Octopus have taken on a lot of extra customers recently, I suspect they haven't been expanding their customer service depth, its probably manic in their customer service office now which doesn't make for happy employees.

 

Or happy customers.

 

Has it now completely gone down the toilet?
Are any of the other providers any better than Octopus?

The decline in Octopus CS is well-documented. They were once: decent, now they are terrible. Unfotionatly so are all their competitors. I guess they're now outsourcing CS to one of the big providers, hence the lack of knowledge/experience of the operators...

 

To be fair Intelligent is a tariff that must depend on a whole load of flakey interfaces holding together; talking to all the different car APIs and meter readings that come from a whole load of different meters via a few different pathways and wherever the electricity market rates come from that are all out of their control. Maybe the meter data hadn't been retrieved when it should have been to set the schedule, but had been by the time you looked.

It must be a fairly complicated software stack that I wouldn't really expect a first line customer service person to be able to understand everything that could go wrong.

That said, I don't know why they don't respond to emails but do respond to twitter messages pretty quickly...

 

I guess actual Octopus employees respond on Twitter whereas some outsourced team respond to email...

 

Yeah it sucks. Completely useless with zero response to email. Well I'm not going to chase them any longer. I haven't had a bill for over 6 months and I'll just wait until 12 months rolls around and they have to start writing off what I owe them.

It must be a fairly complicated software stack that I wouldn't really expect a first line customer service person to be able to understand everything that could go wrong.

I would expect them to have some knowledge of how it's meant to work and be able to sort common problems, or at least explain to customers what they thin the issue is and know who to raise it with internally.
"It's complicated" is not an excuse - train people.

 

Yeah it sucks. Completely useless with zero response to email. Well I'm not going to chase them any longer. I haven't had a bill for over 6 months and I'll just wait until 12 months rolls around and they have to start writing off what I owe them.


I would expect them to have some knowledge of how it's meant to work and be able to sort common problems, or at least explain to customers what they thin the issue is and know who to raise it with internally.
"It's complicated" is not an excuse - train people.

Train people? Are you kidding? Nobody trains anybody these days. These people all read from preprepared scripts.
I listened to what the call centre person said, decided it was bo!!ocks and said goodbye. Politely. If I ever get to talk to the guy who runs this outfit (what’s his name?) maybe I’ll tell him just how cr@p his previously efficient company has become. Or maybe he has now made his money and really couldn’t give a damn.

 

Judging by the number of other businesses Octopus has acquired recently, they are probably biting off more than they can chew and it will take time to recover (if it does at all).

 

To be honest not had this issue..

Email sent at 0715am reply at 9.15am replied again at 9.30am and they replied at 10.02am...

This was about a meter query, so not all is bad at Octopus..

 

I am not currently with Octopus but my 85 year old MIL is and I am the first point of contact and manage her account online. She lives over 200 miles away from us so her meter readings are taken by her. The last readings did seem a bit out but she has always been reliable and does not take being questioned well. Got the bill back the same day as readings submitted and she was 2000kWh over normal use. Contacted Octopus next day to get readings updated and bill altered. Replied same day no problem very apologetic although it was our readings that caused the error, so good response as far as I'm concerned. I find them very reliable in replying to email in a timely fashion and once my current tariff ends I will switch to them for TOU tariff.

 

They may have your MIL flagged as a vulnerable person on their system hence the apology and possibly a prompt service on the account, get them (MIL) to take a picture if the can and that way they can check if written down correctly.

 

Use Twitter if you need a fast response. Or phone. I've had a pretty good experience

 

I had 1 or 2 emails not replied when I joined recently. Another 1 was replied to. A phone call or two was OK.

now that I've joined I'll try to avoid calling unless essential.

But please don't call them or email with little geeky nitty gritty questions like why have you charged me £17.12 according to x, y and z factors that I can explain in depth it should be £16.88.....or impatient questions that might not be necessary if you wait a day or two...if we just call when we really need to, that should improve service

 

I sent Octopus an email query aat 2.28 p.m. and had a reply at 4.06 p.m.. I do not think you can expect much better than that!

