Huge yearly bill after switching to the Octopus Energy

ZilianStoleMyMoney

born_again said:

No offence intended 👍

I was replying to ZilianStoleMyMoney & there comment on compensation. & placing all the blame on the company.

Something I see a lot of that sadly people do not notice these things. 

Excuse me I did not place all the blame on the company, I suggest reading my post and saying both are at equal fault, however the supplier is a tiny bit more at fault due to the fact they knew of the issue last year.

Maybe you don't notice what people have written before making a reply? Yes?

perur

Thank you for all comments. Definitely I don't want to start arguing here who's right and who's not, so base on a research and comments in this post I will create official note to their complain department.

I accept it as my oversight (and also as mentioned in 1st post, due to family circumstances), however I do believe Octopus with all possible processes in place (automation, ai, etc.) should notify/raise concerns eariler this year. If they cannot serve customers properly, they shouldn't be taking more customers on board. Saying that I believe that's a problem for all companies in energy sector.
Thank you all

EssexHebridean

definitely escalate it to a complaint - because at some stage yes, someone there should have noticed that they weren't billing you. You may not get anywhere, but it might at least encourage them to treat you with a little more leniency. 

As I said earlier, I suspect any one of us here has probably at some stage been hit in the financials by having taken our eyes off the ball - we weren't all born knowing this stuff!   It's a painful but useful lesson!

MWT

EssexHebridean said:

definitely escalate it to a complaint - because at some stage yes, someone there should have noticed that they weren't billing you. You may not get anywhere, but it might at least encourage them to treat you with a little more leniency. 

Worth it for the leniency point, but for the rest, no employee is going to 'notice' a single un-billed account without some other reason to be looking at it and Ofgem has set the limit at 12 months as a reasonable period for back-billing so I guess we shouldn't be surprised if suppliers set their exception checking to pick up un-billed accounts as they get close to that limit...

 

Spoonie_Turtle

MWT said:

EssexHebridean said:

definitely escalate it to a complaint - because at some stage yes, someone there should have noticed that they weren't billing you. You may not get anywhere, but it might at least encourage them to treat you with a little more leniency. 

Worth it for the leniency point, but for the rest, no employee is going to 'notice' a single un-billed account without some other reason to be looking at it and Ofgem has set the limit at 12 months as a reasonable period for back-billing so I guess we shouldn't be surprised if suppliers set their exception checking to pick up un-billed accounts as they get close to that limit...

 

I believe Octopus review accounts annually anyway (reviewing your 'account health' they call it), although of course there's no reason to think backbilling rules wouldn't have been taken into consideration when creating that policy.

SnorbsLee

I’m surprised to see some comments here about ‘customer should have noticed’ etc.
The contract in place likely had a ‘term’ that the Supplier would Bill (and maybe take a Direct Debit monthly). Obligation on them.
There is a likely impact to the customer of unexpected higher use.
I’m aware of a case where British Gas Lite billed for a 1 year period (part of backbill) of £8,000; the expected annual use was £3,500.
Im sure if I got a bill for quadruple expected monthly amount,  I’d be reviewing my use at the point I was made aware of the issue, not a year later, when the damage is done. 

Ombudsman offered £250 for the £4,500 excess on the bill. 

Ombudsman made no suggestion to BG Lite to improve anything relating to the 25 month late billing, but advised the 80 year old consumer with a hip replacement and broken rib after a fall to get down on their hands and knees to take manual readings from her Smart Meter more frequently. 

EssexHebridean

MWT said:

LEssexHebridean said:

definitely escalate it to a complaint - because at some stage yes, someone there should have noticed that they weren't billing you. You may not get anywhere, but it might at least encourage them to treat you with a little more leniency. 

Worth it for the leniency point, but for the rest, no employee is going to 'notice' a single un-billed account without some other reason to be looking at it and Ofgem has set the limit at 12 months as a reasonable period for back-billing so I guess we shouldn't be surprised if suppliers set their exception checking to pick up un-billed accounts as they get close to that limit...

 

“Someone should have noticed” was in essence a figure of speech - if you prefer, their systems really should pick up an account they have failed to send a bill to - after a single month ideally, but certainly once that in-billed period reaches a quarter or more. 

MWT

EssexHebridean said:

MWT said:

LEssexHebridean said:

definitely escalate it to a complaint - because at some stage yes, someone there should have noticed that they weren't billing you. You may not get anywhere, but it might at least encourage them to treat you with a little more leniency. 

Worth it for the leniency point, but for the rest, no employee is going to 'notice' a single un-billed account without some other reason to be looking at it and Ofgem has set the limit at 12 months as a reasonable period for back-billing so I guess we shouldn't be surprised if suppliers set their exception checking to pick up un-billed accounts as they get close to that limit...

 

“Someone should have noticed” was in essence a figure of speech - if you prefer, their systems really should pick up an account they have failed to send a bill to - after a single month ideally, but certainly once that in-billed period reaches a quarter or more. 

I always try to imagine what I'd do if I was a senior manager in these circumstances, and I can't help but think that if I was working in an industry with tight margins I'd start from the revenue protection end of this which is the 12 month limit, and then work backwards from there to pick up the problems as early as the staffing allowed.

I suspect with the way that Octopus has grown and the mess they have inherited with some blocks of customers that they are not getting as far back from the 12 month cliff-edge as they would like.

It is going to be hard to prioritise finding the billing problems when they are only 2 or 3 months old if fixing them means you fail to bill revenue that ages out at 12 months and is then lost for good.

Producing a list of accounts that have not been billed for say 90 days is relatively easy, but you then need the staff to go through the list one by one to find out why and fix the issues.

It just feels like there is a certain amount of pragmatism in play here as the number of staff available is not limitless... 

EssexHebridean

You’d hope that there wouldn’t be so many of these accounts that it was a huge job though -  if there are, then that suggests a bigger issue. 

MWT

EssexHebridean said:

You’d hope that there wouldn’t be so many of these accounts that it was a huge job though -  if there are, then that suggests a bigger issue. 

Agreed, but rapid growth, especially via the SoLR process is bound to bring in a lot of issues and I suspect that the ripples from ingesting Bulb extended well beyond 2023. 

Hopefully they are getting on top of things, but it is going to take a while to work back to the point where they will pick up everything within say 90 days of an issue.

Also still worth keeping in mind that we don't see many of these cases, as it does take a failure on both sides to create a problem that would reach out to the 11/12 month period.