Octopus trying to double charge me

[bakingmummy21]

Received a bill from octopus on Friday - terrible timing as their call centre is closed until Tuesday now. Bill relates to electricity for Feb / March 2023. I’ve gone back through all our bills and I can see they billed us for this at the time. Same meter reads, same total cost but split over 2 bills when it was originally charged. It relates to when we moved to a smart meter so it’s easy to see as the first reading was 0.
I’ve emailed and will call them this week but am I within my rights to cancel my DD if it’s not resolved asap? They want to take an additional £256 and I really can’t afford them to take it by DD even if they do then credit it against the account after.
I’m very stressed that they might try and delay and claim they are owed the money etc. Anyone else ever had this?!

I've never had any issues with Octopus billing...I find the bills really clear and straightforward as the exact period you're being billed for is stated on each account update.

I'm assuming this is sorted now as a couple of days old - but if you want to avoid any potential future issues you could maybe change to a fixed DD rather than variable?

We pay 2 DD's of £50 each every month. I then go on the app/website just after the DD's and do two manual payments with my Debit Card, to bring the account balances back to £0.

I do it this way because I dislike variable DD's but don't want the accounts to go into credit at all.

The same has happened to me. Also, Octopus. We pay by Direct Debit each month. This month they've tried to charge me for November last year through to April. We pay monthly and they've already debited payments for each of those months. I've queried it, but am waiting to hear.

Same. They are a pain to deal with compared to the company we were transferred from. Really unclear billing process.

I had a similar situation with double billing last year. After weeks of emails and getting nowhere, a patronising customer service agent (definitely a man, he had his pronouns in his signature....don't get me started😡) told me I clearly did not understand the bills....

I eventually went to the Ombudsman (in fact had to do it twice as Octopus failed to sort out the remedy the Ombudsman told them to make the first time I complained) and Octopus had to completely redo my bills AND pay me hundreds in compensation. I don't know why they are Which recommended, I have had nothing but trouble with them, and have heard many similar stories. Took over a year to sort it all out!

We are on a standard meter, not at all complicated. I ended up with them after they took over Bulb and will be leaving once rates stabilise.

Thanks all, I did speak to them on Wednesday and they confirmed that in feb this year they refunded all our charges backdated 12 months and recharged them. No idea why and the customer service person didn’t know either. The issue is when recharging they missed off 6 weeks worth of charges so they are now trying to re bill for these. But these are now relating to energy used over a year ago (just) so having done some research I believe the ofgem back billing principle applies and they cannot charge for these because the re bill was their error. Any further advice welcomed! I’ve raised a complaint about it and am waiting to hear.

I find them so much easier than the company we moved from

Some people are having issues with them:

https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/octopus-energy