Octopus Tracker

QrizB

Qyburn said:

[Deleted User] said:

That said, I have been on Tracker gas for nearly 2 years and I have no intention of changing but my risk is mitigated by a Cap below the Octopus fixed gas rate.

There's really no risk for those on the older version. With electricity price capped at 30p together with the lower standing charge I don't think it could go significantly above current or forecast SVT. 

Tracker (like Agile and Go) was a one-year fix, but is now a rolling variable tariff which lets Octopus move the cap up or down with notice. Most people are moved to the new flexible Tracker when their old fixed Tracker expires.

The 30p/6p or 30p/11p caps were very reassuring. The current 100p/30p cap is less so!

SJMALBA

QrizB said:

Qyburn said:

Dolor said:

That said, I have been on Tracker gas for nearly 2 years and I have no intention of changing but my risk is mitigated by a Cap below the Octopus fixed gas rate.

There's really no risk for those on the older version. With electricity price capped at 30p together with the lower standing charge I don't think it could go significantly above current or forecast SVT. 

Tracker (like Agile and Go) was a one-year fix, but is now a rolling variable tariff which lets Octopus move the cap up or down with notice. Most people are moved to the new flexible Tracker when their old fixed Tracker expires.

The 30p/6p or 30p/11p caps were very reassuring. The current 100p/30p cap is less so!

40p/11p for v2 and v3.

mmmmikey

Qyburn said:

We're on the Nov tracker with electricity cap of £1/kWh.  I may keep a contingency fund in an EA saver that could be used to ride out a peak period. A month of 12kWh @ £1 per day (more than we actually use) would cost around £270 more than SVT. Two weeks to switch back would cost up to another £125.

I'm not sure Tracker has saved us that much just yet, I need to analyse the bills. In reality I'm gambling that this worst case won't happen.

I understand your point but in practice if something happened that caused prices to go up fivefold would you wait a month before changing tariffs? That kind of increase would be all over the mainstream news so you'd be hardly likely to be unaware. So is £1/kWh for a month a realistic worse case scenario given that you could switch to another tariff well within that time? 

I can't help thinking a much more challenging scenario is a doubling of prices to 40p/kWh or so over winter - a significant amount more than the SVR at a potentially high consumption time of year and much harder to decide whether to switch away or weather the storm.

bristolleedsfan

Qyburn said:

 Two weeks to switch back would cost up to another £125.

No suggestion has been made that up to 2 weeks to change from Tracker tariff might cost customer anything, someone signing up to tracker tariff gets message can take up to 2 weeks for tariff change to take effect, tariff changes to tracker get backdated, I would of thought highly likely tariff changes from tracker tariff would get backdated as well.

Spies

I'm still on agile and last month I averaged 18p/kwh but I do make a conscious decision to load shift

Tracker has worked out well for my friend vs Agile because he isn't able to load shift like I am, so having a lower rate all day works for him

Qyburn

bristolleedsfan said:

No suggestion has been made that up to 2 weeks to change from Tracker tariff might cost customer anything, someone signing up to tracker tariff gets message can take up to 2 weeks for tariff change to take effect, tariff changes to tracker get backdated, I would of thought highly likely tariff changes from tracker tariff would get backdated as well.

That's an interesting point. They didn't backdate when I went on to Tracker, I applied on the 6th Feb and the change came into effect on 8th.

masonic

Qyburn said:

bristolleedsfan said:

No suggestion has been made that up to 2 weeks to change from Tracker tariff might cost customer anything, someone signing up to tracker tariff gets message can take up to 2 weeks for tariff change to take effect, tariff changes to tracker get backdated, I would of thought highly likely tariff changes from tracker tariff would get backdated as well.

That's an interesting point. They didn't backdate when I went on to Tracker, I applied on the 6th Feb and the change came into effect on 8th.

They backdated for those joining from the waitlist, although I requested not to so as to benefit from one last Agile price plunge.

It's not clear what reason they have for not processing a switch from Tracker immediately, but if it is a case of needing to balance their energy purchasing, it is unlikely they would agree to backdate, as that would defeat the object of having the delay.

bristolleedsfan

masonic said:

Qyburn said:

bristolleedsfan said:

No suggestion has been made that up to 2 weeks to change from Tracker tariff might cost customer anything, someone signing up to tracker tariff gets message can take up to 2 weeks for tariff change to take effect, tariff changes to tracker get backdated, I would of thought highly likely tariff changes from tracker tariff would get backdated as well.

That's an interesting point. They didn't backdate when I went on to Tracker, I applied on the 6th Feb and the change came into effect on 8th.

It's not clear what reason they have for not processing a switch from Tracker immediately, but if it is a case of needing to balance their energy purchasing, it is unlikely they would agree to backdate, as that would defeat the object of having the delay.

Due to change of tariff being done manually, more about managing workload/expectations than anything else.

Answer I have seen them give on twitter is they would aim to process tariff change away from tracker ASAP.

FAQ mentions words which to me indicates reasonable expectation tariff change would be back dated .  "This can take up to two weeks to be processed"

Qyburn

Just did the calculations.  From 8th Feb to end of August it's saved £210 compared to SVT, that's around 32%.

noitsnotme

It still says on their website it can take up to 2 weeks to move to Tracker but mine was completed in less than 24 hours about a month ago.

I could see them taking the 2 weeks for a lot of people if there’s a sudden surge of people wanting to move away from Tracker when the prices do go up.