Octopus cancelled our eco 7 then denied it ever existed, overcharged, messed up bills, fobbed off

Mulbin

I know they are popular but we've had such a poor service from Octopus (still ongoing) I thought I should share our experience so far.

We switched to Octopus 2 months ago when we got our solar panels and were set up on their economy 7 Flexible tarrif. It all switched over, our meters updated to dual tariff, our app showed our dual rates... so far so good!

We got our first bill after 6 weeks, charging us for 6 weeks of gas, but not electricity! (the did pay us for our small feed-in though).

So the phonecalls began....

Phonecall one

They agreed this didn't look right and they would fix. But they just randomly charged us for a single week.

Phonecall two

The agreed this didn't look right so billed us for the first month only... not the 6 weeks we had been billed for gas.

But they also reversed our feed-in payment for no reason.

Phonecall three

The agreed THIS didn't look right, so gave our feed-in payment back.

But this was just the start, the worst part came the following week when I noticed they had moved us off of eco 7 and back on to the standard tariff.... backdating and charging us the full tariff to the start of our contract!

Phonecall four

They denied we were ever on eco 7 (which was an utter lie as I was showing the dual tariff on our app tariff screen to anyone I could bore!), denied we had a meter capable of eco 7 (which is nonsense as its STILL showing the dual tariffs they set up), denied that their app had been showing my our dual tariff (which it absolutely had) swore black is white despite me literally standing both at the meter and reading the two readings our to them.

Eventually I lost my cool and demanded to speak to a manager, being fobbed off with "he's in a meeting", only afterter threats of ofgem to get my overcharges back did the manager phone me.

So know they have submitted a new eco 7 switch request (despite our meter already being set up for it and running on it for 6 weeks) which could take weeks and its like our previous eco 7 tariff never happened!

So far, they seem like utter incompetents, has anyone else had such a botched account with them or are we really unlucky?


UPDATE June 23

Now well over three months of issues and still nothing fixed, countless emails and fobbing off with "we've submitted the relevant data flows" each time it fails.

Ombudsman now involved with these utter incompetents.

We are also being encouraged to pay £230 a month "based on our previous bills" which seem to be based on pure fiction as out last bill was actually £12

Far too many emails and phonecalls now to list them all here.


We did receive the 8 week letter from Octopus asking if we would like a "senior manager" to look into the issue and contact us. More lies - no senior manager cas been in touch after a fortnight.

70sbudgie

Have you emailed them at any point to put your issues in writing? 

I have found that a combination of email and phonecalls to be quite effective.

That said, I need to make another call to prompt the final step in resolving my issue. (Hopefully)

Mulbin

70sbudgie said:

Have you emailed them at any point to put your issues in writing? 

I have found that a combination of email and phonecalls to be quite effective.

That said, I need to make another call to prompt the final step in resolving my issue. (Hopefully)

Oh they will be getting more phonecalls if they don't sort it    I managed to finally shout a manager call back today so I'll make them want to sort it!

Mulbin

Just in case anyone thinks I'm crazy, here is my app last week before I phoned to sort the billing issues out.




...and this is it this week! Octopus claim it has always been like this.

Scot_39

As others have said - formal by email - with Complaint in title - to customer services or  complaints address if have a specific one.

Then you can escalate to Ombudsman - not Ofgem - who dont handle individual complaints like this.

Octopus might come good eventually, the Ombudsman might not agree with you, but might - and then set out proper compensation, terms - which Octopus could ih theory challange or just pay..


And a paper chain sets hard dates - you sound pretty close to the unresolved threshold already - search here - iirc c8 weeks but not 100% sure.

Complaining to a customer service rep is not always formally recorded as an actual formal complaint.

I have been specifically asked if wanted to escalate in past, but not always.

70sbudgie

Have you emailed that screen shot to Octopus?

My issue has required a couple visits from meter readers (which weren't helpful as they were based on static photos!) and me sending videos to Octopus. In the end Octopus must have decided my videos were better as they stopped trying to send the meter readers and just requested more videos.

Keep_pedalling

If you have gas heating why E7 for electricity? it is likely the most expensive option.

Mulbin

Keep_pedalling said:

If you have gas heating why E7 for electricity? it is likely the most expensive option.

Not when you have solar panels its not! Sadly Octopus Go was no longer available without an EV.

We don't touch the national grid during the day.

Mulbin

70sbudgie said:

Have you emailed that screen shot to Octopus?

My issue has required a couple visits from meter readers (which weren't helpful as they were based on static photos!) and me sending videos to Octopus. In the end Octopus must have decided my videos were better as they stopped trying to send the meter readers and just requested more videos.

I have now! With the account no etc and an FAO of the manager I spoke to. Not hopeful they will actually link it to the complaint but worth a shot.

CanNeverThinkOfAUsername

From the look & sound of it i bet what has happened is the agent(s) at the start tricked Kraken into getting you onto a E7 tariff (as per your screen shot), and sending a request to the smart meter to change this to a E7 smart meter too......but they didn't do it correctly by updating the PC etc on the national database. This means Kraken wont bill you and you'll only be billed for gas. The only way to get a bill to you would be to manually trick Kraken again to issue a bill.

I have seen agents do this in order to keep the customer happy, and its only 1-2 months later the issues crop up.

They should have updated the national database first, this can take upto 8 weeks (depending on how quick the DC and who the MOP is). Once the national database is updated to PC2 etc then Kraken should have been updated, then a request sent to the smart meter in order to send the day and night readings.

Raxiel

Mulbin said:

Keep_pedalling said:

If you have gas heating why E7 for electricity? it is likely the most expensive option.

Not when you have solar panels its not! Sadly Octopus Go was no longer available without an EV.

We don't touch the national grid during the day.

Do you also have a battery?

We have PV, and it's helped reduce our import, but we still definitely do most of our importing during the day period. remains to be seen how things change over the summer, but over the last 6 months of winter since the install our night usage has been 12% of the total. Most of that usage occurring between 5pm and midnight.

Go might not be an option for you, but why not Agile? Or Flux?