I won't go into the full complaint (believe it or not this is the SHORT version!!) basically I had a smart meter installed by Octopus when I bought my house over a year and a half ago and it's been an F*ing nightmare ever since. Even though they were direct debiting monthly, I wasn't getting bills from Octopus. I called them to query this and was told 'not to worry', problems with the smart meter, it's all normal.
Months went by and then a year went by and then after about 13 months I was suddenly getting a flurry of emails from Octopus several times per day every single day for weeks. They were bills going right back to the first day the meter was fitted but the bills were repeating and giving different amounts owed.
As an example I received a bill for say 1 November 2023 to 1 December 2024 saying a owed (can't remember exact figure) £1,000 , then I get another email 30 seconds later saying I owed £89 for dates 9 July 2024 to 10 July 2024, then seconds later I get another bill saying I owed £357 for dates 11 July 2024 to 27 November 2024, then seconds later another bill saying they owe me £247, then seconds later another bill saying I owe £11 for 24 November 2024, then another bill seconds later..... and on and on it went for months. None of it made any sense and none of the figures added up.
I called them twice and was told their system was trying to sort it and to be patient. Meanwhile the monthly direct debits were coming out of my account but they didn't seem to match the dates on the bills and it was hard to work out what I actually owed because some bills were days, some were weeks, some were several months and they all overlapped with repeated bills for some days, weeks and months.
I started to email Octopus, as I wasn't getting anywhere with them by phone, and I said I wanted the constant back billing, repeated emails to stop and going forward I wanted to be billed monthly. They initially said they couldn't do that and that I would be billed per day. I've never heard of such a thing and insisted I wanted to be billed monthly. I continued to received constant emails of bills dating back from over a year ago. After weeks of emails I insisted on escalating to a manager and was told that I couldn't speak to a manager. After weeks of pushing I finally managed to get a manager to contact me. He said he would look into it and that it might take some time, it took several weeks. After much going back and forth the manager finally agreed that I could be billed monthly and he chose that my billing period would be the date of my direct debit (so if my direct debit is 5th of the month then I would be billed from 4th of month X to 5th of month Y, that means the day I receive the bill is also the date the money is direct debited from my bank. This made no sense to me but at least I finally had a monthly billing period which seemed to stop the repeated bills being emailed to me from the past year and I could better view what I actually owed and was paying for. It took them months to actually get the monthly billing into place and then it only lasted two months before I was told that they were changing my tariff for some reason.
I was offered £30 to close my complaint but that has never materialised.
Even though I have storage heaters and an electric hot water heating (which work overnight and uses a significant amount of electricity) they have changed me to a flat rate tariff. When I questioned this they responded the same day and said they didn't know what my electrical use was and questioned why I wanted to be on a cheaper overnight rate. :O How can Octopus not know what my usage is?
When I explained that 90%+ of my electrical use is overnight and included pictures of my usage charts from my Octopus account they suddenly went quiet and haven't responded. After waiting a week, and worrying about how much this new tariff is costing me, I emailed their complaints team and also their ceo (it says on their website to email him if you're having problems that are not getting resolved). Again I've had no response. I also haven't been billed for the past 6 weeks so it looks like I'm no longer being billed monthly?
WTF is going on?? I'm getting so fed up with all this and the hassle of having to contact them all the time to figure out what is happening with my account.
Has anyone else had similar problems? I keep hearing how amazing Octopus is but all I've had are problems.
I've heard there is no point in complaining to the Obudsman but I don't know what else to do. I want a monthly bill, not a bill every couple of days or every 3-4 months or repeated overlapping bills that cover 14 months. I don't understand why they can't bill me monthly. I also don't understand why I am not on a cheaper overnight tariff. I've turned my heating down to 14 degrees because I can't afford the flat rate tariff. What else can I do??
I'm thinking about changing suppliers but who to chose if Octopus are suppose to be the best out there how much worse are the other providers??
AIBU to want a monthly electric bill and an explanation as to why they changed my tariff to a flat rate?
(Apologies for the long email I'm so frustrated that it's been like therapy to write this all out :) Thanks for reading.)