Terrible Experience with Octopus 🐙

JB1991

So we have been living in our house for almost two years now. Its a three-bedroom, detached house.

When we moved in we went with Iresa, we were paying £40 a month. I work from home, so there is usually a laptop/desktop on and I boil the kettle a few times throughout the day however I have always been fairly careful with consumption. From memory, we owed Iresa about £100 at the time Octopus took over, however it was the middle of the winter so I wasn't too worried.

It was a fairly slow process moving across to Octopus, we carried on paying what we were paying and all was well, I submitted meter readings and all of a sudden we were £500 in debit on the account. I posted on Facebook about what had happened as I had noticed that there were some other people who had had the exact same thing happen to them, and within the next 10 minutes they were calling me. We had supposedly been paying too little with Iresa and needed to start paying more to cover the energy and bring our account down. They knocked £100 off the bill as I was quite irate that it had seemingly appeared from nowhere. I was assured all was correct and £90 would cover everything and bring my account down.

Three months later I receive a letter through the door saying I need to pay Octopus a sum of £200 immediately, else debt recovery will be getting involved. Horrified, I rung them up and was assured that actually that wouldn't be the case as long as I submitted a meter reading for this month. I submitted it straight away and was informed that I am now using £150 worth of electricity a month without even starting to pay off the amount owed.

I really am horrified this has happened, it seemingly has spiralled out of control rapidly and out of nowhere. My consumption of electric has not increased since I have moved in here, we are always averaging around the same amount.


Not really sure how to progress from here. Has anyone had a similar experience and how did you handle it?

tacpot12

The problem here is that you don't know how much electricity you have actually been using since you moved in. Nothing you have said suggests that your usage has changed, other than the normal variations that occur with the seasons. Your bills might have changed, but this could well be because Iresa didn't bill you correctly.

One of the problems of switching energy suppliers is that you generally lose access to your usage details, so really before switching, you need to make a note of the actual meter readings you gave to the supplier. Then you will have the data to see if your usage has actually changed.

You might ask to have your meter checked, but if it is providing readings at all I would expect it to be correct.

Redboot

JB1991 wrote: »

So we have been living in our house for almost two years now. Its a three-bedroom, detached house.

When we moved in we went with Iresa, we were paying £40 a month. I work from home, so there is usually a laptop/desktop on and I boil the kettle a few times throughout the day however I have always been fairly careful with consumption. From memory, we owed Iresa about £100 at the time Octopus took over, however it was the middle of the winter so I wasn't too worried.

It was a fairly slow process moving across to Octopus, we carried on paying what we were paying and all was well, I submitted meter readings and all of a sudden we were £500 in debit on the account. I posted on Facebook about what had happened as I had noticed that there were some other people who had had the exact same thing happen to them, and within the next 10 minutes they were calling me. We had supposedly been paying too little with Iresa and needed to start paying more to cover the energy and bring our account down. They knocked £100 off the bill as I was quite irate that it had seemingly appeared from nowhere. I was assured all was correct and £90 would cover everything and bring my account down.

Three months later I receive a letter through the door saying I need to pay Octopus a sum of £200 immediately, else debt recovery will be getting involved. Horrified, I rung them up and was assured that actually that wouldn't be the case as long as I submitted a meter reading for this month. I submitted it straight away and was informed that I am now using £150 worth of electricity a month without even starting to pay off the amount owed.

I really am horrified this has happened, it seemingly has spiralled out of control rapidly and out of nowhere. My consumption of electric has not increased since I have moved in here, we are always averaging around the same amount.


Not really sure how to progress from here. Has anyone had a similar experience and how did you handle it?

This is not an Octopus issue. You would have experienced the same whoever Ofgem appointed as a SoLR following the demise of Iresa.

As I understand you, you were immediately in debt to the sum of £500 when you joined Octopus. That could only be was a balance carried forward from Iresa.

As for timing, over 80% (of 90,000) of Iresa final bills had been issued within 1 month of Octopus taking over, and all were issued within 2 months.

When you received the final bill, you were asked to say whether it was right or wrong in your opinion.

You either did not object, or Octopus were not convinced by your reason for objecting to the Iresa final bill.

So, if 3 months later, you still had not paid the final bill, it's no wonder they wanted at least 40% of it paid immediately.

I'm amazed they knocked £100 off; they were only knocking £20 off Iresa final bill for quick settlement.

Btw, Iresa failed in the middle of the summer 2018, not the middle of any winter