Octopus Energy New Flexible tariff beginning April. Unannounced switch to dynamic unit price.

NeilT79

5 days ago I received an email from Octopus Energy clearly stating the new tariff starting on April 1st. In the email both standing charges and unit prices for both electricity and gas are clearly stated. Today I noticed on my account page online that the tariff , same name, same dates etc has what they call a Dynamic unit rate which the information box describes thus. " Your unit rate changes based on the time of the day. You can see how the unit rate changes each hour on the graphs below." 
3 points:-
1. This is not what the email sent to me with information on the new tariffs remotely says. The unit Kwh tariffs are clearly stated with no mention of variability per hour.
2.  Surely Octopus Energy cannot , according to regulations , inform you in writing of a ne tariff and then charge you a completely new tariff without first writing to you. 
3. What normal household can manage their energy consumption based on pricing that changes hourly? 

MattMattMattUK

NeilT79 said:

5 days ago I received an email from Octopus Energy clearly stating the new tariff starting on April 1st. In the email both standing charges and unit prices for both electricity and gas are clearly stated. Today I noticed on my account page online that the tariff , same name, same dates etc has what they call a Dynamic unit rate which the information box describes thus. " Your unit rate changes based on the time of the day. You can see how the unit rate changes each hour on the graphs below." 
3 points:-
1. This is not what the email sent to me with information on the new tariffs remotely says. The unit Kwh tariffs are clearly stated with no mention of variability per hour.
2.  Surely Octopus Energy cannot , according to regulations , inform you in writing of a ne tariff and then charge you a completely new tariff without first writing to you. 

I am not sure if you can post an image yet (new site user), but if you can, can you share a screenshot with personal information redacted, if you cannot then can you copy and past the text. What is the name of the tariff? 

NeilT79 said:

3. What normal household can manage their energy consumption based on pricing that changes hourly? 

Fairly easily, think how many people used the demand windows where they got paid to cut usage in a two hour window, or people on E7 who push their usage overnight, EV tariff users, Cosy users etc. it is perfectly possible. 

[Deleted User]

NeilT79 said:

5 days ago I received an email from Octopus Energy clearly stating the new tariff starting on April 1st. In the email both standing charges and unit prices for both electricity and gas are clearly stated. Today I noticed on my account page online that the tariff , same name, same dates etc has what they call a Dynamic unit rate which the information box describes thus. " Your unit rate changes based on the time of the day. You can see how the unit rate changes each hour on the graphs below." 
3 points:-
1. This is not what the email sent to me with information on the new tariffs remotely says. The unit Kwh tariffs are clearly stated with no mention of variability per hour.
2.  Surely Octopus Energy cannot , according to regulations , inform you in writing of a ne tariff and then charge you a completely new tariff without first writing to you. 
3. What normal household can manage their energy consumption based on pricing that changes hourly? 

The supplier has to give you reasonable notice of any changes to allow time for you to initiate a switch. As we now have 5 day switching, you have time to start the process before the 1st April.

That said, I suspect that something has gone wrong with the ‘back office’. Dynamic pricing has for sometime been used for Octopus’ Agile and Tracker tariffs. The former changes the unit price every 30 minutes and the latter once a day. For Agile, Octopus sends out an email each day with the next day’s prices.  normal households can save a lot of money on these tariffs without many changes to the way the home is run. Here are the Agile prices for my region today:

MWT

NeilT79 said:

Today I noticed on my account page online that the tariff , same name, same dates etc has what they call a Dynamic unit rate ...

Can you give us the exact tariff name please?

aaiiee

My Octopus account (Co-op Flexible tariff) is showing the same thing.

aaiiee

Screen shot:

Spoonie_Turtle

How bizarre.  I'd be inclined to think it's a glitch, 'Flexible' is their SVT and at the moment only changes when the price cap changes.

aaiiee

I agree it's probably a glitch. I won't panic just yet!

TheElectricCow

Considering it says the same for gas as well (as far as I know, time of use gas tariffs aren’t a thing) I think it’s safe to assume it’s just an error on their part which will be updated in due course.

EssexHebridean

I've just double checked my Octopus app and it's showing two tariff windows for each fuel at the moment - I assume the second is shortly going to have the new prices from Saturday in it...Both are just showing straight unit prices though. It definitely sounds like there are little 8 legged gremlins running about the place today though! 

Spoonie_Turtle

TheElectricCow said:

Considering it says the same for gas as well (as far as I know, time of use gas tariffs aren’t a thing) I think it’s safe to assume it’s just an error on their part which will be updated in due course.

Only Tracker, which is daily changes not time of day.

(The price of gas only changes daily, whereas electricity changes every half-hour which is the reason proper TOU tariffs can exist.)