Octopus Energy - £4k elec bill for 11 months?

Your comment was childish and rude! 😂😂

You just don’t like that you’re wrong. It’s not a difference of opinion - it’s a figure that’s publicly available and can be calculated. You didn’t bother to calculate it before trying to correct me. A specific item using a specific amount of electricity charged at a specified rate isn’t something you can disagree with and expect everyone bow down.

If you genuinely think I have to respect your point - why don’t you think you have to respect mine?

It’s also pretty childish to tell someone quoting facts that they’re talking rubbish.

If he is in a flat and all the meters are in a communal basement has he checked that a. the right meter is being read and b. no one else is tapping in to his supply at all?

Checking he is reading the right meter is easy. Put a kettle on to boil and then go and watch the meter that you think is his. It should be running fast.

You know you dont need to eye roll and laugh at people who dont agree with you. Its so childish and rude. Grow up.

It’s not rubbish - you can calculate it yourself easily. It’s not like you have to estimate or guess - it’s explicitly stated how much energy an item uses and how much energy companies charge for that much usage 🙄😂

That's absolutely rubbish. My partner's house has only plug in electric heaters that he has on when he's working at home in the winter. Add on the heated throw that he uses as he reckons its cheaper than the electric heaters.

He isn't spending £4k a year. Not even close and he works from home.

Edit - yes i do live in my flat. Alone. I have one or two showers a day. Usually cook on the hob so using gas rather than electricity. Washing machine about 3 times a week. Heating on in winter - gas fired radiators. Im not complaining about the low costs.

Unless he's growing weed, that figure has to be incorrect. If they aren't going to listen then contact the ombudsman for advice. Ultimately the supplier will have to provide all details of any dispute to them

If he has three small plug-in heaters that are on when he’s at home only during the winter months then that alone would be more than £4000. Just that. Nothing else at all.

You really think it’s impossible that a man who clearly has no idea at all about energy usage couldn’t possibly have done that?

An electric immersion heater alone can cost 90p per hour… Just having that on, just that and no other electricity use at all, could have easily cost £4000.

Standing charges alone are about £30 - your actual usage of less than £1 per day is extraordinarily low. Do you live there?

Ain’t that the truth! Nobody wants to bother with boring stuff like meter readings, or whether they’re on an unsuitable tariff, or monitoring their actual energy consumption. It’s far easier to blame highly unlikely things like faulty meters or being wired to their neighbour’s property, or simply evil energy suppliers. It’s rather depressing.

Its a 2 bed flat and a sole occupant who is at the office most days.

He isnt in a 4 bedder with 6 kids and 2 adults. £4k would be impressive.

My dual energy bill right now in a similar flat when I'm out all day is about £58 a month and the most I ever had was £92 in the winter with heating running.

How is your comment helpful? Not everyone exaggerates.

I’ve never seen one of these threads go any way other than everyone initially agreeing with OP and wildly exaggerating how low their own usage is “I live in a mansion with the heating on 24/7 and only pay £3.50” 😂🙄

Then, OP dripfeeds that they heat the property using two plug-in heaters that are on permanently throughout winter and switch to their aircon unit in the summer or that they run a laundry service from the house or something else ludicrous and everyone then agrees that the bill is reasonable and expected.

Given that OP doesn’t live there and has no idea what he does energy-wise, that dripfeed won’t be as forthcoming…

I would raise a formal complaint with Octopus and go to the ombudsman if not resolved. It sounds like a faulty meter. Im with octopus and they are mostly very good but sometimes they deal badly with an unusual situation.

A couple of years ago I asked Octopus to replace my meter as it had stopped working, just displayed the same figure it had at the previous reading.

I asked again every month for nearly a year, also asking them to ensure my bill for the first months reflected the special deal they were offering at the time. I had no useful response, until I finally said I was switching to another supplier. They then quickly sent someone to change the meter.

I continued trying to get them to show me figures for how they had calculated my debt until I gave up.

Does the current meter reading make sense vs the last reading on a bill?

Does he have a record of what the metre said when he first moved in? Maybe a copy of a bill? Check that compared to the metre now.

Another check to do is turn everything off in the flat and check if the metre is still clocking round. If it is then it's either another flats metre or he's paying for another flats energy.

We had similar a few months ago! Random amounts added and random amounts taken away all on the same day,

Not one person could/would explain what all these charges and credits were about. We asked for a manager to call us several times and none ever did. We took it to the ombudsman and suddenly managers were abundant!

Still to this day have had no explanation about the random credits and debits but we did finally get a manager to zero the account. We were also given a £140 credit as an apology.

I’m with octopus. Does he have an online account? If you dig around in there there is lots of details/ graphs of usage etc so you could see any big jumps etc and use that to question them.

You say he only has electric. Is his heating electric? In the winter if he has his heating on a lot that would build up ££. My energy bill is over £4k per year (so it’s definitely possible!) but I have a bigger property and household and that’s gas and electric combined.

Also, get your brother to send in monthly readings, it's a bit lax to live there all that time without sending accurate readings. Octopus has an app and it takes seconds to do. I refuse a smart meter but sending in the readings monthly keeps me on top of bills and we can see when the usage goes up and down.

Turn everything off, check the meter, then turn each thing in one at a time and look at the meter again.
My friend had crazy high bills and it turned out the neighbours EV charger had been wired to their place. They discovered it when they turned all the plugs off and the meter continued to spin.

Electrician here, get your brother to request a check meter to be installed - they should do this for free, it is a second meter that will then check the accuracy of the reading and you can then work out if the previous meter was over recording.

However in 20+ years in the trade I have never come across a meter that over registered - back in the day when meters had the spinning disc the bearings sound dry out and it would run slow, but never faster!

If he is unable to find whether a meter reading was taken on moving day he can prove when he took legal responsibility (irrespective of moving in day) for the flat by providing a copy of his tenancy agreement, if renting, or completion statement if he bought the flat. I'm wondering if he is being billed for unoccupied period.
Another thing to try, with the agreement of the other residents, is to establish if he is being billed for other flats by turning the power of and seeing if others are affected.
Is he being billed for external lighting like the communal hallway, outside the main door or car parking area?
Failing that you ask the provider to "prove" the supply.

I used to work in the water industry. Above isthe advice we gave to people with disputed bills, but the theory is the same.

I was sent a £2k gas bill by British Gas when my mum died. They tried to transfer the debt to me because i had POA and I was never named on the bills.

They wouldn't back down and threatened to sue me. Energy omsbudsman sent them packing and it turns out it was a computer error when they transferred to a new system and the bill was actually £175 which they wrote off out of "goodwill."