Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Telegraph_Sam

Tracker gas prices have been trending upwards since the day I switched and I am living on hope that this will be reversed over the summer. In the absence of a "Go Faster Gas" tariff there is no obvious alternative that has clear blue water compared with Tracker. On the other hand one needs to see things in perspective: Short of a climatic drama gas costs should become less important in the summer. My annual gas costs should be less than 40% of my total.  There is more mileage to be had from getting a good electric deal - and I would not rule out Go Faster for this.
Taking everything into consideration I was not disappointed with my first combined Tracker bill compared with what else shows up in the search engines.
On a different tack: A question to reader(s) who have experienced getting a smart meter installed: How big a job is it to get the setup right, how much hassle and does it work just "out of the box" as no doubt the promoters would have us believe? I'm guessing that once having taken the plunge there is no going back if the consumer has a change of mind? There is not a lot of work space around my existing mains consumer unit.

niktheguru

As bristolleedsfan says, they don't offer any time of use tariffs for gas, so if you want to be with octopus for your gas itll be on their flexible/fixed/tracker tariffs which aren't terribly competitive at present.

It's probably more economical to go with another company for gas as there are much better gas prices on the market.

niktheguru

Telegraph_Sam said:

On a different tack: A question to reader(s) who have experienced getting a smart meter installed: How big a job is it to get the setup right, how much hassle and does it work just "out of the box" as no doubt the promoters would have us believe? I'm guessing that once having taken the plunge there is no going back if the consumer has a change of mind? There is not a lot of work space around my existing mains consumer unit.

I just had my old smets1 British gas smart meters changed to smets2 meters by octopus on Thursday. 

When I had the original smart meters installed in 2017 it was a seamless installation, took about 3 hours and the installer even noticed a problem with the gas main isolator thing (forgotten the actual name), which the DNO came and replaced same day. Had a good experience with smart metering from British gas but as I switch annually it became dumb the next year, so carried on providing meter readings until I could easily get a smets2 meter.

The plan on moving to octopus was always to go on either go or go faster. So the intention was always to upgrade to a smets2 meter. I moved both my elec and gas to octopus despite them not being that cheap for gas as I wanted both meters to be changed at the same time. I went on tracker in the interim whilst I waited for a smart meter. You can only book an appointment once you are fully switched to octopus. The next available appointment in my area was approximately a month away.

With regards to actual fitting, took 2 hours for both meters, was without elec for about 30mins. Extremely painless process.
Meters updated on octopus website the same day
Electricity smart readings ready on website in 2 days, and moved onto octopus go the same day. Now waiting for being moved to go faster which they say will take up to a week......so now only paying 14.4p/kwh for elec and will charge my car and do the elec intensive things during the off peak hours at 5p/kwh.

The only caveat is my gas smart meter isn't giving smart readings yet or appearing on my ihd. Mind you they said it could take up to 2 weeks for this, so I still have plenty of time.

Regarding the installation it all depends where your current meters are. My meters are both outside in their own cupboards and not near my consumer unit.
Once you have smart meters you can't just ask for dumb meters again, it's a one way ticket.

Personally I am all for smart meters, particularly when they will save you so much money. I appreciate people's reservation regarding the demandside potential etc etc, but don't see that as a problem for me personally.

At the end of the day it provides accurate readings for me, is the cheapest electricity for my needs at the moment and provides excellent data about my usage.
If you really have serious reservations over smart meters then you should completely ignore the cheaper tou tariffs, stick to the fixed/variable/tracker deals and just be prepared that you're paying a bit more at least at the moment. (Also be aware that if you have tracker with a smart meter then you will be billed daily accurately, rather than your usage being estimated depending on the frequencies of the manual readings you provided)

Hope that helps.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

On a different tack: A question to reader(s) who have experienced getting a smart meter installed: How big a job is it to get the setup right, how much hassle and does it work just "out of the box" as no doubt the promoters would have us believe? I'm guessing that once having taken the plunge there is no going back if the consumer has a change of mind? There is not a lot of work space around my existing mains consumer unit.

Bristolleedsfan will be able to recount a different experience, but for me it was simple. I used Twitter to book an appointment, installation went smoothly, although it was touch and go because there was a threat of rain and my meter is outside, the installer didn't fancy things getting wet! Install took about half an hour and then another half hour of cleanup, showing me how the IHD works and the mandatory energy saving tips.

Then the IHD needed to connect to the meter, which for me happened within hours. It took quite a bit longer for the meter to be shown in my online account (maybe 5 days?) and it wasn't until day 10 that Octopus started getting readings (my IHD showed a provisioning complete message). It was really just a waiting game.

Telegraph_Sam

masonic said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

The other hoop is making sense of

https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-go-tariff/
 and 
https://www.energy-stats.uk/dashboards/

Not for the faint hearted.

There's a lot of information on the dashboard, but it's quite easy to use. Go to this page: https://dashboards.energy-stats.uk/d/y9iWNjZMz/user-dashboard?orgId=1&var-area_name=North_Eastern_England

Then scroll down to the Agile vs Go data or Go Faster tariff data and click on one of the tariffs in the legend to see the pricing graph for just that tariff.

Go and Go Faster tariffs are less complex than the Tracker - they do exactly the same thing every day and there you'll only pay one of two prices depending on what time of day it is. You also have certainty of pricing for a year from the date you switch, unlike the Tracker where you only have a few hours notice of what you will be charged the following day.

I was able to retrieve niktheguru's very helpful summary from previously.

Deciding just which Go Faster tariff applies to the dashboards.energystats (underneath the graphs) for the North East was not too obvious but it looked like there was not a vast difference between them individually. My question is: what is the original source of the data, where one would apply to for an official quote, having studied the small print and decided to switch to Go Faster?

A quick back of a fag packet calculation seemed to show that for me the Go Faster rate would work out annually a little more than what Octopus are estimating my annual cost on Tracker, as shown on their latest invoice, which I suppose is anticipating a drop later in the year compared with present prices. Could be that when everything pans out there is not a huge difference.

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

My question is: what is the original source of the data, where one would apply to for an official quote, having studied the small print and decided to switch to Go Faster?

There is no way to get a meaningful 'quote' for these types of tariff...

You've been chasing this same point for months now and the answer isn't going to change...

You are not on a smart meter so you don't have your own historic data to use so the best you can do is take a guess at how you think you'll be able to shift your usage around to fit within the various time periods.

I'd strongly suggest that you start the process of moving to a smart meter if you have an interest in these tariffs so you can get your own data or at least be ready to move to one of these tariffs if you decide to go ahead...

Umiamz

I went from ‘dumb’ meters to smart meters a couple of years ago. Octopus fitted SMETS1 because SMETS2 weren’t working in my area at the time. The whole process took around an hour to replace the meters and another 20 mins to commission and test.

Very painless process.

Telegraph_Sam

The 0.1293 / kwh (inc VAT?) plus £91.25 quoted above by Masonic must come from somewhere, even if I ignore usage shifts for rough calculation purposes.

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

The 0.1293 / kwh (inc VAT?) plus £91.25 quoted above by Masonic must come from somewhere, even if I ignore usage shifts for rough calculation purposes.

Same place that has been linked before:

https://octopus.energy/tariffs/

Don't ask for a quote, just put your post code in on the page.

That is the rate for Eastern Region for example...

You can also retrieve tariff rates via the API, but the webpage is easier for most people...

Telegraph_Sam

Thanks I did that previously but was put off course by the "current" GF tariffs displayed all being from 2019 (your Go is 2018). This must mean that there has been no change in rates since then. No mention of the off peak rates that I could see.
Probably all too obvious in retrospect.