Octopus Tracker

MWT

SJMALBA said:

I take your point, and largely agree; however, AFAIK, these tariffs have been been around for a while now (Tracker at least?), so surely it's incumbent upon Octopus to train staff accordingly, or have 'general' CSAs pass enquiries onto those who are trained/knowledgable? Providing inconsistent, contradictory, and incorrect information helps nobody.

They take a different approach to the traditional suppliers where CS is mostly outsourced and the staff are heavily scripted with very little ability to do anything...

They give the staff considerable flexibility to delivery good outcomes for the customer and encourage a more organic learning process with minimal scripting...

I have also found it frustrating at times, but it is how they have decided to operate, so you will get different answers from different staff and different solutions to problems, but they believe that overall the customer experience is better this way than if the staff were locked down and following a script...

Senior staff can be reached for meaningful escalation if things spin off on a tangent or vanish into a black-hole, but on balance I do prefer this approach to dealing with an offshore call centre that is polite and promises much but delivers little to nothing...

milo_2020

I strongly disagree that they are unable to do anything, I have had every answer answered first time with the info on caps when ringing, I even asked explicitly to start my switch of gas onto octopus for the tracker v3 before the pull the cap and he was able to do this for me, so they do have a level of control.

I don't start v3 until 13th August but i have it confirmed in writing that I will go onto that tariff and the cap will remain in place for the tariff duration.

flyingscotno1

To be honest the way the cap is going the July V1 one might be decent value soon enough!

westv

If the January price cap predictions are correct and assuming Octopus don't change the caps then the move to Tracker V3 seems to have been a good move

milo_2020

Why would they change the caps when they have said existing customers will keep cap until tariff ends on multiple occasions (even re-posted here in this thread?)

SAC2334

Chrysalis said:

SAC2334 said:

milo_2020 said:

I think in January we will see a larger rise than expected, the October one has gone up twice since the estimations came out from Cornwall. I can't see it coming down - it's not in big corporations favor anyway to reduce the cost, why would they when people will go into debt and pay it?

I wonder who will be footing the bill with all the jumped meters?

As a meter reader for 20 years I can say that  all the "jumped meters " will quadruple this year  and so will the subbed and reversed gas meters . Who foots the bill ? the honest payers foot the bill of course like they always have done

I can see them raising SC to compensate for this if possible as its a means of forcing more costs on those registering low usage.  But of course impacts everyone.

I used to get meter reader visits at least 4-5 times a year, but there is people I know who never had them in many years.  So they seem to concentrate on certain areas or customers?  Do meter readers just take a reading or also actually check for tampering?

Supposed to do both .

 Thats how I worked for 20 years and in the known meter tamper areas I paid more attention to carefully checks  of the meters than getting the readings  and that included using a mirror to see the underside of gas meters when reading Takeaways meters. 
A tampered meter is a dangerous meter and now more than ever the suppliers should be responsible to check each meter at least once  every 2 years and the older prepayment meters once a year IMO as they are the most tampered meters by a country mile .

 They won t though as that costs them money they can t afford .
I expect to be seeing in the news many houses blowing up with gas leaks this winter 

Mstty

With the new price predictions released today it might be worth considering the new Agile and Tracker tariffs.

Spoonie_Turtle

… and we're back considering this, reluctantly have decided we'll accept a smart meter if we must.  Well, not considering, I've e-mailed to ask to switch when we get back from holiday (so we can take a meter reading for the switch).

Now kicking myself a bit because I sort of had just the tiniest gut feeling we might regret not wanting a smart meter and passing up the 40p cap   but what's done is done, and at the time I had no way of knowing things would get so bad so quickly.

milo_2020

35p cap with agile *

Spoonie_Turtle

milo_2020 said:

35p cap with agile *

No, we don't have a smart meter.  That's why we didn't switch to Tracker when we initially were going to, because we didn't want one and were told they were rolling them out to everyone this summer.  But we've reconsidered because prices are only going one way for the foreseeable!