Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Telegraph_Sam

Lessons for all of us in there somewhere?

condoghost

brucie24 said:

I have been with Octopus from almost the beginning and they were always great with their customer service. Sadly not any more.

I had't had a bill since Dec 2023 even though I am on a smart meter. After numerous emails and phone calls this afternoon I received a bill which showed I was £1800 in credit. The elation was short lived when I realised it was gas only although showing my monthly dd credits in full. So now I have to wait for the electric one to follow and see what happens.

I'm so fed up and am thinking of moving suppliers. I daren't even try to do that until my Bills are actually up to date.

Of course there's no guarantee any other firm will be any better and Octopus are meant to be one of the good ones!!!

Haven't had a bill since Dec 2023? surely you emailed them in January 2024 or March 2024? are you saying you haven't been proactive not checked-in with them in over ten months? haven't checked with them readings from your smart meter are being received their end?
So fed up? unsure 'moving supplier' will resolve anything.

condoghost

masonic said:

chamelion said:

masonic said:

Sad times. After repeated billing issues in recent months, and Octopus adding over £600 of charges to my account out of the blue without any billing to support it, I have had to go down the formal complaint route. It certainly feels like they are taking on the characteristics of another large energy company.

What did they say on the phone? I've had insanely reasonable people in every chat, which is usually over a few £ extra I've been charged for my car charge which didn't trigger the low intelligent tariff. Given how data led the company is the bill has to have come from somewhere...

They've been perfectly nice and taken my feedback on board, but it was only after getting in touch I was informed of the £600+ to be billed for the period from mid-August to date, which makes absolutely no sense given I've used about 100 kWh on Tracker tariff over that period - it would make the unit price about £6, rather than the expected 15-22p! I have not suddenly started up a crypto-mining operation, nor do my readings show that. I really don't think they should have mentioned such a figure if they weren't confident in it. Luckily I didn't fall off my chair.

A couple of hours ago I did receive a 40 page bill where a year's worth of charges were reversed and re-billed, ending up with a final balance of £0. I had the same thing happen last month. I suspect the root cause of the issue is that at some point over the summer my meter profile was changed to Economy 7 out of the blue. I only noticed when checking recent readings and seeing two registers there instead of the usual one. That is when the billing issues began.

Since 23rd July, when my last "normal" bill was issued, 47 separate rows of charges and reversals have been applied to my account, all different amounts. While I am partial to a maths brainteaser, that's taking the biscuit.

This is the third opportunity I've given them to sort it out, so hopefully the complaints people will see it through this time.

First I would say that having to adjust a year's worth of charges indicates a lack of a proactive check on your side given one would expect a bill each month or at least every three months and only 'noticing something' when checking recent readings would highlight that.
Second, yes, whilst faced with 40 pages of charges reversed and rebilled you might feel 47 separate rows of charges and reversals is "taking the biscuit", upon reflection the reasoning is that every charge must be reversed then recharged to have an audit trail.
Sure, stuff happens, and sometimes it can take two three opportunities to sort things out. The truth of it all? it is down to us ourselves to take time out and be proactively checking our billings each month.
My experience of Octopus Energy? not switching to a cheaper tariff with another supplier says it all.
Saving £20 the coming year compared to not having such excellent customer service? no brainer, this is not just customer service, this is Octopus Energy Customer Service.

masonic

condoghost said:

masonic said:

chamelion said:

masonic said:

Sad times. After repeated billing issues in recent months, and Octopus adding over £600 of charges to my account out of the blue without any billing to support it, I have had to go down the formal complaint route. It certainly feels like they are taking on the characteristics of another large energy company.

What did they say on the phone? I've had insanely reasonable people in every chat, which is usually over a few £ extra I've been charged for my car charge which didn't trigger the low intelligent tariff. Given how data led the company is the bill has to have come from somewhere...

They've been perfectly nice and taken my feedback on board, but it was only after getting in touch I was informed of the £600+ to be billed for the period from mid-August to date, which makes absolutely no sense given I've used about 100 kWh on Tracker tariff over that period - it would make the unit price about £6, rather than the expected 15-22p! I have not suddenly started up a crypto-mining operation, nor do my readings show that. I really don't think they should have mentioned such a figure if they weren't confident in it. Luckily I didn't fall off my chair.

