Octopus Faulty Meter Issue

Babz1986

Hi Everyone, I'm not sure where to go with this issue. 

We have a smart meter with Octopus, installed in February 21. I'll be honest, I keep an eye on the smart meter daily, get an email to say my bill has arrived, and quickly log on to check my balance in my account. If i'm in debt, then my payments are ammended to suit, etc.

Well in August, I do my monthly check of our account, and noticed we were £500 in debt. I Looked into it and noticed we'd been charged over £400 for Gas in July. I obviously automatically assumed it had just been a mistake their end, emailed Octopus and asked them to look into it and ammend the balance.

It turns out, that there was a fault in their smart meter software from November, and we hadn't been billed from then until July. They'd only just noticed the fault, hence the huge bill. The smart meter from our end, hadn't seemed to have had a fault, all daily readings seemed spot on, not once did I look at it and think 'somethings gone wrong.' So I imagine, the fault was the smart meter sending the readings. The bill was an estimate of the usage we had used, but once I'd emailed, they looked into and ammended it to the actual usage, and ammended my account by £150

I sent another email of complaint, that we'd always made sure we kept our account in credit, and with the times we are in, suddenly finding ourselves in debt with the rising costs is very worrying.

Is there anything else I can do? The offered £50 compensation to be added to my account. Do I accept this as just something we'll have to slowly pay off over the time, or is there anyway I can get this written off?

[Deleted User]

I read this as saying:

Accurate bill in November 2021, next accurate bill in August 2022.

If this is correct, then you're not covered by anything to do with back-billing so I wouldn't expect anything more than a goodwill offer.

I'm interested - why do you believe that you shouldn't pay for the gas that you have used?

Babz1986

That is correct. It's not that I'm not willing to pay for the gas I use. However throughout the whole period between November - August, we weren't aware that there was ever a fault in the meter. We were quite pressured by them to have a smart meter, for the purpose and ease of making the bills as accurate as possible. However only been made aware of any fault 7 months after there was a fault, in the midst of times where every one is struggling; meaning where we thought we were just staying a float, and now finding ourselves in £400 worth of debt, means we are literally no longer staying afloat. I feel, as the majority of the UK does, that it's a little unfair. Of course if the fault was picked up on instantly, I would have adjusted my payments accordingly and been able to pay for our gas usage in a more feesible amount. Instead, I'm now £400 in debt, only managing to pay for what we use monthly as it is. With the prices rising in October, meaning we'll barely be able to pay extra for the increases, also means the £400 debt, won't be able to be paid very easily. Hence the message to see if there was actually anything else we could do. 

[Deleted User]

It sounds like they've sent you several bills in the intervening period, all of which would have said "estimated" against the meter reading and which would have contained different meter readings to the ones that you say you "keep an eye on".

You didn't at any point in nearly a year notice either of these clear indications?

MWT

Babz1986 said:

We have a smart meter with Octopus, installed in February 21. I'll be honest, I keep an eye on the smart meter daily, get an email to say my bill has arrived, and quickly log on to check my balance in my account. If i'm in debt, then my payments are ammended to suit, etc.

It is at least puzzling that being as aware of your use as you say you were, and knowing how much you were actually paying... how come you didn't notice that your balance didn't add up?

.. in any event the lesson here is do look at your bill, not just your balance.

The good news is that they have given you £50 off, which they did not have to do.

Babz1986

Unfortunately, I obviously put too much trust in the company who is supposed to provide my bills.

As I said originally, I get an email to say that my bill is ready. I log onto my account purely to check the balance. I look at my smart meter daily, weekly and monthly, so kind of guage from there what our usage should be and what our monthly outgoing would be. If that matches up with my account balance, then I'll be honest, I don't look much further into that. I've never had a problem like this in all my adult years of paying for energy usage, so had no other reason to assume I needed to look at every figure.

When I receieved the larger than average bill in July, I did go back to check on all bills, and to me, they all seemed accurate. Once I had emailed them and they'd looked it it, they updated all the bills on my account to show the current upto date readings. I no longer have access to the older unammended version of the bills. As far as I'm aware, there was never any 'estimated' bills, they were all readings from the smart meter. Hence why when I first saw the charge, I assumed it was just a mistake. I actually downloaded all of the smart meter readings for that period, and they seemed to match with the bills which were originally on my account.

QrizB

Babz1986 said:

I look at my smart meter daily, weekly and monthly, so kind of guage from there what our usage should be and what our monthly outgoing would be. If that matches up with my account balance, then I'll be honest, I don't look much further into that.

When you say you look at your smart meter, do you mean the smart meter or are you talking about the in-home display?

I actually downloaded all of the smart meter readings for that period, and they seemed to match with the bills which were originally on my account.

Do you still have those readings? How do they compare with the readings used for the new bills?