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Octopus Energy: Six weeks, eight requests, three escalation routes — still no payment record
The escalation ladder and CEO route are decoration and misrepresentation. Octopus invites dissatisfied customers to write to its founder and CEO, Greg Jackson, personally. I did, twice. Both replies came back from the same customer service that had already failed me six times, and neither produced the document. Every rung puts you back in the room you started in, talking to the people you complained about.
On 11 July 2026 I asked Octopus for one piece of documentary evidence from a closed account: one document bearing the account number and supply address, showing three £25 payments made in May, June and July 2025, with the date and amount of each.
On 13 July, Cecil repeated my request back correctly and said Octopus would prepare the document and email it.
It never arrived.
On 21 July I was told the statement had been issued. What had been produced began only the day after the account had already been closed. A period in which I could not have paid them anything.
On 22 July Cecil went further, and said the statement covering the correct period, including the three £25 payments, "has been raised and is available for you to view."
It wasn't there.
On 29 July I was told that producing a combined statement would require reversing charges and that "we no longer offer this service."
On 22 July Octopus told me the document existed. On 29 July it told me it could not be made. It has never withdrawn either statement and has never produced the document. That is not delay and it is not a misunderstanding. It is a company that will say whatever closes the email in front of it.
I made a formal complaint on 22 July and escalated to Octopus's published Issue Resolution address on 24, 28 and 31 July. Not one received a human reply.
Instead Cecil — whose handling I had complained about and asked to have removed from the complaint — answered an escalation to which Cecil was neither an addressee nor copied, and refused my £150 compensation request.
On 4 August Cecil finally agreed to step away and said another colleague would take over. Nobody contacted me for twelve days.
So I used the route Octopus advertises for exactly this — its published invitation to email the chief executive personally. I wrote to Greg Jackson on 16 August.
What came back was another Customer Care Manager.
On 18 August, Thuli sent two documents and said they "clearly show the three payments of £25 made in May, June, and July 2025."
They do not. One shows March and April. The other shows July. May and June are absent. She cannot have opened the attachments before sending them.
I wrote to Greg Jackson again on 19 August with six numbered points. On 20 August, again answering mail addressed to Greg Jackson, Thuli replied:
"I understand that you have been requesting a single PDF document showing the three £25 payments made in May, June, and July 2025, along with the account number and supply address, and that the documents previously sent did not meet this requirement."
That is my request, set out perfectly, with an express written admission that nothing sent had met it.
And still no document. Instead she offered me £50 — into the account that closed in July 2025, exactly as Octopus had already done with an earlier £40 payment that took four emails to get out again.
Read that again, because it is the whole company. A Customer Care Manager, six weeks into a formal complaint, escalated from the chief executive's own inbox, wrote out precisely what I had asked for, admitted nothing sent had met it, produced nothing, and offered me cash — into the closed account she had already been told was closed. That is not customer care. It is a company buying its way out of a question it will not answer.
So what exactly is that advertised CEO escalation route?
Either Greg Jackson saw those emails, and this continued after the chief executive was told exactly what was happening. Or he did not, in which case presenting "write to Greg" as a meaningful escalation is a misrepresentation.
Octopus restated what I wanted correctly four separate times, though sent me something different every time.
The original request was trivial. What it exposed was not.
🔴 Bottom line
No document. No named handler. No explanation. No answer to a single one of the six points put to the chief executive. Just £50 and the hope that I would go away.
Eight requests. Four correct restatements. Three escalation routes. One written admission that nothing sent had met the request. Still no document.
If nothing goes wrong you will never see any of this. If something does, you will find a company that will tell you a document exists, then tell you it cannot be made, then pay you to stop asking which of those was true.
Has anyone else had similar experiences with Octopus Energy?
Comments
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Yes, whoever you write to, whatever Octopus email address you send it to, your email will be routed to the small team, usually the particular team member, designated to serve you. Your emails are routed based upon the email address you send them from.
The so called Customer Care Manager, will almost certainly be the team leader of the small group of energy experts which your energy expert reports to. It should be the name given when you log into your online octopus account. Once you get to them, there is no further internal complaint escalation process available to you.
The only way I have found to by-pass this is to escalate the complaint to the Energy Ombudsman (when eligible) and then the complaint is sent to a designated person/team at Octopus who differ from their so called energy expert assigned to your energy account, whose role is to respond to complaints received via the EO. They will probably make you an offer to resolve before the EO has investigated..
If they do, report that to the assigned EO case handler, as all resolution offers at that point should be raised through the EO portal.
(Only if you express a wish to accept the Octopus offer, will they then load it to the portal for your formal acceptance - which is an abuse of the EO process)
3 -
Very similar experience!
In September 2023 I applied and was ‘approved’ for loft insulation under the Great British Insulation Scheme.. And that was the end of that! I complained at all levels every year, sometimes twice. My email to Greg Jackson resulted in a reply that mirrored my own words of complaint, but I’ll guess this was automated whilst snowbird Greg sipped from a glass with an umbrella / fruit hanging out of it.
My latest formal complaint has seemingly been handed back to the department/s that ignored it in the first place. The Ombudsman advises that I receive a final response before escalation. Trouble is that they’re so busy not marking their own homework that I never receive one! I’ve not even mentioned compensation, just repeated requests for top-up insulation. Ironically the less they do for me the more energy I use and the more money they make.2 -
I understand the frustration about the various loops around the CS escalation process, but I suspect the real mistake was ever saying 'yes' in the first place…
Asking for a custom document reflecting transactions on an account that had been closed for a year should simply have resulted in being referred to the statements that would have been provided by email at the time the transactions were originally processed.
1 -
You can escalate a complaint to the EO 8 weeks after you have submitted a formal complaint to the supplier.
I don't know if the EO handle complaints about loft insulation; they generally deal with energy supply matters.
This link may provide better info on how to escalate your particular complaint:
2 -
Thankyou.
It looks as though my issue / position may rest with Ofgem, in the first instance anyway, as they are the administrators of the Great British Insulation Scheme. Broadly, part of their role is to remind energy suppliers of their obligations, under the scheme, to provide energy saving measures, including loft insulation, to households with a low energy efficiency rating.Anecdotally their biannual reports, since 2023, on compliance with the scheme across the energy sector are not as good as they should be.
Apologies to the OP for the slight deviation from their thread.1 -
I understand the point about existing statements, but that wasn't the issue I raised. Octopus did not simply say they could not provide a new document and direct me to the existing statements. On 22 July they told me the statement covering the correct period had been raised and was available to view. A week later I was told that producing a combined statement was something they no longer offered. The complaint is about that change in position, not simply about whether they should have created the document in the first place.
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Agreed, you should have been told upfront that what you wanted was not available, everything else flows from that mistake unfortunately as various people tried to deliver and failed.
You obviously pursued this matter with considerable energy, have you managed to achieve whatever objective was motivating the request without the document now?
1 -
Anyone calling Octopus but becoming dissatisfied with the team should call again but withhold the number. Usually 141 from landline, #31# from a mobile. You're likely to get a different team.
It's a good idea to always reach the same small team because they all know each other and you shouldn't have to tell your tale of woe every time you're transferred or make a new call. If your normal person is on holiday the others will know when that person will be back.
However, if you can't establish a good rapport with an individual then it can work against you.
3 -
Needless to say, sooner or later one of your 'anonymous' calls will get you through to someone that you find helpful, so ask them to make their team your new default.
1 -
Thanks — that's the point exactly. Not yet, no. It's still outstanding. Thank you for your appreciation of the time it has taken me, and taking the time to help out too.
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