Beginning to think Octopus is a mistake

Bullet500

Octopus seem to be dragging there feet with taking on Avro customers, no mention of payments, no mention when switch will be completed. Wish I had now opted to move to a much bigger supplier, have lost all faith in Octopus. 

Ultrasonic

Bullet500 said:

Octopus seem to be dragging there feet with taking on Avro customers, no mention of payments, no mention when switch will be completed. Wish I had now opted to move to a much bigger supplier, have lost all faith in Octopus. 

Octopus have had something like a couple of weeks so far to manage 580,000 new customers so I hardly think it's time to start being disappointed if everything isn't sorted yet. Realistically, does it make any practical difference to you personally right now?

Neil_Jones

Bullet500 said:

Octopus seem to be dragging there feet with taking on Avro customers, no mention of payments, no mention when switch will be completed. Wish I had now opted to move to a much bigger supplier, have lost all faith in Octopus. 

The choice of SOLR doesn't change the timescales.  It took six months for EDF to migrate all of Green Network Energy's 360k customers, so it will probably take as long to migrate the 580k of Avro.

It is not as simple as click on Excel, export, save to some storage device somewhere, take to another computer, import into Excel, job done, let's go to the pub.

Neil49

The customer service of some of the big suppliers leaves a lot to be desired. 

Octopus will have a considerable number of accounts to process which will take time. You could have been landed with Scottish Power!

Stick with Octopus as they have a good reputation 

bagand96

From experience and reading the various threads here it's normal for all SoLR transfers.  The process isn't great and is very slow with periods of time with little information leaving people feeling like they are in limbo.  It's easy to blame the SoLR but they are also reliant on getting information from a company in administration being run on skeleton staff.  As mentioned above Avro is one of the biggest failures with almost 600,000 accounts to be dealt with.

All that said I did think Octopus' initial communications where they said they hoped to have most account up and running in a  couple of weeks were incredibly optimistic.

elsien

Yesterday’s update:


This evening, we officially began transferring Avro's energy supply to ours for the first handful of customers. This is an important part of bringing Avro customers over to us: we're basically changing the supply going to Avro customers’ homes so it’s coming from Octopus Energy instead (in energy industry terms, this is called changing the ‘market participant ID’). There are complex industry rules that dictate how quickly we can do this – we expect it should take 4-6 weeks to complete everyone, and during that time, you won’t be able to switch to another energy supplier without running into complications. We’re planning to contact customers soon with more details about this part of the switch.

Flight3287462

Bullet500 said:

. Wish I had now opted to move to a much bigger supplier, have lost all faith in Octopus. 

You would have had to be on the ball for that to happen, probably first week in October latest.  You are where you are and will have to grin and bear it until its all sorted out.

MWT

You are part of what is probably the best communicated SoLR process we've seen on here.

Go read a few of the other SoLR threads and see if you still feel the same way...

... and do read their daily updates on the website to keep expectations aligned with reality.

MalMonroe

I've been with Octopus for the last year. They are no better and no worse than any other energy company. Before joining them I'd been switching a lot because all the companies I was with seemed to be useless and I was desperate to find 'the very best deal'. However I've discovered that there isn't much to choose between any of them. 

Even Martin, normally so confident and competent, is now saying there's so much turmoil that he doesn't know which way to turn in respect of energy suppliers.

As others have said, they're going to be quite busy for a while. Give them a chance, as Neil49 says above, 'stick with Octopus as they have a good reputation'. I'm sticking with them for now, anyway. You are not alone . . . 

jellie

I received an email yesterday informing me that my transfer should be completed within the next 5 days.  They also gave details of the tariff I will be put onto.

ozuma

Bullet500 said:

Octopus seem to be dragging there feet with taking on Avro customers, no mention of payments, no mention when switch will be completed. Wish I had now opted to move to a much bigger supplier, have lost all faith in Octopus. 

26 Sept 2021 - Octopus Energy were announced as the SoLR for Avro by Ofgem - that's just 3 weeks ago today.

If you were supplied by Avro, then you have been supplied By Octopus Energy from 26 Sep 2021.

Octopus initially indicated they would contact all existing customers within 24 hours, although customers who had left (but still had accounts to be settled) were told it could take as long as 4 weeks to be contacted.
- Octopus priority was presumably and sensibly to cater for the ongoing supply of existing avro customers.

Existing customers were advised not to cancel their DD, as that would be moved over to Octopus.

According to Octopus daily updates:

26 Sept 2021 -They had emailed all existing customers

28 Sept 2021 - they were working on requesting meter readings from all customers (those without an email address on record would be written to by post before the end of the week)
Those emails were sent within 24 hours.
The email also asked you to set up a direct debit (where necessary e.g. because you cancelled the one you had set up with Avro)

30 Sept 2021 - Octopus say they have contacted all existing Avro supplied customers by email where an email address was available. If you have not received an email, you should email Octopus
(those not actually supplied by Avro when they went bump, either because they had recently previously left to another supplier or were in the process of being switched to Avro, must still wait patiently)

13 Oct 2021 - Octopus have now emailed all customers who were mid switch.
Final bills to existing Avro customers are starting to be sent out, slowly in small numbers at fisrt.
The official registration of the transfer of Avro customers to Octopus has commenced, and is expected to take 4-6 weeks to complete everyone.