Octopus Intelligent - A Warning!

Marksfish

Try downloading the Energy Saver app (Android), it is similar to Loop and Hugo and it is free. If it connects to your meter, it can get all your historical readings, took about a week for mine to all come through. I used Hugo in my complaint to the ombudsman with British Gas. I had a screenshot of every days usage, the ombudsman then made a calculation of what I should have paid against what BG were asking. You could also compare a 3rd party app against the Octopus one to see if they tally.

WiserMiser

Octopus have been like a breath of fresh air with a brilliant app, good customer service and extremely clear bills.  They've deservedly become the No.1 supplier.

It's therefore even more disappointing that they're allowing their copy book to be blotted in this way.

Fair enough to warn that it's an innovative tariff that's liable to interruption, but they need to ensure that customers are notified immediately so that they can make alternative arrangements.

Once a reputation is trashed it's very difficult to restore.

SimonBirtwistle

Marksfish said:

Try downloading the Energy Saver app (Android), it is similar to Loop and Hugo and it is free. If it connects to your meter, it can get all your historical readings, took about a week for mine to all come through. I used Hugo in my complaint to the ombudsman with British Gas. I had a screenshot of every days usage, the ombudsman then made a calculation of what I should have paid against what BG were asking. You could also compare a 3rd party app against the Octopus one to see if they tally.

Thanks - unfortunately I don't think that would help here.  The smart meter itself broke, i.e. it couldn't communicate readings to anything, whether Octopus, an in home display, or the "Octopus Mini".  The best consumption data I have is from my battery and solar apps, which use clamps on the wires and therefore aren't accurate enough for billing purposes.

Reed_Richards

So in fact the comms hub attached to the smart meter broke.  But if just the comms hub had been replaced then presumably the missing data stored on the smart meter itself could have been downloaded and used to correctly bill the OP.  

SimonBirtwistle

Reed_Richards said:

So in fact the comms hub attached to the smart meter broke.  But if just the comms hub had been replaced then presumably the missing data stored on the smart meter itself could have been downloaded and used to correctly bill the OP.  

The first attempt to replace the meter replaced only the comms hub, but didn't work.  I had to book another appointment to get the meter fully replaced, and that is what caused the extra 6 weeks of delay.  The engineer who came the first time was venting about how annoying it was that they didn't send him with a spare meter in case the comms hub replacement didn't work.

Rolling_Scissors

It's why people lose faith in both the regulator and ombudsman.  The idea that the providers equipment fails = you owe them more money should belong in the past.  Given the vaunted power of Kraken it does seem odd that billing data should fail without being noticed by the provider's systems.  At worst there should be an estimated bill for the export earnings as well as imports; or perhaps better - give it a % bias towards the customer to incentivise the provider to provide a rapid or even proactive response.

I don't have a personal experience to compare to 3 months at SVR but I was a little irked when I first joined Octopus and lost 1 month of export.  Their reason was that they only set the registers on my meter for import only.  This wasn't true as the export register was working and readable from day 1.  Their next statement was they were, at time of joining, 'unaware' that they would be taking my export as well as import.  Nice try I guess but as I was on Octopus Flux at the time the tariff only allowed for a combined import+export.  

So the export earned was kept by them as unjust profit.  I raised the issue after 10 days when the online data was up and running online but with no import credit.  It then took them a further 20 days to 'activate' the export registers.... that were already running.

The beta nonsense is just that.  You don't get beta bills and you don't send them beta payments.  Disputes don't get settled in a beta court and OFGEM does not have an annex for beta tariffs either.

Reed_Richards

It's a shame that replacing the comms hub did not work.  The data you lost should be stored on the meter and if any sort of communication with the meter could be established then in principle that could be used to access the data that would bill the OP correctly.  I wonder if Octopus tried to do this after the faulty meter was removed?