Wrong meter reading on switching suppliers

mrsyardbroom

I switched from Octopus to Eon in April and shortly afterwards an agent at Eon said Octopus had given them the wrong final reading. I sent photos of the readings on my meter at the time and thought nothing more of it. Today I logged into my account and found the total in credit was wildly different to the amount I expected. I rang Eon and they said it must due to Octopus giving them the wrong figures. They weren't able to change anything as the final figures have to come from Octopus. They have raised a dispute with Octopus. I'm wondering what happens if Octopus are unable to supply the correct figures. Does anybody have any idea?

BarelySentientAI

How wrong are your readings?  There's a bit of tolerance under which they don't have to do anything.

I thought it was the new supplier that gives the readings to the old one, so E.ON sends them to Octopus in your case.

mrsyardbroom

It's more than £2000 worth of electricity. Octopus have to send Eon the meter reading, not the other way about. It can take a little while for the new supplier to connect to the smart meter.

Spoonie_Turtle

Do you have usage on different registers of your meter?

It is apparently somewhat common for people switching TO Octopus to have the registers switched (i.e. which one is charged at night rate and which at day) but I wonder if something has happened to switch them for you moving AWAY from Octopus.

mrsyardbroom

Yes,I know that's what has happened. Octopus switched the readings. I don't understand why nothing was done about it until now. Octopus knew about it in April.

mrsyardbroom

BarelySentientAI said:

How wrong are your readings?  There's a bit of tolerance under which they don't have to do anything.

I thought it was the new supplier that gives the readings to the old one, so E.ON sends them to Octopus in your case.

I have just found this information on the National Energy Foundation website,

Your new supplier will ask you to submit your opening reading and it is their responsibility to pass on this meter reading to your old supplier. So even if you give your old supplier the correct meter reading, they should technically be using the one provided by your new supplier – this should avoid two different readings being used and customers being double billed.

This doesn't appear to have happened. Octopus supplied the final reading to E.on and that is what has appeared on my statement.

Chris_b2z

I struggle to understand why switching suppliers causes so many problems. It should be a simple automated process when there is a working SMETS2 meter.
In my case, Scottish Power were waiting for BG to provide switch readings. They gave up after a month and sent a completely incorrect estimated final bill.
The industry is run and regulated by muppets. It needs a shakeup.

mrsyardbroom

If something is programmed properly there's no problem. Unfortunately humans do the programming. I thought everything was fine until I checked my account yesterday.

Chris_b2z

mrsyardbroom said:

If something is programmed properly there's no problem. Unfortunately humans do the programming. I thought everything was fine until I checked my account yesterday.

Code defects are inevitable and expected in any large scale development project. Problems arise when 'humans' fail to resolve and manage the effect of those bugs.

Lessons must be learned from Horizon.

mrsyardbroom

I would like to know what happens if Octopus can't supply the correct reading. I also have another issue. I've never had a bill from E.on, only statements.

BarelySentientAI

mrsyardbroom said:

I also have another issue. I've never had a bill from E.on, only statements.

E.ON's bills are called statements.

mrsyardbroom said:

I would like to know what happens if Octopus can't supply the correct reading. 

It depends how the readings are wrong.  Sometimes it doesn't really matter and everyone can pretty much just ignore it, sometimes it matters a lot.

And as we have said, it is for E.ON to fix, not Octopus.