Estimated Annual Usage Quantities For Gas & Electricity Missing On Latest April Octopus Statements?

Spoonie_Turtle

matelodave said:

Does this random guess of estimated consumption change much every time a bill comes in, ie do they recalculate it on your last months consumption or does it effectively stay the same.

Mine changes with every bill, which at times has been more often than once a month (giving readings for Tracker, currently no smart meter but I'm aware that will soon have to change to stay on the tariff).

johnggold

I have been having extended conversations with Octopus about the fact that Octopus despite claiming that they include local weather conditions, area factors and so on do no such thing.

Octopus use TypeForm Customer Support tool that promotes using AI for Customer responses, and as a result replies are a mishmash of keywords mined from previous conversations but no actual response to questions raised.

 I have been with Octopus since 2021, and have used the estimated forecasts provided by Octopus and examined them in Excel. What Octopus actually do is to divide the annual usage into 365 packets and add the number of days since the last estimate times the daily average.

If the estimated usage allowed for seasonal usage the trend line would have sinusoidal curves, but actually the trend line is absolutely straight.

So, there is zero impact of seasonality. For example winter estimates should show a higher estimate than summer. This never happens. As a result, Octopus consistently overestimate, and the only solution is to regularly underpay. This is all fine until I send an actual reading. For most users there is no benefit of automated reading. There is a benefit to Octopus. If you want to pay the same amount every month, then resolution once a year (I use the end of September) plus whenever there is a supply price increase.

The last time I submitted an accurate reading I was already showing in credit, and since the reading showed an overestimate, the usage tool showed a doubling of credit, but when I asked for a refund, they recalculated previous bills, after cancelling the old ones, and suddenly the credit was a lot less. 

Then I get another email apologising for not charging for 3 days

One thing that keeps being said by Octopus is that I am alone in complaining about this. I'm sure I'm not..

Chrysalis

johnggold said:

 I have been with Octopus since 2021, and have used the estimated forecasts provided by Octopus and examined them in Excel. What Octopus actually do is to divide the annual usage into 365 packets and add the number of days since the last estimate times the daily average.

If the estimated usage allowed for seasonal usage the trend line would have sinusoidal curves, but actually the trend line is absolutely straight.

My annual estimates whilst with Octopus have been consistently extremely high.  When I was on fixed DD, it used to make their system calculate an excessive DD, and of course affected any cost estimates for tariffs.

Octopus used to have a beta feature that showed on my dashboard which showed how they calculated the annual prediction, and I found two interesting things about this feature.
1 - It ignored my previous usage pattern, historically at the time, my winter usage was not much difference to summer, however they ignored this and seemed to apply some kind of "typical usage" adjustment to the predicted usage.
2 - Also even the summer usage didnt bear that much resemblance to my historical usage.

So seeing your report of a flat line is odd as it is at complete odds with my own experience and what they state on their website.

Scot_39

matelodave said:

Does this random guess of estimated consumption change much every time a bill comes in, ie do they recalculate it on your last months consumption or does it effectively stay the same.

Dunno how they'd guess mine, last month I used around 1000kwh but this month I expect it to be down to 500 and then  250 a month from May through to September when I reckon it'll increase about 500 in October, peaking to 1200 in December/January.

Eon-Next dont do ever such a good job, its a random guess of around 1000kwh more than I use, so its a waste of time and no help whatsoever.

EOns in the rariff tablws updates a bit monthly when check it - its not a simple 12x current month  - but nor does it line up with my spreadsheets for the billing date - but it's often close - within 10% anyway.

Grizzlebeard

I am not a typical energy customer. My usage for both G & E are consistantly flat and very low across the year.

The annual forecast on my monthly Octopus bills has never been more than £10 different from my daily, consolidated monthly + annualy, spreadsheet despite Octopus factoring in future price change predictions.

Equivalent figures from my previous BG(ex Ebico) account were never better than 50-200% out in BG's favour.