Octopus Energy website showing incorrect direct debit

dosh37

I logged on to their website today and went to the 'My Account' page.

It shows my Direct Debit to be £47.79. I wish.

The balance forecast shows that I wil be in debt to the tune of £600 by August 2023!

These figures are utter nonsense. It looks more like what I was paying before Avro went bust.

My Direct Debit was £114.79 before the end of September increase.

It's good to see energy suppliers have everything under control and that our money is being well spent.

[Deleted User]

Out of interest, what’s £114.79 - £67 ?

You may wish to change the title to “Octopus showing me an entirely consistent DD which just hasn’t yet been updated to the new October tariff levels.”

k_man

Direct debits are reduced by £66 or 67 for the next six months as part of the £400 energy payment from the government.

https://octopus.energy/blog/energy-crisis-information/#energycrisisgovsupport

£114.79 will still be going into your energy account.

daveyjp

And this will be just the start of what energy provider call centres will be dealing with over the next month. 

The operators have my sympathy.

The_Green_Hornet

If the implementation of the Energy Bills Support Scheme is being misunderstood by lots of customers then the energy suppliers aren't making the changes clear enough.

The operators do have my sympathy though.

molerat

The_Green_Hornet said:

If the implementation of the Energy Bills Support Scheme is being misunderstood by lots of customers then the energy suppliers aren't making the changes clear enough.

The operators do have my sympathy though.

The bigger problem is that people are ignoring the information sent to them.  Both my suppliers have been very clear communicating about the implementation of the scheme but there are still posts on here questioning what those suppliers are doing.

MWT

The_Green_Hornet said:

If the implementation of the Energy Bills Support Scheme is being misunderstood by lots of customers then the energy suppliers aren't making the changes clear enough.

It is hard to imagine how it could be made any clearer, there have been emails sent out explaining it, there are messages on screen explaining it...

... yet still people don't pay attention to what is in front of them...

BooJewels

molerat said:

The_Green_Hornet said:

If the implementation of the Energy Bills Support Scheme is being misunderstood by lots of customers then the energy suppliers aren't making the changes clear enough.

The operators do have my sympathy though.

The bigger problem is that people are ignoring the information sent to them.  Both my suppliers have been very clear communicating about the implementation of the scheme but there are still posts on here questioning what those suppliers are doing.

I was one of the people that asked you about that and for references to where you'd seen about the DD being reduced by £66/£67 - that's information that's only really now being shown by suppliers, but not in the wider media, or the Government web site, which is contradicting it in some cases.  At the time I asked, my dashboard on Octopus had a link to where the EPG and EBSS were explained, but it said we'd each be credited by £400 from the Government and linked to the BBC web site for more information - which said all electricity accounts would be credited by the 400 quid - no mention - at that time - of how it would impact on DDs.  Hence I asked where you'd seen that.

As of now, there's a big turquoise flash in my Octopus dashboard saying that the displayed tariffs are incorrect and will be updated 'really soon' and a link to an explanation page of how the EPG and EBSS will be managed.  Those things were not there when I submitted my meter reading around midnight on the 29th/30th.  So it is only within the last 48 hours or so that this information has been added to the customer dashboards.  So you can't really blame people, like myself, who actually look in what seems to be the right place, a few days before it's implemented, but the information displayed is out of date.

It's not really surprising, as it has all had to be put into place in very short order and I'm sure at supplier level it must be quite complicated making their systems do something they can't have anticipated and weren't set up to handle, but it's also hardly surprising that the public are confused by it too.

[Deleted User]

I don’t think anyone is trying to hide it.  These pages have been there for more than a week.

The_Green_Hornet

MWT said:

The_Green_Hornet said:

If the implementation of the Energy Bills Support Scheme is being misunderstood by lots of customers then the energy suppliers aren't making the changes clear enough.

It is hard to imagine how it could be made any clearer, there have been emails sent out explaining it, there are messages on screen explaining it...

... yet still people don't pay attention to what is in front of them...

The fact that lots of customers are still confused confirms that it isn't as clear as you or I think it is.

Keep posting the same message isn't really going to change that I'm afraid.

MWT

The_Green_Hornet said:

The fact that lots of customers are still confused confirms that it isn't as clear as you or I think it is.

Keep posting the same message isn't really going to change that I'm afraid.

The fact remains that there is an abundance of information out there, which people are electing not to read, can't really expect any more from the suppliers than what they have done.

At some point the blame has to be placed at the feet of those who will not spend the time to understand, rather than blame the suppliers for not trying harder...