 

And that is the type of service I have had in the past but my latest email was sent 8 days ago, with no reply. The response I received by querying this on the phone, was total rubbish.

 

I find that I eventually get a response but it is often useless and doesn't address my issue or question. It smacks of a CS department staffed by people brought in off the street and given packaged answers. The level of service has deteriorated from even a year or two ago. My emails get answered in about a week and then I have to write again, and again, because all I got was a pre-written reply answering a question I didn't ask. It is so frustrating.

The complexity of IO need solid support in these early days and I do not want to have to rely on such a flakey CS so I am not considering IO at the moment. It is a great concept and I am sure once it is implemented via APIs to chargers (as with Ohme) instead of the cars then it might work better but right now there are too many "moving parts" that can go wrong IMO. It it is working for you without issues then fantastic. But I get the feeling that a lot of people have problems with IO and Octopus isn't really up to providing the necessary support right now it seems.

In a way I am not really too surprised. The rate of growth has been huge with all the acquisitions they have made. It must be difficult to integrate the customers into the Octopus systems. But that doesn't help us as existing customers and it isn't an excuse IMO.

 

Im with you, this is the main reason that Im avoiding IO at the moment, was going to upgrade to an Ohme, but Im holding off.

 

The replies when I don’t use the actual email address I used to open the account are abrupt and they reply with incorrect replies such as my account is not in credit and I can’t have a refund even though I am over £240 in credit. This has happened twice this year and I have had to again request refund pointing out the refusal was incorrect.

This more than doubles the time they spend on sorting out the refunds so if this is repeated with other customers they are not using their time efficiently. Prompt incorrect replies just cost them a lot of lost time and annoy customers. Octopus is getting a bit legless and customer loyalty is fading fast.

 

As well as being popular and absorbing failed companies and their thousands of customers from Avro & Bulb etc, I noticed when I was on the Tube in London an advert for “Octopus Money” which from the branding and logo seemed to be the same company. So they are definitely expanding in to other markets and obviously making lots of money with the increased standing charges (like all the rest of the Energy companies). A grim sign.

 

It’s not all bad. I am disputing a £1,220 bill that should be closer to £150. I have been backwards and forwards with them, with long gaps waiting for responses, since July. The latest is they are asking for a picture of my smart meter so they can see if the day and night registers are reversed.

In a weeks time, the period in dispute will be over a year old and they will have to right the whole bill off. Doing customer service on the cheap isn’t as cheap is it first appears.

 

I'm not certain but I think the 12 month rule pertains to them billing you in the first place. Not sure it counts for sorting out a billing error.

 

They are now using AI to reply to CS queries. They claim a higher satisfaction rating for their AI than for actual CS staff.

 

I'm not sure if I would call it AI - more keyword triggered autoreplies.
After being offered to roll-over my Gas tracker tariff when it expired, I accepted, and got what I suspect was the auto reply robot saying I had to join the queue. More contact to 2 real people was required to get it fixed.

 

I'm wondering what proportion of Octopus' support staff time is now spent dealing with IO. Whenever it doesn't work, you have someone sending you an email telling you that their car charged at the wrong time and demanding a refund of 50p. And you are dealing with a continuously moving target of car and charger software and phone apps (all of which seem to be designed explicitly to prevent simple manual control).

At least with my outstanding support requests, they will eventually be able to fix the billing and move the tarrif retrospectively. Once they've dealt with their backlog of other support requests...

 

It doesn’t include sorting billing errors

 

Where did you read that?

 

It’s not all bad. I am disputing a £1,220 bill that should be closer to £150. I have been backwards and forwards with them, with long gaps waiting for responses, since July. The latest is they are asking for a picture of my smart meter so they can see if the day and night registers are reversed.

In a weeks time, the period in dispute will be over a year old and they will have to right the whole bill off. Doing customer service on the cheap isn’t as cheap is it first appears.

On mine they currently have import and export reversed....

They also asked for a picture of my meter today (3rd time in 6 months)

Hope It gets corrected asap, not holding out much hope.

 

Just re-read the Ofgem “back-billing” section and the wording does include incorrect billing
Sorry I was mistaken (wrong 😀)