A couple of hours ago I did receive a 40 page bill where a year's worth of charges were reversed and re-billed, ending up with a final balance of £0. I had the same thing happen last month. I suspect the root cause of the issue is that at some point over the summer my meter profile was changed to Economy 7 out of the blue. I only noticed when checking recent readings and seeing two registers there instead of the usual one. That is when the billing issues began.

Since 23rd July, when my last "normal" bill was issued, 47 separate rows of charges and reversals have been applied to my account, all different amounts. While I am partial to a maths brainteaser, that's taking the biscuit.

This is the third opportunity I've given them to sort it out, so hopefully the complaints people will see it through this time.

First I would say that having to adjust a year's worth of charges indicates a lack of a proactive check on your side given one would expect a bill each month or at least every three months and only 'noticing something' when checking recent readings would highlight that.
Second, yes, whilst faced with 40 pages of charges reversed and rebilled you might feel 47 separate rows of charges and reversals is "taking the biscuit", upon reflection the reasoning is that every charge must be reversed then recharged to have an audit trail.
Sure, stuff happens, and sometimes it can take two three opportunities to sort things out. The truth of it all? it is down to us ourselves to take time out and be proactively checking our billings each month.
My experience of Octopus Energy? not switching to a cheaper tariff with another supplier says it all.
Saving £20 the coming year compared to not having such excellent customer service? no brainer, this is not just customer service, this is Octopus Energy Customer Service.

I checked each of my monthly bills and they were all accurate. It was the cancellation of those bills and re-billing that was spurious. And the spuriously re-billed period had to be reversed to fix the problem, essentially reinstating what was billed originally. The readings were changed retrospectively - one day the app showed a second register out of the blue (corresponding to my meter being changed to Profile 2/E7) - this has now been removed again (and meter is back to Profile 1). I was totally on top of things, it was Octopus who was not.

Octopus has held its tentacles up to changing my meter profile without my consent and retrospectively changing my tariff code to correspond to an E7 version of the tariff. This was the source of the problem. Also, the £600+ of new charges mentioned by a CS agent turned out to be fake news. It seems even after re-billing, the charges were still showing as unbilled from their side.

And yes, I can understand the need to audit all of the changes, but the problem was at the time Octopus could not provide me with a statement corresponding to the charges I was seeing online because their billing system didn't like the tariff code they'd retrospectively changed on my account. The online view just gives a list of charges without the billing period they relate to, they were simply labelled "Electricity".

It was through me being on top of things that I was able to query their GraphQL API to get the relevant data and present to them exactly what had been changed using my previous records of my agreements. I gave them 4 weeks from opening my complaint before I intervened, but at that time they had moved me back to Profile 1, but hadn't made any progress in diagnosing the billing problem. So I took a more prescriptive approach, told them which fields in my account record needed to be corrected, and it was fixed within days.

brucie24

condoghost said:

Haven't had a bill since Dec 2023? surely you emailed them in January 2024 or March 2024? are you saying you haven't been proactive not checked-in with them in over ten months? haven't checked with them readings from your smart meter are being received their end?
So fed up? unsure 'moving supplier' will resolve anything.

Your assumption that I have not been 'pro-active' is erroneous. Of course I 'checked-in' with them over that time. Constant excuses about system errors and readings received etc etc. In the last two month's alone Five times I requested to speak to a manager, Five times I didn't receive a call back.

I made the decision to move from Octopus and even that took a ridiculous length of time to produce a final bill and credit me the balance owed and that only after more phone calls.

I am under no illusion that changing suppliers will produce any better service but quite simply their incompetence will not be rewarded by my continued custom or loyalty.

BargainBear

We had something similar happen to us when moving to the smart tariffs for both meters, these were originally SMETS1 which had received the upgrade by Octopus to make them smart again. Prior to that I was photographing and documenting monthly meter readings on a spreadsheet and submitting them online.

