Octopus energy drive to smart meters

petermorgan5

Its pretty clear that Octopus Energy are on a drive to install smart meters. I believe this their way of driving down a bad debt problem hence reducing their customer service costs chasing debts by moving folks to smart meters and then without notice switching them remotely to pay as you go or prepayment meters. I get a sense this is their current strategy driving smart meter installations. Anyone feel the same way. 

petermorgan5

To be clear their strategy reduces bad debt by tasnferring customers to prepay and then reduces customer service costs because less none prepay customers who are self care customers i.e. dont pay no electricity and no need for customer services reps. 

Browntoa

99% of all current swap outs and installs are smart meters . At end of life of your current meters there are no old school meters to install .

The rules were changed a while back to enable all suppliers to do this , with or without your agreement 

Spoonie_Turtle

petermorgan5 said:

Its pretty clear that Octopus Energy are on a drive to install smart meters. I believe this their way of driving down a bad debt problem hence reducing their customer service costs chasing debts by moving folks to smart meters and then without notice switching them remotely to pay as you go or prepayment meters. I get a sense this is their current strategy driving smart meter installations. Anyone feel the same way. 

That's a bold claim, any proof of that?

MattMattMattUK

petermorgan5 said:

Its pretty clear that Octopus Energy are on a drive to install smart meters. I believe this their way of driving down a bad debt problem hence reducing their customer service costs chasing debts by moving folks to smart meters and then without notice switching them remotely to pay as you go or prepayment meters. I get a sense this is their current strategy driving smart meter installations.

Their current strategy is to fit as many as possible, as they are required to do by the government, the regulator an their license.

petermorgan5 said:

Anyone feel the same way. 

Lots of the anti-Smart Meter brigade have feelings against smart meters, but they do not matter.

petermorgan5 said:

To be clear their strategy reduces bad debt by tasnferring customers to prepay and then reduces customer service costs because less none prepay customers who are self care customers i.e. dont pay no electricity and no need for customer services reps. 

There are restrictions on transferring customers to pre-pay against their will, Octopus do so at a lower rate than any other supplier. There is almost no need for customer service people for most customers anyway, hardly anyone needs to speak to someone to pay. 

alanwsg

When I joined Octopus (From Avro) I got an Email asking me if I'd like a smart meter.
I said 'No thanks' and they haven't bothered me about it since.

bagand96

It's pretty clear every energy supplier are on a drive to install smart meters.  As stated above it's UK Gov policy to roll out smart meters and via Ofgem they are encouraging suppliers to roll them out and setting targets to do so. 

I'm not sure if Octopus were involved with the recent issues involving forcing of pre-payment and/or smart meters, but they're certainly not the main supplier the press were reporting on.

Octopus are quite openly in a drive to smart meters but I don't think it's for the reasons you state.  They want to drive smart technology to change the way we think about and use energy.  For example they offer a number of experimental "time of use" and tracker tariffs.  I think they're pretty open about that and will be the market leader as that sector of the market grows.

[Deleted User]

It might have something to do with this (taken from the Ofgem letter sent to all suppliers in March 2022):

Or put it another way -‘meet your agreed smart meter rollout target or you will be fined’.