Octopus billing issues - gaps in data

potts8

I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced issues with Octopus and automated billing?

All year now I've had to contact them to generate a bill and the reason is always that there are gaps in my smart meter readings. During the year I switched from Go to Tracker but it was an issue on both tariffs.

Normally it wouldn't be a major issue apart from now it feels there is some major manipulation in the bills where July and August seem to be approx 3-6 times more than my normal usage daily so this has naturally put my account into debt.

I've reached out to their support team multiple times and raised a complaint but I was just curious if anyone else had experienced similar?

It's been quite disappointing to see the customer service element of Octopus tank over the years which I assume comes with growing too big too soon

northernstar007

i had the same problem, (maybe becasue i have a old smets1 meter, is that what you have?) i think they done a software update on my meter and that solved it
sure there will be people on here to advise 
also i find speaking to someone on twitter gets things done straightaway

potts8

northernstar007 said:

i had the same problem, (maybe becasue i have a old smets1 meter, is that what you have?) i think they done a software update on my meter and that solved it
sure there will be people on here to advise 
also i find speaking to someone on twitter gets things done straightaway

Thanks for the reply, no I actually have a SMETS2 that was installed by them but went though a period of time where it suffered comms issues(2-3 weeks).

I've been told a few times that it's all sorted now but it never seems to be the case.

The problem is with so much manipulation on the bills it's becomming hard to track. I've now had £000's deducted and also refunded.

Lesson learnt it's well worth recording regular readings for your own benefit.

masonic

Comms issues are difficult to resolve and may require the meter manufacturer to develop and release a firmware update, or it may be down to your geography and landscape. I had my initial problems resolved after about 6-8 months. It should be no biggie going forward on Tracker because they can bill using meter readings and apply averaging to the daily consumption, but on Go their fallback position is to bill you according to SVR if they cannot get the half-hourly data they need to bill you for TOU. Perhaps that is what has happened with the earlier bills? It would be worth looking at them in detail to see exactly how they've arrived at the figures. In my case (also Go) they were always able to manually pull the readings they needed for billing.

njkmr

Had the same problem with my smart ...! electric meter they fitted. It doesnt communicate and ive just had to remind them its been Sept 23 since they updated my electric usage.
Absolute garbage to deal with .

zedonk

My gas meter doesn't talk to them properly, so I just send a manual reading every month or so and that triggers an accurate bill. It does mean I get bills at random intervals (they also send them on their own schedule with just electricity on) but I'm not getting charged for anything I'm not using, and I'm not going to get any nasty surprises either!