 p

Fixed tariffs
Octopus 1 yr fix: 15.34p
Octopus Loyalty 14.88p
SO Energy 1 yr Iris 12.53p

Immediate conclusion: I would be paying approx twice the flex cost for the security of a 1 year fix. SO Energy would seem to have the edge

HOWEVER - crucial to these figures is / are the underlying  govt price cap(s). Much general literature has been published online on these but I am still trying to establish how they (would) work on the ground in practice in my situation in LSD.

1. What cap is currently applicable to each of the flexible tariffs above, even if the latest price is below the tariff?
2.  Tracker being Tracker is it somehow exempt from a price cap?
3. Is the price cap a one-size-fits-all or does it vary by
a. supplier,
b. individual tariff,
c. region as well as
time scale,
d. now,
e. October,
f. January?
One could understand reluctance to predict what it might be in Jan 23 but Oct 22 is not unrealistic.
4. OR is it - as I was given to understand by the man from Octopus this afternoon - not a price cap at but an "annual spend cap"? I would find this hard to swallow if it had come from any other source.
In a strategic sense the crystal ball choice is between a "good" price capped flexible and a fixed tariff.
Anyone who can see through the complexity and is willing to share the secrets I'd be grateful if he would shout.

Yes, Tracker and Agile from Octopus, plus fixed tariffs from any supplier, and tariffs from certain green suppliers, are all exempt from the OFGEM cap.

Telegraph_Sam

I don't have the app but does what you use give you the equivalent meter readings at the beginning / end of the billing periods? I was winge-ing about the disappearance of these from the invoices in an earler post. To no avail I suspect.

k_man

wild666 said:

I keep a spreadsheet of my electric and gas usage and each morning I get the usage for the previous day off my app, in my case thew previous reading is two days old, so the previous reading will be the 10th. I went to input the data into the spreadsheet today, the 12th and the online reading is different to the reading from the app, but only by 0.004 of a kWh. The latest reading from the app stated 3.769 kWh but online it says 3.77 kWh. 
If it is a difference of 0.04 each day then that is 1.46 kWh over the year, or just under 40p per year, not a lot but I just wish the app and online readings would be the same.

That is just a rounding difference, so should balance out to virtually nothing over the year (some will round up, some will round down)
And isn't the difference 0.001 kWh in that example?

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

"Typical" annual consumption would seem to leave considerable room for divergence.
We are definitely in the kingdom of the blind.

You are just missing some critical information, mostly in the links QrizB already pointed you to, but in short the 'Typical consumption' is precisely defined for the cap calculations, so for those with both gas and electricity on a single rate meter it is 3100kWh of electricity and 12,000kWh of gas, for someone on a dual rate electricity meter it is assumed to be 4,200kWh split 58/42% between day/night.

So with that information you can easy translate the cap figures to a standing charge and kWh figure.