Problems with Octopus and smart meter charges

DomA87

Hi all,

First post, and a bit of a long one, but any advice would be appreciated.

Background

I bought a new build house in July 2017 and the supply was initially provided by Eon. When I attempted to change suppliers it became apparent that the meter serial number for my electricity meter was not the same serial number that was recorded in the national database.

An investigation discovered that when the meters were installed, the installer mixed up the meters for plot 6 & plot 9, so I had my neighbours meter and vice versa.

After a lot of messing about Eon informed me that it had been resolved and I was able to change supplier.

Fast forward to January 2020 and I swapped again, this time to Octopus.

When I received my January 2021 bill my electricity readings were insanely high, roughly 2500kWh higher than the reading on my meter. 

After speaking to Octopus, it turns out that they had enabled the ‘smart meter’ element of my meter, and had discovered that the serial number for this was somehow also incorrect on the national database, so in January 2021 the meter had reported my neighbours reading, that I was subsequently billed for.

After a lot of e-mails backwards and forwards, in May 2021 Octopus acknowledge that there was an issue, and in August 2021 this was finally claimed to be resolved.

Since then the electricity readings that my smart meter has been sending back to Octopus have consistently been wrong.

Yesterday Octopus contacted me to tell me that there are two internal meters that both clock at the same rate, one being the smart meter and one being the display that I can see, therefore they have adjusted the opening reading that I provided them by the difference between them.

The problem

The issue that I have is that I have is that there is a discrepancy between the smart meter readings and my actual readings.

For example, the smart meter data has been used to bill me for 5756kWh for the year of 2021, whereas the actual meter readings that I have taken show that I used 3299kWh which means I have been billed for 2457kWh that I haven’t used.

For reference, my annual usage in 2020 was just over 3300kWh, which is almost identical to the readings that I have taken this year.

The smart meter also shows my usage during the period where there was a known issue (Feb - April 2021) as 2400kWh for the 3 months, compared to 1600kWh for 4 months of usage when the meter was known to be working (September - December 2021).

I appreciate that this isn’t an amazing comparison as they are different times of the year, but I think it clearly shows that my usage for the period when the meter was faulty is clearly not in line with my usual usage.

I’m not getting anywhere with Octopus at the moment, as a resolution I have told them that I would like to be re-billed for 2021 based on the meter readings that I gave them rather than the smart meter readings, does this sound reasonable?

Is this something that the Ombudsman would be able to help with?

Any other advice for how to approach this would be appreciated, based on my unit rate I have been overcharged my nearly £400.

Thanks

Dom

Fred2712

I haven’t heard of this two clocks in a smart meter before .??
Sounds like the meters could still be mixed up with your neighbour, have you tried speaking to your neighbour to see if is having the same problem?? 

Are his reads showing on your bill for example..
If it is a early smets 1 smart meter I think the reads get sent to a central database first (The DCC) before the supplier receives them, so maybe this is where the problem is...

MWT

Are you sure this 'two clocks' thing isn't just a reference to the meter registers?

Are you looking at the individual registers, R1, R2... or the total actual import when giving meter readings?

Elmer_BeFuddled

DomA87 said

Yesterday Octopus contacted me to tell me that there are two internal meters that both clock at the same rate, one being the smart meter and one being the display that I can see, therefore they have adjusted the opening reading that I provided them by the difference between them.

Thanks

Dom

Would one of the two be your IHD (in house display) unit? Readings should be taken from your actual meter. Not a "gimmick" you plug into a socket in the kitchen.

wild666

Fred2712 said:

I haven’t heard of this two clocks in a smart meter before .??
Sounds like the meters could still be mixed up with your neighbour, have you tried speaking to your neighbour to see if is having the same problem?? 

Are his reads showing on your bill for example..
If it is a early smets 1 smart meter I think the reads get sent to a central database first (The DCC) before the supplier receives them, so maybe this is where the problem is...

The Smart meters will give two readings if you were on a tariff like free electric by BG that was given from around 2015 to mid 2018. These meters are SMETS 1 meters.

MWT

Also perfectly normal if the meter was ever used for Economy 7 for example...