octopus forcing smartmeter

LeesArt

Newbie_John said:

I had a person reading my meter yesterday first time ever (possibly as I was never around during the day, then COVID etc.)
And I asked for their ID which meant nothing to me - some random name like John Smith, with some random company name Colisen that I never heard of.. the guy came, took a reading, left.Totally pointless but what do I have to hide Happy to share my usage with anyone..

Since I have smart meter it allowed me to understand how my house works - what runs when, how much things cost. All this applied with Octopus Agile resulted in £550 saved on electricity bill between December and now.

Every meter can go wrong and under/over report, but with a smart meter it's so easy to spot it earlier on and get it sorted quickly.

My understanding is that they have to manually read every two years, not sure if this only applies to analogue or Smart Meters not working, 

In my last home I caught a guy in the meter cupboard, challenged him and he said he worked on behalf of EDF,  I then pointed out that nobody on my floor was with EDF and he said "oh I must be on wrong floor" and dashed out of there.

A week later I heard a neighbour upstairs shouting, I went up there and it was the same guy trying to get his name, he had collected the reads on the last visit.  The Police were not interested and all we could do was get him to leave and warn the neighbourhood watch. I checked my energy company  and they confirmed they had not sent a reader, my immediate neighbour did the same thing.

I have family abroad who have a far better implementation of software, a bit like the octopus home mini output.

I have no smart meter but I have cut my usage by analysing usage of the usual devices, heating the people not the home, my analysis shows me the cost of certain activities,  some I have eliminated and I am using substantially less units (40% to 60% less depending on the month and weather).  Despite this I am still paying at least 50% more in my bills, of course paying over £300 for the privilege of a connection does not help.

LeesArt

Qyburn said:

avenue12 said:

So many comments! Thanks all, I've contacted Octopus already to ask why our bill was estimated and if he was a legit meter reader. Thanks for the phone no whoever it was provided, if there is.no reply soon I will call them.

In addition I think it would be worthwhile putting in a meter reading of your own, on the web site. Your reading should over ride the earlier estimate and get the overall bill correct.

I had to do this a few times when training Octopus to bill once a month. For example they sent an estimated bill covering up to 28th November (over estimating), then my meter reading on 1st December triggered the next bill covering 29th-30th November for -58kWh and adding appropriate credit to the account.

GOOD POINT, I got an estimated bill from Octopus when they moved me and discovered a mistake, they promptly cancelled the bill and the portal was updated during the call.  I was then able to make a payment because they did not take the DD, the manual payment showed within 2 days.  I put my read in so I would get the bill and direct debit to come out when I wanted and bills cover the period I want.

Doing this with Shell Energy would have been impossible, bills were never cancelled, instead they put a plethora of irreconcilable figures and the bill would end up being 12 pages.  It also messaged up the next three months of billing because another member of staff generated a bill in the middle of the month for no reason and with no prompting.

Shell were a nightmare to deal with, their bills took 6 days from read submitted online, even direct debits did not show promptly.  They used faulty estimates for 8 months of each year, one bill had 16 different tariffs.  

A question I have is whether I lose control of the billing if I get a smart meter?  I want it to bill from the 1st to the end of the month regardless of whether there are 28, 29,30 or 31 days.

booneruk

That is putting the customer into debt 

It's not a debt. The energy company has just become a temporary custodian of money that you are due back. 

This also happened with traditional meters - over charging due to estimated readings. (I could spend minutes on google finding examples)

You complain about smart meters. You also complain about smart meters acting like conventional meters, yet you appear to love conventional meters. Presumably you consider conventional meter users being wise to check they're not being billed based on estimates, yet seem to think that the same responsibility is automatically bypassed by anyone with a smart meter fitted.

Get bill, look at bill, see ESTIMATED, submit a manual reading. It's all quite simple.

Qyburn

LeesArt said:

A question I have is whether I lose control of the billing if I get a smart meter?  I want it to bill from the 1st to the end of the month regardless of whether there are 28, 29,30 or 31 days.

You may have to push them on that, it took me a couple of goes. What you want is your billing date to be the 1st. Once they sorted that out it's been fine since.

To be fair it might have been the tariff change early the following month that messed things up. But it got sorted.

LeesArt

Qyburn said:

LeesArt said:

A question I have is whether I lose control of the billing if I get a smart meter?  I want it to bill from the 1st to the end of the month regardless of whether there are 28, 29,30 or 31 days.

You may have to push them on that, it took me a couple of goes. What you want is your billing date to be the 1st. Once they sorted that out it's been fine since.

To be fair it might have been the tariff change early the following month that messed things up. But it got sorted.

This is an area where Octopus have some limitations, I am on Variable DD which is how I like it. 

Currently I can post a read from the 1st of the month any time between 1st and 10th, but I can't set the DD on a fixed date on Variable DD, it takes 14 days so  I have to factor that in, I may have to move other DD's to later in the month.

Do they allow you to specify what day they take  a read from the smart meter?

FreeBear

Newbie_John said: Every meter can go wrong and under/over report, but with a smart meter it's so easy to spot it earlier on and get it sorted quickly.

I have a secondary meter recording electricity usage - A PZEM-016. Whilst not MID compliant, is it close enough to spot if the SMETS2 meter starts misbehaving. Just wish I could do something similar with the gas supply.