Octopus energy smart meter issues

LYNDBO

I'm facing the same problem and have done for months to the stage where I've gone through the ombudsman and awarded £75.00 but still receiving statements where day reads as night and night reads as day , I didn't receive a bill for a couple of months (January and February) and when I did finally get the statement it was again incorrect, so far ive had 3 different credit balances in a matter of weeks , one was £709.00 in credit then dropped to £135.00 in credit.  The problem is nationwide with Gen 1 smart meters and is Transposed readings and can result in a bill double your usual amount. Go through the ombudsman when you've made a official complaint and you haven't received a satisfactory outcome.

brig001

@LYNDBO are you with Octopus or someone else?

Brian

EssexHebridean

The good news is that so long as people pickup on this issue immediately it is at least easy to get billing corrected I would hope as it is a known issue, and for most, it will be obvious what has happened as the readings will tie up with previous - albeit in a different orientation against the R1 and R2.

Those of you with this issue, as a matter of interest can you confirm which way round your rates are - ie is your day rate R1 and your night, R2? (That is usually considered to be “normal” although it’s far from standard - we were always the other way round, and even with a non smart meter it lead to readings being transposed by suppliers 3 times in the 20 years we had E7, as I recall. 

brig001

EssexHebridean said:

The good news is that so long as people pickup on this issue immediately it is at least easy to get billing corrected I would hope as it is a known issue, and for most, it will be obvious what has happened as the readings will tie up with previous - albeit in a different orientation against the R1 and R2.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. As I understand it, the contractor who supplies the meter readings randomly swaps the readings round. Just because you have solved it once, doesn’t mean that it will stay solved 

The second complication is dumb CS advisors - one un-billed three years of bills, then re-billed me but with all the readings the wrong way around. To say I wasn’t impressed is an understatement as it had taken me ages to get them straight in the first place 

Brian

Qyburn

brig001 said:

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. As I understand it, the contractor who supplies the meter readings randomly swaps the readings round. Just because you have solved it once, doesn’t mean that it will stay solved 

Do you mean for an individual customer with the same meter? For example you get it finally sorted out that R1 is day and R2 is night, but then at some random time further down the line the registers swap so that R1 registers night and R2 registers day.

EssexHebridean

Oh yes - there is no question that it will happen again until such time as the issue is actually “fixed” - but the early detection means that people should be alive to the possibility of a repeat of the problem (we certainly were once we had experienced traditional “operator error” transposition) and the suppliers also should be aware that the situation exists too.  @Qyburn It’s perfectly likely to happen again the very next month, from what I have heard. 

I’m not suggesting that it is as simple as sorting the problem out once and it stayed sorted at this stage - which is exactly why I said that it should be easy to get billing corrected rather than making any suggestion that once sorted, that would be it! 

Qyburn

EssexHebridean said:

It’s perfectly likely to happen again the very next month, from what I have heard. 

So is this meter problem, the meter of its own accord randomly changing which register increments at which time? Or system problem, something sending instructions to the meter changing the registers.

What if it changes mid month?

brig001

Qyburn said:

Do you mean for an individual customer with the same meter? For example you get it finally sorted out that R1 is day and R2 is night, but then at some random time further down the line the registers swap so that R1 registers night and R2 registers day.

i think R1 and R2 stay the same in the meter, but the contractor sends the units as day and night, and they swap day = R1 to day = R2 and back again

Brian

Gerry1

Seems to be more of a billing problem rather than a metering problem?  Sometimes it may also be poor communications from the supplier if they ask only for Day and Night readings and leave the poor befuddled customer to guess whether to enter R1, R2 or 't'... 🤔

My non-smart E7 meter is R1=Night, R2=Day, although I've now chosen to be billed at single rate.

Ideally it should be standardised but changing over would probably cause more problems than it solved.

The best solution might be for meter readers to make sure that all multi-rate meters have a sticker like mine which shows which rate is which.  Even then there's still room for confusion because meters often refer to Normal/Low whereas bills refer to Day/Night.

Qyburn

brig001 said:

Qyburn said:

Do you mean for an individual customer with the same meter? For example you get it finally sorted out that R1 is day and R2 is night, but then at some random time further down the line the registers swap so that R1 registers night and R2 registers day.

i think R1 and R2 stay the same in the meter, but the contractor sends the units as day and night, and they swap day = R1 to day = R2 and back again

Brian

By "contractor" do you mean the DCC, or prehaps an intermediate between Octopus and DCC? We're talking about smart meters so there's no physical meter reading going on.