Octopus Tracker

Telegraph_Sam

masonic said:

It looks like I've now had my billing scuppered by a single missing half hour read. It seems to have stopped the monthly smart reading being taken and despite submitting a manual read a few days later, this hasn't produced a bill. I can see the data is also missing from n3rgy so is not just an Octopus issue. We shall see what they try to do for me...

Could you kindly remind me how Tracker differs from Agile in the circs you have described - the way the bills are calculated with both tariffs - and crucially how they are affected by data outages. As I understand it, if a 1/2 hour read goes missing then with Agile the consumption is "averaged" over the whole day???

masonic

Agile requires all half hour readings for a bill to be produced. Any missing data that cannot be retrieved would lead to the customer being billed on Flexible rates (potentially). In the past Octopus have generated a manual bill for me with a missing half hour slot assumed to be zero, but they didn't have to do that.

With Tracker, they can use index readings and scale to the half hour readings they do have. If there is just one day with missing data, it is fairly straightforward to calculate actual consumption on that day.

la531983

Worth posting...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/european-gas-jumps-unplanned-norwegian-062732613.html?guccounter=1

Natural gas wholesale price currently up 10% on the day, and is the highest its been since mid-December 2023....  Add that to the relatively low levels of wind predicted from the end of this week and we could see electric breaching the new July 2024 cap levels....

pete-20-11

I'm still on the gas tracker although obviously not using much now.

I did wonder if there'll be some days where the gas price on tracker gets very close to the SVR price (or beyond). 

Telegraph_Sam

That is a point worth making: The difference between being on an "uncompetitive" tariff at a time  when consumption is minimal,, compared with when demand goes through the (poorly insulated) roof.

masonic

masonic said:

It looks like I've now had my billing scuppered by a single missing half hour read. It seems to have stopped the monthly smart reading being taken and despite submitting a manual read a few days later, this hasn't produced a bill. I can see the data is also missing from n3rgy so is not just an Octopus issue. We shall see what they try to do for me...

I was hoping to have got to the bottom of this by now as they emailed me yesterday afternoon to say they'd "corrected my account and billed me up to date" and my account was charged up to the date of my last reading, but so far no statement. What I have been charged is 13p more than expected, so we'll see how that has come about. Certainly not a sum worth quibbling over. The missing data is still missing, so they didn't resolve it that way.

Telegraph_Sam

The value of the explanation should be worth more than 13 p IMHO.
. Could something similar happen with Tracker, or if it is less complex should it be more robust in the case of outages? 

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

The value of the explanation should be worth more than 13 p IMHO.
. Could something similar happen with Tracker, or if it is less complex should it be more robust in the case of outages? 

It is happening with Tracker.

Telegraph_Sam

   ....

masonic

The bill is in and the reason for the discrepancy is that they've averaged my consumption and not used my actual daily totals.