Octopus - Help, Escalation of long term complaint

Scotte_3

I'm looking for a bit of advice about escalating a long term on-going issue I have with Octopus.

Without going into too much detail I have not had an accurate electricity bill or account reading since April 2022.  I have raised a couple of complaints around this and despite previously being told that the issues had been resolved the last reading available on my account is 25th July 2023.

My initial complaint went to a stalemate so I took it to the ombudsman. In November 2023 the ombudsman found in my favour with a recommendation of a modest compensation payment and formal apology.  However by the time they had reached this conclusion my account was already 4 months out of date again and the root cause not resolved - so I rejected their outcome. 

Since then I have raised a separate complaint and been trying to get anyone in Octopus to take ownership with no success and I'm still chasing them down 7 months later.  I've had multiple calls and emails and been promised many call-backs that have not materialised - the rare time I have been called back it's been by someone who has no knowledge of my case/issue so been rather pointless.

Octopus have now sent me an estimated bill using a standard variable rate which does not reflect my use as the majority of my consumption is off-peak to charge my EV.

Due to these inaccurate and missing readings my account is still 7 months out of date and I have an estimated bill pushing my account nearly £3k into debt.  I still can't get any traction on reaching a resolution from anyone, just lots of stalling and passing the buck.

What should I do next?  Try the Ombudsman again, which was rather pointless last time, OR got down a legal route and contact the Law Society Scotland?  Something else?

Any advice would be gratefully received. 

njkmr

I had no look with the Ombudsmen against Octopus last year. Only got a minor offering and letter of apology for gas leak caused by them changing my meter ,but ended up paying for all the leaked gas which was circa £1500...!
Then someone said the Ombudsmen is funded by the utility companies anyway.?
Good luck but not sure who to go to, maybe a solicitor can help?

Swipe

Google back billing rules to see if you are eligible to only pay the last 12 month's worth.

Scotte_3

Swipe said:

Google back billing rules to see if you are eligible to only pay the last 12 month's worth.

Yeah, I was aware of that but as this is 2 separate complaints neither have gone over 12 months.

EssexHebridean

If you find yourself in a similar position again, never accept them closing a complaint until the situation is resolved. It's more than reasonable to say "no thanks, I'm not happy for you to close the complaint right now as I'd like to give it a few months to make sure things are still working well - then I will contact you with my agreement to close the complaint if all is as it should be". I appreciate this is hindsight heavy in your position, but it's one to bear in mind. if the earlier complaint was never resolved fully anyway though, I'd be inclined to say that the two should work in succession and it would be reasonable for you to say that in fact the situation has now exceeded the 12 months. 

Remember if going back to the Ombudsman that the whole thing relies on the evidence presented as that is what the Ombudsman will look at. I will say that in my experience they don't much like it when companies mislead them. Did you speak with anyone at the Ombudsman's office when the account was already wrong again by the time their original resolution was proposed? The fact that the ombudsman is funded by the utility companies doesn't infer that they are somehow biased towards them either - it's just the way that the service is funded as the alternative would be to charge customers for using them! 

Scotte_3

EssexHebridean said:

If you find yourself in a similar position again, never accept them closing a complaint until the situation is resolved. It's more than reasonable to say "no thanks, I'm not happy for you to close the complaint right now as I'd like to give it a few months to make sure things are still working well - then I will contact you with my agreement to close the complaint if all is as it should be". I appreciate this is hindsight heavy in your position, but it's one to bear in mind. if the earlier complaint was never resolved fully anyway though, I'd be inclined to say that the two should work in succession and it would be reasonable for you to say that in fact the situation has now exceeded the 12 months. 

Remember if going back to the Ombudsman that the whole thing relies on the evidence presented as that is what the Ombudsman will look at. I will say that in my experience they don't much like it when companies mislead them. Did you speak with anyone at the Ombudsman's office when the account was already wrong again by the time their original resolution was proposed? The fact that the ombudsman is funded by the utility companies doesn't infer that they are somehow biased towards them either - it's just the way that the service is funded as the alternative would be to charge customers for using them! 

I'm not sure I had the choice.  I only had a a limited time to accept or reject the ombudsman judgement.  Upon rejecting it Octopus closed the complaint. 
I did inform the ombudsman about the account readings falling behind again (and therefore the problem was not resolved) when I appealed their decision.  However, TBH, they didn't appear to care.

born_again

Can't comment on complaint.

But have you supplied them with any readings in this period?

Petriix

There are some important questions before anyone can actually make a judgement about your particular case @Scotte_3.

Primarily: is your smart meter sending reliable 30 minute data to the DCC?
It's fundamental to receiving the cheap overnight rate from Octopus.

Have you checked what data is actually available to download from n3rgy or similar?

Do other people in your area have smart meter issues? 

Do you have any other equipment which can provide evidence of the time you've used the energy? 

While the T&Cs are explicit that missing data = being charged at the standard variable rate, Octopus have been known to be reasonable about manually calculating bills based on reasonable evidence. 

It's important that any EV owner actually regularly checks that their usage is being correctly recorded. It's no use just charging away and hoping it all works out in the end. 

Scotte_3

Petriix said:

There are some important questions before anyone can actually make a judgement about your particular case @Scotte_3.

Primarily: is your smart meter sending reliable 30 minute data to the DCC?
It's fundamental to receiving the cheap overnight rate from Octopus.

Have you checked what data is actually available to download from n3rgy or similar?

Do other people in your area have smart meter issues? 

Do you have any other equipment which can provide evidence of the time you've used the energy? 

While the T&Cs are explicit that missing data = being charged at the standard variable rate, Octopus have been known to be reasonable about manually calculating bills based on reasonable evidence. 

It's important that any EV owner actually regularly checks that their usage is being correctly recorded. It's no use just charging away and hoping it all works out in the end. 

Hi, thanks for your reply.  I've never heard of n3rgy before but Octo did eventually replace my meter yesterday.

I don't know what other people in the area have and unfortunately I don't have anything that would prove the times I used the energy - other than looking back at historic data showing my average use during peak and off-peak hours.

I understand their T&C's and I was aware that the half hourly readings weren't working.  My complaint being that despite all my constant calls and email they have sat on it for 7 months doing nothing about it then sent me a massive bill - sure that can't be right.  Given the number of times I contacted them about they issue surely they also have a responsibility to resolve the issue in a timely manner?  Is that unreasonable? 

Scotte_3

born_again said:

Can't comment on complaint.

But have you supplied them with any readings in this period?

Yes, I provided them with readings on 2 different occasions and they sent a person round to take a reading twice - no updates were made to the account after any of them.

Petriix

Unfortunately, with the meter being replaced, you may have lost all evidence of your previous usage. It might still be possible for Octopus to extract the data directly from the (removed) meter but the you really wanted that data uploaded to the DCC. The meter stores 13 months of data which can be back-filled to Octopus if the connection is fixed but that's unlikely now. 

I'm sorry to say that it's fairly obvious that you might not get the cheap charging rate while the meter wasn't sending data. Octopus have clearly taken an unreasonably long time to fix it but I don't think I'd have carried on charging in hope of a resolution in retrospect.

I've experienced a couple of losses in data connection but they've only lasted for a few days at a time. Only once was there an issue with my bill when a power cut meant there were no readings available for a few hours. Octopus ultimately accepted these as 0 usage when I pointed out that my cumulative meter reading had only increased by the total of my 30 minute usage meaning those missing slots could only be zero. 

Good luck with your complaint.