Octopus Tracker smart meter reading discrepancy

Andreg

Has anyone else who switched to the Octopus Tracker in the last few months seen a discrepancy between the meter reading on their bill and the displayed meter reading on the meter itself?  Mine has had a consistent discrepancy from the start of switching to Tracker in July. 

I believe Octopus have an error in their Tracker billing system whereby they build up the meter reading number used for the bill from incremental usage rather than using the absolute number as displayed on the meter itself.

If you are on Tracker I suggest you check: if there is a discrepancy and a manual meter reading is ever input this will cause a large unexpected bill.

QrizB

Andreg said:

Has anyone else who switched to the Octopus Tracker in the last few months seen a discrepancy between the meter reading on their bill and the displayed meter reading on the meter itself?  Mine has had a consistent discrepancy from the start of switching to Tracker in July. 

Consistent as in a fixed offset? Or consistent as in continually increasing?

Qyburn

I had one month with a 0.1kWh discrepancy. I guess a rounding error somewhere, not enough to worry about.

Andreg

QrizB said:

Consistent as in a fixed offset? Or consistent as in continually increasing?

Consistent as in ‘fixed offset’.

QrizB

Andreg said:

QrizB said:

Consistent as in a fixed offset? Or consistent as in continually increasing?

Consistent as in ‘fixed offset’.

A fixed offset would not immediately suggest any problem with Octopus and their Tracker billing system.

How large is the offset?

Has your smart meter ever been configured to use two registers? Economy 7, for example, or BGs "free electricity Sundays"?

Andreg

QrizB said:

A fixed offset would not immediately suggest any problem with Octopus and their Tracker billing system.

How large is the offset?

Has your smart meter ever been configured to use two registers? Economy 7, for example, or BGs "free electricity Sundays"?

1. I disagree - see the last paragraph of my first post - when a manual reading is input a large incorrect bill is generated.
2. Enough to worry about - about a month's worth of electricity consumption.
3. No

Scot_39

Have you notified Octopus ?

To look into it.

They may even be able to recover the full upto c13 months iirc history stored from your meter to rebill it when if they spot an error.

Have you tried looking at one of the apps like loop or bright to see how your meter 48 1/2 hr data compares to the daily index totals yourself ?

Or do Octopus give you that granularity online for Tracker too ?.

And if by fixed offset - do you mean fixed over the months regardless.  So really just a base reading issue.  So always say 100 or 200kWh out month after month.
(I think you arent saying that's 100, then 200 next month, 300 etc.)


So could for instance they have started accumulating Sum of 48 hour daily slots from the wrong base point.

But if do so over a day or a month - get the same total units used in the period as meter total register day / month 2 - meter total register day / month 1.

I.e. same usage, just wrong start point.

You might want to look at a few days just to eliminate the odd hour that can confuse due to differences in utc bst reporting for times in various sources.

You might be able to check that online at Octopus or as I say over an app - over even just a few days- let alone a month.

Like if a new meter, but swapped to tracker say a few weeks later, but they started from 0 on accumulation, and the registers include the first n weeks ( or xxxxx if/ when you swapped to them and then waited to active to start accumulation etc).

dunstonh

Has anyone else who switched to the Octopus Tracker in the last few months seen a discrepancy between the meter reading on their bill and the displayed meter reading on the meter itself?  Mine has had a consistent discrepancy from the start of switching to Tracker in July. 

Have you taken into account that meter readings are on GMT but the time on smart meters usually shows BST during summer?   With some software, it means a one-hour offset occurs.

That would create potential incorrect daily use but it would not be compounding.   Your issue sounds big enough to be a compounding issue.

QrizB

Andreg said:

QrizB said:

A fixed offset would not immediately suggest any problem with Octopus and their Tracker billing system.

How large is the offset?

Has your smart meter ever been configured to use two registers? Economy 7, for example, or BGs "free electricity Sundays"?

1. I disagree - see the last paragraph of my first post - when a manual reading is input a large incorrect bill is generated.
2. Enough to worry about - about a month's worth of electricity consumption.
3. No

A constant offset of 2-300kWh still doesn't suggest any problem with Octopus's billing.

Have you actually input a manual reading? Did you get an erroneous bill as a result?

Are you reading your smart meter, or your IHD?

If you are reading the meter itself, are you reading the individual registers or the total import?

wild666

Andreg said:

Has anyone else who switched to the Octopus Tracker in the last few months seen a discrepancy between the meter reading on their bill and the displayed meter reading on the meter itself?  Mine has had a consistent discrepancy from the start of switching to Tracker in July. 

I believe Octopus have an error in their Tracker billing system whereby they build up the meter reading number used for the bill from incremental usage rather than using the absolute number as displayed on the meter itself.

If you are on Tracker I suggest you check: if there is a discrepancy and a manual meter reading is ever input this will cause a large unexpected bill.

I moved to the tracker tariff in July and I submit meter readings for electric and gas on the 26th of the month. I don't have to submit electric readings as they can read the meter but not the gas meter so every month I give them the readings for both and that's what they use. 

wild666

QrizB said:

Andreg said:

QrizB said:

Consistent as in a fixed offset? Or consistent as in continually increasing?

Consistent as in ‘fixed offset’.

A fixed offset would not immediately suggest any problem with Octopus and their Tracker billing system.

How large is the offset?

Has your smart meter ever been configured to use two registers? Economy 7, for example, or BGs "free electricity Sundays"?

My smart meters where configures to use free electric from BG and the tariff ended on 31/03/18 but it kept reading on another section, ACT 2, until 15/9/19 until that time I had to give the two suppliers I was with in that time two readings every month and the second supplier actually queried the reading on ACT 2 not increasing so I told them it had stopped increasing after the 15/9/19 and they were welcome to send someone to check the meters if they wanted, they never did.