[rikdud]

Sorry for long post but bit of background will help explain my frustration..
I signed up to Octopus Energy on 2/9/20 after seeing good posts on here & using a members referral code..
All went well to start with, moved over a few weeks later after sorting teething problems with transposed reading apparently caused by my old supplier ( had to send in pics to prove which readings change over a number of hours despite my pics showing the rate for each reading ) I went on a standard Economy 7 fixed tariff & requested a smart meter so I could move to Go, after a couple of phone calls & emails to chase them my smart meter was installed around 7 weeks later & I moved to Go...
All was well but I had a few questions about how to read meter manually to make sure it was working ok & about moving to Go Faster, after a phone call that wasn't much help I emailed them on 13/11/20, after no reply for 4 days I emailed again, while waiting a reply I had my 1st bill come through, unfortunately upon checking it they had somehow put the transposed readings down as my start ones 😯 Oh great I thought, here we go again...
I then sent an email to the complaints team as I'd still not had a reply to my earlier emails & now the billing issue, guess what, yep no reply from them either, so not knowing what else to do I contacted them on Twitter a few days later on 23/11/20 & within half hour they responded, success I managed to get them to switch me to the Go Faster tariff & they would get a bills specialist to look into other issue...
Now this is where I need some help, I'd heard nothing from them after a few more days so emailed again for an update, no reply again, so this morning got in contact via twitter again, they asked for my details, which I sent ( again ) & I've heard nothing since... Is there a way of getting in touch with someone higher up who takes customer service more seriously to get these issues finally sorted ??
Oh & since switching to the Go Faster tariff with a confirmed start at 00:00 28/11/20 my meters stuck on the day tariff, no off peak hours at all last night 😢
Is the customer service at Octopus really this bad????
R..

 

[dk6780]

[email protected]
I suspect that he is too busy to do all his own work but it gets a quick and effective response in his name.

 

[dk6780]

Your IHD will not reflect either Go or Go Faster but your Bill should. Phil responds best to the "hurt" or "sad" approach, not "angry". I appreciate your disappointment but remain positive. I believe in their business model but accept that they mess up occasionally and sometimes are slow to resolve it.

 

[rikdud]

Your IHD will not reflect either Go or Go Faster but your Bill should.

Ta for reply, I'll try [email protected] if I don't hear anything tomorrow from anyone else.. It's the main meter that isn't changing, the off peak rate hasn't gone up at all for 2 days, was working fine on standard Go Tariff.. All my usage has gone on the peak rate & my IHD is showing double costs for last 2 days compared what I normally spend despite no change in my power usage, normally 30% peak, 70 % off peak...

 

[Spike]

I find telephone much better. They sometimes reply with an email afterwards, but phone does seem to be the best way to get something done.

 

[dk6780]

When they "eventually" pick up your case I'm sure that they'll find a way of reapplying your usage across both rates. Keep doing the right thing in the interim and moving your consumption to the low carbon/low cost times.

 

[rikdud]

I find telephone much better. They sometimes reply with an email afterwards, but phone does seem to be the best way to get something done.

Iv'e called them a few times since switching & to be honest I wasn't impressed, maybe I was just unlucky & got the newbies so may try again if I get time whilst the phone lines are open..

 

[Lexden]

Your IHD will not reflect either Go or Go Faster but your Bill should. Phil responds best to the "hurt" or "sad" approach, not "angry". I appreciate your disappointment but remain positive. I believe in their business model but accept that they mess up occasionally and sometimes are slow to resolve it.

I think that you will find that for Go and Go Faster, the IHD cost is correct. For example, I am on Go at the moment and I know that I only use Grid electricity between 0030 and 0430 as I have a PW2. So far today, my IHD indicates that I have used 9.05kWhs which with a DSC of 25p gives a total cost of 72p. The actual smart meter is capable of storing up to 48 half hour tariffs per day. For Agile, Octopus do not bother to do daily updates as there is a cost associated with each change of tariff so they set an equivalent/average unit cost. For Go/Go Faster, the two charging periods can be set when the tariff is set up: my IHD is presently showing 14.62p/kWh which is my peak cost. For actual billing purposes, all three smart tariffs use 30 minute usage rather than R1 and R2 readings but this shouldn't result in a different cost figure for Go/Go Faster.

 

[dk6780]

Interesting. My meter is SMETs 1 - maybe that makes the difference?

 

[james rogerson]

I may be wrong but I suspect that the main meter has no idea when your "OFF PEAK" is operational and OCTOPUS will calculate your bill from !/2 hour readings

 

[rikdud]

I think that you will find that for Go and Go Faster, the IHD cost is correct. For example, I am on Go at the moment and I know that I only use Grid electricity between 0030 and 0430 as I have a PW2. So far today, my IHD indicates that I have used 9.05kWhs which with a DSC of 25p gives a total cost of 72p. The actual smart meter is capable of storing up to 48 half hour tariffs per day. For Agile, Octopus do not bother to do daily updates as there is a cost associated with each change of tariff so they set an equivalent/average unit cost. For Go/Go Faster, the two charging periods can be set when the tariff is set up: my IHD is presently showing 14.62p/kWh which is my peak cost. For actual billing purposes, all three smart tariffs use 30 minute usage rather than R1 and R2 readings but this shouldn't result in a different cost figure for Go/Go Faster.

