Gas provider estimating 27% increase in usage

Spoonie_Turtle

Raxiel said:

EssexHebridean said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Octopus have a very responsive billing system.  It generates a bill every time you give a manual reading, if not then the default is monthly if you have smart meters.

I've found they revise my annual electricity estimate every time, downwards since taking measures to reduce consumption.

I've been really impressed that they constantly tweak the usage estimates as they get to grips with your actual use! Very impressive! 

They are pretty good at it. The balance forecast is a little conservative but not excessively so. The recommended Direct Debit in the payments section does seem to lag a long way behind though.

I think the key difference between Octopus and other suppliers, is they let you set your own Direct Debit, even if it wouldn't cover your usage.

On the one hand it allows customers to set themselves up for bill shock if they set something silly, but it also means there's no motivation for Octopus to massage the figures in order to justify an inflated DD, because the customer can just say "no"

They do manually review it if it's below their minimum recommended amount (not sure if that's only if you're also below a certain amount of credit, or for all).

Raxiel

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Raxiel said:

EssexHebridean said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Octopus have a very responsive billing system.  It generates a bill every time you give a manual reading, if not then the default is monthly if you have smart meters.

I've found they revise my annual electricity estimate every time, downwards since taking measures to reduce consumption.

I've been really impressed that they constantly tweak the usage estimates as they get to grips with your actual use! Very impressive! 

They are pretty good at it. The balance forecast is a little conservative but not excessively so. The recommended Direct Debit in the payments section does seem to lag a long way behind though.

I think the key difference between Octopus and other suppliers, is they let you set your own Direct Debit, even if it wouldn't cover your usage.

On the one hand it allows customers to set themselves up for bill shock if they set something silly, but it also means there's no motivation for Octopus to massage the figures in order to justify an inflated DD, because the customer can just say "no"

They do manually review it if it's below their minimum recommended amount (not sure if that's only if you're also below a certain amount of credit, or for all).

Possibly. Their recommended DD is ~£325. Balance forecast suggests £217 including the EBSS (£150 taken). I've manually set the DD to £100 after actual charges for the cold months of December and January were £240 and £210 respectively.

Not knowing exactly how effective my energy saving efforts would be, I've been paying their recommendation until now, resulting in a balance just over £1k which might be why the system didn't seem to throw any objections.