Octopus Agile

MWT

Newbie_John said:

Although as a new provider they have a lot of issues, none customer service, bills won't be calculated correctly (30 minutes sides of your cheaper windows), but what's most important for me - bills will be cheap 😉

The company is not really 'new' though, they were previously known as Logicor and dipped a toe into the electricity supply business with some very low cost offers and as I recall the customer facing billing and other operations never really got off the ground properly before they faded from view again.

This current iteration kicked off with what looks like a change of ownership in 2021 and the name change in 2022.

I've not followed all the beneficial ownership paths through the fairly complex structure they have now so cannot be 100% sure the ownership really changed in 2021 but certainly the company directors changed at that point.

Telegraph_Sam

Given the negative reviews I'd want to be sure I'd fully understood the Lifestyle T's & C's before taking the plunge. In this respect this correspondence thread is very helpful. If contemplating a switch from Tracker to Agile is deemed to be high in risk : reward terms, then Tomato strikes me as one step higher.

Newbie_John

EssexHebridean said:

Is it only me that can't see how this pricing is going to be sustainable for Tomato?

Nope, I think it's everyone's worry.. such small company offering prices below the costs, most people still haven't received their bills, not many paid yet either. They offer Tomatopia where they give you "free" solar and battery. Where do they take money from?

And if you look where they came from - company called Logicor with a lot of problems, in 2022 they employed 7 people  

Happy to use it while it lasts, once gone I'll moved back to Agile.

teaselMay

I have the same worries, it doesn't look sustainable and their set up and online platform doesn't give me confidence. 

Telegraph_Sam

Bendo said:

Set Tomato Lifestyle rates as a custom tariff in Octopus Compare and it looks like most months I'd be a few quid better off.

Not significantly enough to make me want to jump yet but will keep an eye on it.

You have done this for your set-up and were the results different (which was the best deal) depending on whether SC's were included?
I seem to be able to undercut Agile with Dec 23 Tracker incl SC's without a huge effort in load shifting - which I find surprising.

Smeagal

Newbie_John said:

Smeagal said:

For those mentioning tomato I switched from agile to tomato a couple of weeks ago and my gas is still on tracker and it is still showing the 30 min gas usage readings in my octopus account since I switched.

The sc for my region was 60p soon going to 65p on agile and now 40p on tomato and 5p overnight everynight and no peak, over the last week or so it's been about 20% cheaper than agile would have been.

Yeah, recent month has been bad on Agile. Looking back I've calculated that TE Lifestyle would be 15% more expensive than Agile but I can set all the automations just once (and easier for family to remember) and also as you say - there's no peak, so I can ignore the clock for the rest of the day 😅

Yeah been with Agile since Jan this year and the octopus compare says tomato would have been about 10% cheaper over those 9 months, most of that is probably standing charge though as 60p agile vs 40p tomato, also not got solar, ev or battery or anything like that so just put the appliances on overnight and avoided the peak tea time, be good to get normal tea time back though.

Smeagal

EssexHebridean said:

Is it only me that can't see how this pricing is going to be sustainable for Tomato?

Yeah I can't see how they can do the standing charge so cheap, for my region the sc price cap is 67p and 40p with tomato on this tariff and then to give cheap rates as well and no peak is a bonus.

wrf12345

Tomato may have assumed falling prices going forward, wholesale electric prices are circa 10p at the moment (average for the day) but you would have to add on a bit for the s/c not being the full whack, so with very low overhead it may be viable, and that would mean software that is good enough not to have to battle through various layers of customer agents to change things like DD's and get disconnected smart meters working again, but not sure how they would get to that point without serious investment money. Or if the existing players would licence them software knowing they were going to undercut them and ruin the cartel-like system currently in place.

pritchah

We've just moved house from north Wales to Yorkshire and it's only now that I'm getting around to considering vfm utilities

We've been on Agile for quite a while and generally found it relatively economical, as well as giving us a nudge to use max electricity at the cheapest times

I've recently had a look at daily/hourly prices, and, whilst I appreciate that these can vary wildly, does the forum think that in general, at this time of year, that Agile is still a good choice?

wrf12345

Mostly Agile is still cheaper than std tariff, in my case as a very low user I want to keep the s/c which was fixed for twelve months back in February so cheaper than other Octopus tariffs, I could make small savings going to Tomato but not really worth the hassle at the moment, by the time the twelve months runs out the s/c will probably have gone up again, and like gas (having deducted the loss of the winter fuel allowance from my spend) won't be viable, especially if council tax goes up (which would have to be deducted from the electric spend rather than go to jail). Only willing to pay the current electric bill because I stopped paying the TV licence fee so overall fixed costs have remained the same, just.