Octopus hikes estimated annual usage way above actual usage

rhedyn

FWIW I do not think anything in my situation was due to Octopus trying to inflate credit balances for their own benefit.  What I think is most likely (but do not know, this is just my educated guess) is that they made the decision to disable letting (some?) people edit their own DD amounts ahead of April 1st, reasoning that if people really wanted them changed they could still do so via customer support, but that it would make for a safety measure against a whole lot of people panic editing their amounts with unintended consequences which would then completely overload their customer support trying to sort it all out.  Not unreasonable if that was their purpose, although I think it would have been a lot better if they had said so openly with a message on their dashboard if so.  But, the problem with that is that because they have always allowed people to edit their DD amounts, that was providing a correction for problems with the estimated annual usages, so previously there was no real need to pay close attention to estimated annual usage numbers and correct problems with it -- it was only advisory.  So when they shut down the ability to directly edit DD while simultaneously setting DD based on estimated annual usage, suddenly the problems with estimated annual usage became a whole lot more important.

So, I prefer to have maximum control over my own account and payments, not because I think Octopus has any bad intentions, but because the only incentive for me to allow DD with Octopus is convenience, and these past few days have been extremely inconvenient.

k_man

I thought the reason you couldn't change your DD was partly due to you having a negative balance?

rhedyn

k_man said:

I thought the reason you couldn't change your DD was partly due to you having a negative balance?

No, I didn't have a negative balance, that was just the amount that had just come due.  I paid it immediately but I still couldn't change my DD.

k_man

Gotcha.

Good to know all now sorted for you.

David_Mills

In my opinion, while it may be nice to even out your payments by a monthly fixed DD, inevitably you will get out of sync. with your bill sooner or later. So if you want to make sure you are always right with energy bills, the way forward as some others have suggested, is to pay off each month in full by DD. I've just organised this with Octopus (very easily). It is now quite expensive of course- expect substantial increases folks! Ours has gone up mega and we keep a close eye on usage. But I particularly don't like the standing charges we are now paying of nearly £1 every day (around £300 p.a.) which can't be controlled at all. How is this an incentive to use less energy?

MWT

David_Mills said:

But I particularly don't like the standing charges we are now paying of nearly £1 every day (around £300 p.a.) which can't be controlled at all. How is this an incentive to use less energy?

It isn't intended to be, but it is intended to be reflective of the real costs we are all sharing from the recent failures, along with the other levies and maintenance charges...

This s from the post at the top of this group about why the standing charges have gone up so much...