Octopus not helping

Pericles1st

I did write to the email address but will do so again as did not write ‘formal complaint’ that’s useful, thank you. 

Alnat1

If they are having to estimate your readings, all you need to do is enter the actual reading on the website and a new bill will be generated. It doesn't need to be a complaint.

BooJewels

Pericles1st said:

Thank you. Am sure it’s the meter. Smart meter as gave a energy calculator in my home which shows about )1 a day for gas and less for electricity. The smart meter is whizzing round. Can someone have access to the meter and steal my gas. Am getting paranoid and stressed about it as gave written so many times. Not sure seeing my bill would help unless you are an octopus person or gas expert

Most of the issues posted here with exceptionally high or erroneous bills end up being explained or rectified through something simple - like the meter being a metric one, but being billed for an imperial measuring one - or the wrong digits from the meter being given and decimal places being read as whole numbers etc etc.  So seeing some proper data might allow for one of us here to spot where the error is occurring - there might just be a simple solution.

The quality of the help you're given is directly proportional to the quality of the information you give us to work with.  If all you're saying is 'my meter is whizzing around and I'm being billed too much', then the best help we can offer is "yep, Octopus are horrible, go complain".  Believe it or not, the only reason that people like me bother to post on a Saturday afternoon is to see if we can help - but you have to invest in that process yourself to get the best from it - give us some hard data to work with.  So no, I'm not an 'Octopus person' or especially a gas expert - but I am an Octopus customer and do know enough about my gas usage and how to calculate my bills, that I might just have been able to offer you some assistance. 

Coffeekup

Pericles1st said:

Thank you. Am sure it’s the meter. Smart meter as gave a energy calculator in my home which shows about )1 a day for gas and less for electricity. The smart meter is whizzing round. Can someone have access to the meter and steal my gas. Am getting paranoid and stressed about it as gave written so many times. Not sure seeing my bill would help unless you are an octopus person or gas expert

If the meter is whizzing round you must be using some gas somewhere, boiler on, hot tap running, gas hob or oven on and no light or a gas leak.

It you don't have a carbon monoxide reader and you haven't been out the house for a few days I would take a picture of your meter, then open all the windows, then check all oven/hob knobs/switches makes sure they are off. Turn off the boiler make sure the thermostat is set to 15*C or lower and make sure no hot taps are running. Wait 30 minutes later ok at the smart meter again and take a picture. If it's changed and is no longer moving you may have had something turned on. If it's still whizzing round you could have a gas leak.

If you have a carbon monoxide reader leave it near the boiler to see if it goes off, and then move it to where you old analogue meter used to be and see if it goes off.

£40 a day is a lot of gas to use even on the coldest of days

Keep_pedalling

Pericles1st said:

Thank you. Am sure it’s the meter. Smart meter as gave a energy calculator in my home which shows about )1 a day for gas and less for electricity. The smart meter is whizzing round. Can someone have access to the meter and steal my gas. Am getting paranoid and stressed about it as gave written so many times. Not sure seeing my bill would help unless you are an octopus person or gas expert

Smart meters don’t Wizz round. 

Alnat1

The OP still hasn't given a reading from the actual smart meter (not the home display) and compared it to the bill.

It might be a simple over-estimate.

Alnat1

Is the shower electric?  Could there be a huge hot water tank being heated to 75C 24/7

Jacklob

this is obviously NOT an estimated reading, there is no basis for such high usage, especially in the summer months, something else must be going on.

BooJewels

Jacklob said:

this is obviously NOT an estimated reading, there is no basis for such high usage, especially in the summer months, something else must be going on.

Do these companies have any algorithms running on billing to spot if a bill is way outside normal parameters and pick it up?  If a customer typically uses 15m³ per month in summer - but the smart meter suddenly presents with 600m³ - would it not trip a human to check it?  Especially if the customer rang to query their billing too.

Pericles1st

I wish. Even when I spoke to three different people they said it looks odd but….no further action