Octopus Bill - last one was Nov - Dec 2023

thriftytracey

Hi

I just logged in and my last bill was November - December 2023.  I have emailed Octopus as there no telephone helpline available today.

We have a smart meter and solar panels.

I have also asked about the export - there was nothing relating to this on the last bill.    I can see regular exports in my account for example this month 

Netexporter

My guess is that the meter has lost communication with DCC/Octopus. If you send in manual readings that should generate a bill.

JKenH

This happens to me occasionally. I email Octopus and I believe they manually retrieve the missing smart meter data and produce a bill. I have never bothered sending them a reading. 

Alnat1

Octopus have had a few blips recently, I've had to chase bills which hadn't been issued.

Have a look in the "view my balance history" section on the website and see if they are showing any debits/credits to the balance. My export figure wasn't getting picked up automatically so somehow stopped a bill being issued, happened each month Dec-Feb. I rang them each time and it was sorted in minutes. This month the electric import is missing but I did get a bill, only showing gas and export. Guess I'll be phoning again on Monday.

Veteransaver

I haven't had a bill since January. Smart meter readings are all there though. 
I've submitted a manual reading yesterday to see if that triggers a bill. Nothing yet though
Octopus billing does have some glitches, I've got an ongoing issue on my father's s account where they've lost a historic "day" rate from when the meter was on E7, so now when he submits a manual reading it bills for several thousand old units. The total meter reading is considerably more than the reading on their system basically.
It will potentially cause a big issue if he changed suppliers too, as despite those "lost" units already being billed, the system is likely to bill them again

Qyburn

Netexporter said:

My guess is that the meter has lost communication with DCC/Octopus. If you send in manual readings that should generate a bill.

His usage shows in his Octopus account, so surely the meter must be communicating?

thriftytracey

I've now had an email response from Octopus.

Thank you for your email,

I have issued an up to date statement, this should be with you shortly. I apologise for the delay.

The export will show on your bill as credits added to your account.

The export for the Jan and Feb period was £32 which was more than I expected.

Alnat1

I've now got a bill for imported electricity too after yet another phone call. It's quickly sorted but it's frustrating that it keeps happening 

1961Nick

It only takes a couple of missing 30 minute readings to prevent a bill from being issued. I usually email them the missing information & within a few days I get the bill & an essay explaining why it happens.

Thanks for getting in contact with us, hope you are doing well.

I have uploaded your dissatisfaction with this onto your account about the late bill, this feedback will be used to help us improve our services moving forward.

Apologies for this, our system had a minor hiccup in retrieving a reading for your electricity meter as we were missing half hourly readings. We were missing half-hourly readings for the 12th & 16th of January, so as mentioned in our T&C's I had to bill this missing period on Flexible Octopus.

However, I have credited this period with the difference between your daily average expenditure from the two tariffs for the amount of days affected. The main issue with this lies in the type of data used as we have profile data (half-hourly readings) & daily midnight snapshots (daily readings once a day).

So with our tariffs there are two different data sets we will use depending on whether we are billing a smart or non-smart tariff. Our non-smart tariffs use midnight snapshot data which are daily readings that are only taken once per day. This allows us to bill these tariffs accordingly since they are not as complex as our smart tariffs and need only one reading a day.

With our smart tariffs, we use profile data which are half-hourly readings we take every thirty minutes throughout the day. This is necessary for our smart tariffs due to the way Intelligent Octopus Go charges customers. Each half-hourly period is attributed an export unit rate, in line with the current wholesale cost of energy and grid demand. So if we are missing even one half-hourly reading then our system will be unable to bill your meterpoint. We require 48 of these readings everyday to ensure our system can bill you accordingly.

This is so that you don't miss out on your preferred tariff. As Intelligent Octopus Go is beta tariff and there can be issues with smart meters sending consistent readings. This isn't an uncommon issue amongst smart meters but can occur from time to time.

If you have any other queries or problems, please feel free to flick us a message.

Kind regards,

Thabo K

Octopus Energy Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 09263424. Registered office: UK House, 5th Floor, 164-182 Oxford Street, London, United Kingdom, W1D 1NN