We then received an email from Octopus offering us upgraded meters to SMETS2, so we said why not and upgraded.  We were assured by Octopus via social media and on the phone that we no longer needed to submit meter readings manually and it'd all be taken care of via their system and the smart meters, oh how naive I was.

Luckily it was only 4 months later, I happened to double-check one of our bills randomly online to see the omission of any charge for electricity.  I looked back and we hadn't been charged for the 3 months prior.  I immediately contacted them on Twitter and over a period of a few days they confirmed a few half hourly readings had failed to upload from the electricity meter, which resulted in the bill not automatically generating.  I queried if they don't proactively get a prompt from their "automated" system to inform them of the missing readings, to which they said they don't, and they rely on customers to pick up on it and notify them, which I thought was quite poor.

Needless to say, it all got rectified in the end, although the bills were enough to make you go cross-eyed unless you printed them out and used a highlighter to track everything.  Now the bill is checked every month, lesson learnt!

quartzz

I posted this somewhere else, but I switched from Octopus to British Gas. my last bill from Octopus didn't match what my smart meter display was showing (the bill was larger than the numbers [strangely enough.......], by about 20% for a week - in the region of £1 for a weeks worth -- or charging me £2 per day for a week for £1.70 used per day for a week). Octopus via email, gave me some incredibly vague/unconvincing text which basically said "sometimes the meter gets it wrong". [why? why does a digital system get it wrong?]

So far, British Gas haven't got it wrong. my online usage from the BG website corresponds exactly to the numbers my display is showing

bristolleedsfan

quartzz said:

I posted this somewhere else, but I switched from Octopus to British Gas. my last bill from Octopus didn't match what my smart meter display was showing (the bill was larger than the numbers [strangely enough.......], by about 20% for a week - in the region of £1 for a weeks worth -- or charging me £2 per day for a week for £1.70 used per day for a week). Octopus via email, gave me some incredibly vague/unconvincing text which basically said "sometimes the meter gets it wrong". [why? why does a digital system get it wrong?]

When I switched away from Octopus, new supplier opened Gas with S/M reading, Octopus closed Gas with its own higher estimated reading, I intend to lodge a complaint asking why they have adopted that policy.

masonic

bristolleedsfan said:

quartzz said:

I posted this somewhere else, but I switched from Octopus to British Gas. my last bill from Octopus didn't match what my smart meter display was showing (the bill was larger than the numbers [strangely enough.......], by about 20% for a week - in the region of £1 for a weeks worth -- or charging me £2 per day for a week for £1.70 used per day for a week). Octopus via email, gave me some incredibly vague/unconvincing text which basically said "sometimes the meter gets it wrong". [why? why does a digital system get it wrong?]

When I switched away from Octopus, new supplier opened Gas with S/M reading, Octopus closed Gas with its own higher estimated reading, I intend to lodge a complaint asking why they have adopted that policy.

That's very naughty. The change of supplier reading must be validated by the DCC and used by both suppliers. Final bill cannot be issued on a different reading.

QrizB

masonic said:

bristolleedsfan said:

quartzz said:

I posted this somewhere else, but I switched from Octopus to British Gas. my last bill from Octopus didn't match what my smart meter display was showing (the bill was larger than the numbers [strangely enough.......], by about 20% for a week - in the region of £1 for a weeks worth -- or charging me £2 per day for a week for £1.70 used per day for a week). Octopus via email, gave me some incredibly vague/unconvincing text which basically said "sometimes the meter gets it wrong". [why? why does a digital system get it wrong?]

When I switched away from Octopus, new supplier opened Gas with S/M reading, Octopus closed Gas with its own higher estimated reading, I intend to lodge a complaint asking why they have adopted that policy.

That's very naughty. The change of supplier reading must be validated by the DCC and used by both suppliers. Final bill cannot be issued on a different reading.

But by the same measure, meter readings when you switch suppliers are validated - and can be adjusted - by Gerry1's "mysterious third party". It's uncommon but not unknown for the agreed handover readings to be different to the actual readings on the meters.