Persuading/Forcing Octopus to bill monthly

Qyburn

Hi,
This is surely a communication rather than a supplier issue, but I'm having problems persuading Octopus to bill monthly. We joined then in the Summer and after a couple of months got them settled to billing for each whole month, using the meter reading taken on the 1st of the following month. 

Now it's gone off the rails again. They produced a part month bill for January covering prior to the Smart Meter install (1st to 23rd) then another to complete the month after I gave the reading on 1st Feb. February I applied for Tracker on 6th, this resulted in four bills covering 1st to 5th, 6th to 7th, 8th to 20th, and finally 21st to 28th. Now in March they've just sent another bill covering 1st to 20th for absolutely no apparent reason.

When I've asked I just got a blockheaded response something like "I can see your billing date is the 20th". Or in other words "we bill on the 20th because we've decided to bill on the 20th". Their only other suggestion was to change to a fixed DD, I have no idea why they think that would help.

BeerSavesMoney

You can change your payment date through your online account? Has this been changed?

I have a variable direct debit set up meaning I pay each bill in full, my bills are generated on the 15th of each month with the direct debit payment taken on the 1st.

Edit: I’ll add I’m on an Agile tariff so my meter provides half hourly meter readings daily, I have noticed on the meter readings section of my account that a smart meter read for the 15th of each month is there.

MWT

BeerSavesMoney said:

You can change your payment date through your online account? Has this been changed?

You can change the date of your DD, but not the date that you are billed.

Qyburn said:

When I've asked I just got a blockheaded response something like "I can see your billing date is the 20th". Or in other words "we bill on the 20th because we've decided to bill on the 20th".

There is no mechanism in the Kraken billing system to enforce a particular date as the only point in the month that a bill will be generated, and certainly no way to ensure that it will always be for a calendar month.

Any employee who suggests they can fix this for you is mistaken, and while they may be able to force it to bill that way for a month, it will inevitably drift off again at some point in the future.

The way the system is designed is not compatible with a fixed monthly billing date.

stripling

Qyburn said:

Hi,
This is surely a communication rather than a supplier issue, but I'm having problems persuading Octopus to bill monthly. We joined then in the Summer and after a couple of months got them settled to billing for each whole month, using the meter reading taken on the 1st of the following month. 

Now it's gone off the rails again. They produced a part month bill for January covering prior to the Smart Meter install (1st to 23rd) then another to complete the month after I gave the reading on 1st Feb. February I applied for Tracker on 6th, this resulted in four bills covering 1st to 5th, 6th to 7th, 8th to 20th, and finally 21st to 28th. Now in March they've just sent another bill covering 1st to 20th for absolutely no apparent reason.

When I've asked I just got a blockheaded response something like "I can see your billing date is the 20th". Or in other words "we bill on the 20th because we've decided to bill on the 20th". Their only other suggestion was to change to a fixed DD, I have no idea why they think that would help.

I'm on Tracker. I pay a fixed monthly DD but I supply readings weekly.. more often when prices were volatile, I get billed a couple of days after I've submitted readings - ie weekly -  and they deduct the money from my accumulated account balance. It went wrong a couple of times in the past year, but I chased them emphasised that I need regular numbers and that's all. It's been fine ever since. 
Maybe yours needs to settle down, or more likely, maybe not having a fixed rate DD complicates things? 

[Deleted User]

I have been with Octopus for nearly 5 years. When I provided manual readings, a statement arrived a day later (in some cases the same day). With a smart meter, I get a bill up to the 27th which arrives on the 29th. If Octopus has to raise a manual bill because of the recovery of missing smart meter data, then monthly billing normally continues from the date if the manual bill. On the odd occasion that there has been a hiccup, a call to CS has always resolved the problem.

Xbigman

I'm billed by Octopus on the 12th of the month. Personally I'd find it much more convenient to be billed on the 1st but I can understand that Octopus want to spread their billing evenly through the month to avoid spikes in customer service calls. It is what it is.

Darren

Grizzlebeard

Can you imagine the chaos in the accounting system if 95% of customers wanted to be billed and variable DD'd on the first of every month and the system was virtually idle for the next 27/30 days?

It would require the servers to be up to 30 times over specified and costly to cater for the peak requirements of 1or 2 days.
(I admit I've described an extreme scenario to illustrate the potential  problem, but the principle still stands.)

I would guess that fixed DD's put much less peak load on the system because all the heavy mathematics can be run in the background and spread out evenly over 24/7/12.

Alnat1

I'm billed 20th monthly but as all the graphs and charts show data by calendar month it really doesn't make any difference.

It's definitely better than some companies that only bill 6 monthly.

Qyburn

Grizzlebeard said:

Can you imagine the chaos in the accounting system if 95% of customers wanted to be billed and variable DD'd on the first of every month and the system was virtually idle for the next 27/30 days?

Even Symbio could manage this, in fact they billed 100% at the month end.

If Octopus really can't manage then I'll continue giving a manual reading on the first of each month. 

Grizzlebeard

Qyburn said:

Grizzlebeard said:

Can you imagine the chaos in the accounting system if 95% of customers wanted to be billed and variable DD'd on the first of every month and the system was virtually idle for the next 27/30 days?

Even Symbio could manage this, in fact they billed 100% at the month end.

If Octopus really can't manage then I'll continue giving a manual reading on the first of each month. 

Don't disagree Qyburn. I'm sure they could "manage it", but it's still  not efficient resource management.

It's not just the IT system load which is probably on the Cloud anyway. The knock-on is mainly with staffing - customer service etc. Imagine if the queries & complaints, most of which are billing related, came in a big wave in the first week of every month. Octopus would have a hard job maintaining their reputation for decent CS response. (I probably should have  highlighted this in my last post but my wittering sometimes gets a bit long winded so I abbreviate some of my thinking.)

(P.S. I also give readings 1st of month and get bill 1st or 2nd but I'm on fixed monthly DD anyway.)

matt_drummer

Does it matter when they bill?

If I was billing millions of customers I would want it spread evenly over the month, it makes sense.

Octopus make it very clear what you have used each calender month if you have smart meters and if you pay by fixed monthly direct debit the date and period of the bill is pretty much irrelevant?