Octopus Energy takes on Avro customers

Consumerist

It may be that it is the information provided in the statement needs to be improved. A customer should be able to use that information to work out their bills exactly.

Bear in mind that many people use spreadsheets these days for many of their financial activities and these 'fiddle factors' are just not acceptable.

P933alilli

alw1971 said:

Collyflower1 said:

alw1971 said:

Just received my Avro final bill which is the same amount that is now on my Octopus account £219cr. I never cancelled my Avro d/d and never created an Octopus d/d. Just waiting to find out from Octopus if my Avro d/d will definitely be migrated over to Octopus before I do anything else.

I'm the same , everything seems to be correct, my credit, meter readings and final bill!  Again it just depends now whether i start a new direct debit on my octopus page or whether i need to do anything at all!

I think I will just leave the Avro d/d running for the time being as all the correspondence from Octopus has told me it will get migrated across.

Hi, ive had a reply from octopus and theyve now told me to cancel my avro dd with the bank and create a new one with them!
My direct debits will be exactly the same as they were with avro for now because i'm £458 in credit!

MWT

FWIW, as a long term Octopus customer my gas conversion calculations on the bill still seem to be correct, I suspect these small differences have something to do with time period for the bill and hence the calorific value not matching the time period that you have been 'on supply' with Octopus.

I certainly agree this is something that shouldn't happen, but if they don't come back with an answer, submit a new gas meter reading in a week or so and see if the calculation for the bill that produces is more accurate...

[Deleted User]

youravinalarrrf said:

There's something very strange going on with these statement Calorific Value and Estimated Annual Usage calculations! Hopefully I will get a reply from Octopus which explains exactly what that something is.

The last time I looked at the Calorific Value calculations in detail was when I had a major disagreement with the clown that used to run Iresa and at that time the way they are to be calculated and charged for was detailed and specified in Ofgem Gas Operators License conditions. It may possibly have changed since then with the proliferation of Smart meters. At the time suppliers were allowed to round to and charge to one decimal place only and as Consumerist says once rounded that should be the exact value used for billing.

You cannot have a situation where a detailed calculation shown on a bill is not correct when a customer runs it through a cacluator.

Calorific values are the average CV for the billing period truncated to one decimal point. It follows that if the average CV is 39.192345 then 39.1 has to be used for billing purposes. I was an Octopus gas customer for 3 years and I had no reason to question their calculations.

Grizzlebeard

Consumerist said:

It may be that it is the information provided in the statement needs to be improved. A customer should be able to use that information to work out their bills exactly.

Bear in mind that many people use spreadsheets these days for many of their financial activities and these 'fiddle factors' are just not acceptable.

Agree wholehearedly.

Just did the calculations on a statement (1months usage exactly @CV 3.92)  I received 20 minutes ago using the truncated numbers as displayed and luckily my bill was spot on. I have very low usage so no opportunity for errors to accumulate but even so percentage wise my bill was within 0.02% correct and rounded to the correct penny. Same process on a 3mth old bill gave same result.

Since all this maths is done automatically by computer I agree your experience is very perplexing Consumerist.

Suppose what we need is lots of MSE members to report their calculations here to see what the spread of errors across a statistically significant number of accounts is.

2010

I put readings in last Saturday 27th Nov.
I have not received any bills yet.
But the credit from Avro is there and the gas balance is fully shown thus reducing the credit accordingly.
Nothing showing for the electric balance and no actual bill for either.

Just to add, I have had the final Avro bill.

P933alilli

After creating a new direct debit with octopus i got my latest bill for 1st october-25th november (i also got the small charge for 26th-30th september!) and the calculations are precise! For my gas they use Mj instead of Kw/h but this can easily be converted using online conversion calculators!

MWT

2010 said:

I put readings in last Saturday 27th Nov.
I have not received any bills yet.
But the credit from Avro is there and the gas balance is fully shown thus reducing the credit accordingly.
Nothing showing for the electric balance and no actual bill for either.

Just to add, I have had the final Avro bill.

Did the final Avro bill and credit come before or after the meter readings?

Once the credit is there I'd expect the next set of meter readings to trigger an Octopus bill.

2010

MWT said:

2010 said:

I put readings in last Saturday 27th Nov.
I have not received any bills yet.
But the credit from Avro is there and the gas balance is fully shown thus reducing the credit accordingly.
Nothing showing for the electric balance and no actual bill for either.

Just to add, I have had the final Avro bill.

Did the final Avro bill and credit come before or after the meter readings?

Once the credit is there I'd expect the next set of meter readings to trigger an Octopus bill.

The Avro bill and credit was already there.
I was waiting for both until I gave any readings to Octopus.
Once I seen the credit in my Octopus account, I entered the readings.
The credit immediately fell and this was due to the gas usage.
As earlier pointed out I can see the gas balance history but no history for the electric.

No actual bills for either yet.

youravinalarrrf

I have now received my 2nd Octopus statement for 1st November to 30th November and as if by magic my Estimated Annual Usage figures and Calorific Value calculations are now correct and as expected.

I have not received a reply from Octopus explaining the reasons for the errors on the first statement covering the period 26th September to 31st October and so far they have not issued a correction to that statement. Maybe they never will?