That sounds about right, on the standard Go tariff my Kwh usage on the main meter matched the costs when I worked them out on the IHD even though it only showed the peak rate unit costs.. This is another reason I want this issue sorted ASAP as it shows my costs have doubled since the meter stopped changing to off peak..
Do Octopus keep records of my half hour use so they will be able to work out correct bill whilst the unit is/was not recording correctly? Unfortunately I can only go by what the main meter reads here so have no way of checking myself & would have to trust what they say I was using in the off peak times as it currently stands...

 

[phproxy]

They do use the half hourly readings for Agile and GO (+ faster), so don't worry too much about the registers.

You can see all of your data here:
Smart Meter Reports (guylipman.com)

 

[EricM]

Iv'e called them a few times since switching & to be honest I wasn't impressed, maybe I was just unlucky & got the newbies so may try again if I get time whilst the phone lines are open..

I rather suspect that calling the (alleged) 'help' line nearly always gets a newbie op ! But as mentioned above, appealing to Phil is usually effective. He may not always answer personally but his immediate team seems pretty newbie-free.

 

[rikdud]

They do use the half hourly readings for Agile and GO (+ faster), so don't worry too much about the registers.

You can see all of your data here:
Smart Meter Reports (guylipman.com)

That's great, ta for info, just had a look & shows my usage ok so they should be able to calculate an accurate bill when they finally deal with it... I did make the mistake of not realising that when they switched me to the Go Faster tariff I'd loose that nights off peak hours ( hadn't changed the timers on my usual power hungry items ) because I changed from 00:30 - 04:30 to 20:30 - 00:30 & the new tariff switched at 00:00
or will they take that into consideration?

 

[james rogerson]

Just relax everything will work out, they know exactly what you have used and when, I did not get my first bill for 4 and 1/2 months and everything was down, for every single day complete with a graph showing my usage.

 

[Lexden]

Octopus uses a third-party adaptor (TMA/CGI) to access your data. The loss of one 30 minute period gives Kraken palpitations and results in no automatic bill. I am missing data for the 16th so no monthly bill for electricity this month.

 

[rikdud]

Just relax everything will work out, they know exactly what you have used and when, I did not get my first bill for 4 and 1/2 months and everything was down, for every single day complete with a graph showing my usage.

l
I do hope so, I would still be much happier if my main smart meter still counted up off peak & peak separately as it did up till a few days ago when I was on the standard Go tariff, so much easier for the not so tech minded to keep an eye on things or kiss as they say ( keep it simple stupid ) Then there's still the inverted readings of my old unit to sort out (again) & the lack of customer service in replying to emails etc...

 

[idiotzoo]

I’ve run into issues, still don’t have a working smart meter, but it was the absence of communication and some clear comms failures that caused me frustration. No show from a meter installer for a commissioning appointment for example.

anyway, I ended up emailing one of the senior people. After a few days I got a good email summing up the situation, apologising for failures and a small credit to my account as a customer service gesture, something I didn’t expect or ask for.

I like the reliance on email but clearly sometimes they get a bit behind and the system doesn’t send a holding response out, which might irritate some people but at least let’s you know it hasn’t dropped into a black hole.

It’s taken the shine off a bit, but I can’t have any complaint about their attempt to make it right.

 

[dk6780]

l
I do hope so, I would still be much happier if my main smart meter still counted up off peak & peak separately as it did up till a few days ago when I was on the standard Go tariff, so much easier for the not so tech minded to keep an eye on things or kiss as they say ( keep it simple stupid ) Then there's still the inverted readings of my old unit to sort out (again) & the lack of customer service in replying to emails etc...

I can understand why you are wound up about it but you have seen for yourself that the data exists and once they start billing you for it you'll be able to make sense of it all. Go Faster is a Beta tariff and clearly there are IT issues around it still but they do resolve things after time. I can only suggest once again that you contact Phil by email and you will get attention and one of the experienced staff.
I am disappointed that the good work they are doing in bringing fairer and environmentally friendly tariffs are let down by the back office systems which may be outside of their control, e.g. the DCC.

 

[james rogerson]

and
I do hope so, I would still be much happier if my main smart meter still counted up off peak & peak separately as it did up till a few days ago when I was on the standard Go tariff, so much easier for the not so tech minded to keep an eye on things or kiss as they say ( keep it simple stupid ) Then there's still the inverted readings of my old unit to sort out (again) & the lack of customer service in replying to emails etc...

While it is unfortunate that you are not happy with the service, this is not a "KISS" service. As dk6780 says this is a BETA service and when you ticked those boxes to agree to the terms and conditions that you read before doing so is exactly the service you are getting. This is not a TARIFF solely to get cheap energy but an expermental exercise to allow the GRID to be managed in a more effient manner, all of us should be prepared to accept that.
I believe that OCTOPUS ENERGY do have a number of KISS tariffs which allow customers to have complete control over their energy usage and match exactly to the meter readings