Octopus Customers - what are you doing?

[JorisBonson]

We're currently on a flexible tariff with Octopus and £200 in credit.

Are people staying on the flexible rate or fixing? We've been offered a fix which is basically double what we're on now, but I'm very wary of October being not far away!

No and it pisses me off more than the rises in my DD.

No and it pisses me off more than the rises in my DD.

That you haven't won or that they do it? I was furious about their stupid challenge where people randomly won ££.

I won £1 on the Octopus wheel of fortune.

Which pays for about 6 hours of G&E, which is quite a sobering thought.

I have been with Octopus for nearly 3 years and never won anything on the wheel of fortune. It does irritate now. I'd be thrilled with £1 lol.

I'm on flexi and scared about winter as I'll be on mat leave so will be heating the house more. We've built up £500 credit so I'm hoping that will continue building and help us out. I've also reduced the time we heat our water tank for.

We moved house. last year & thankfully was able to fix for 2 years until Oct 2023. They did increase our fix rate after the first 2 months from £90 to dd £136, 2 bed detached house 2 adults 1dd. After last months meter reading we are £230 in credit & the app says I’m overpaying by £25pm now. Will continue with the extra as to build up a nice credit balance including the £66 government extra in the coming. Scary seeing so many people with monthly payments £400+😳 I’ve never won anything on WOF & my parents account is linked to my email & they’ve been customers for about 5 years & I’ve never won on their account either 🙄😂

I've twice won £1

You can look at the Octopus balance checker which has a crystal ball mode to give you an idea what's happening. Last year we paid £105 a month and our fix ended in March, the cheapest fix they offered me was £230 which seemed ridiculous so I went on variable. I currently pay £250 and have £530 of credit that should leave me about £50 in credit by the end of January so I regret not fixing.

With the announcement that we're looking at another huge rise in October I went through all the figures again, over the next 12 months I think I need to pay £335 and Octopus are offering £397 fix so will stay on variable but I will need to keep paying normal DD and have govt £400 as 'bonus' payment to make it round to next Spring when I'll look at all my income and out goings and plan for the year ahead.

We're a family of 5 and I feel we don't waste energy so other than sitting in the dark every night I think our bills are about as low as they're going to go

😆 That will help with your energy bills. 👍👍

Positive Octopus update. I'm just off the phone after speaking with the very helpful Mike from customer services. It was a systems related error connected to the switch from a Domestic 7 (night) meter to a smart meter. My bills have now been restored .... and I'm £400+ in credit.
Thank you posters on this thread. Your input prompted me to 1) check that my new meter was actually working and 2) Prompted me to contact Octopus again about the issue. 🙌

Sometimes this is an important thing to take into account. I’ve worked out that my ‘hourly rate’ based on my salary is around £35 / hour. So to spend 2 hours sorting out payments would cost me £70. Id probably get £0.05 interest on my savings account by setting it up 😂

Exactly @Soontobe60 . The extra £50 a month I'm paying voluntarily at the moment isn't all going into credit either and I would earn nothing on it in a savings account.

I fixed a few weeks ago. And that was more expensive that the fix I'd been offered a couple of days earlier. Seems to be changing every few days.

I'm paying 46.95p for elec and 14.93p for gas with Octopus. That's the Loyal Octopus 12M Fixed. More than the Flexible tariff I was on previously but I'm hoping that low usage in summer means I won't be hit too hard and will be insulated in October when the Flexible tariff rises with the price cap. Some are estimating 75% rise but I haven't worked out what that actually means in money terms.

We got a good sounding fixed rate which worked out at around £130pm, already have been told to raise monthly payments to well over £230. We're not using any more power than we ever were.

Why would it take two hours? It takes me about 1 minute to "sort out a payment" via online banking. At your rate of pay that is a 58p. Interest on my “regular saver account” with my bank is 3.5% at the moment so I would and a few pounds more than that in interest.

Haha!
I meant looking at all the options, making comparisons, maybe phoning a provider etc. Also, that 2 hours includes holiday pay, pension contribution, tea breaks and a nap!

Why would you need go make comparisons or phone a provider? The question was whether it was worth over paying vs keeping the money in the bank.

Just gone through all my bills. My gas has doubled for the same period last year. Gas fired central heating (and water?).

11.06.21 - 13.07.21 £40.02
18.06.22 - 21.07.21 £80.51

We don't have the heating on at all.

So tariff options:

Current estimate £3268

Option 1 6808
Option 2 7157
Both around £500 a month

Good grief, that's scarey.

That's nearly 3x what I'm paying with Octopus for electricity and 2.5x what I'm paying for gas. And that's before the next round of increases.

When my fix comes to an end next year, I'll be bloody boracic. Or hypothermic, looks like a choice between the two. The £300 old fart's winter fuel payment won't make much of a dent in that

Thank god I got into a 2-year fix last year. I'd be living on value beans on value toast by now otherwise.

@LakieLady that fix is about 68% higher than the price cap for electricity and a whopping almost 104% higher for gas

I’m on a fixed deal until next September with Octopus. Purely down to luck as we’d just moved, and I needed a deal, and as a lone parent on a tight income, I’m very thankful of the timing.

What do people think about next year, will prices come down at some point? They can’t keep going up and up - can they?

Played wheel of fortune x2 every month for past FIVE years. Never won a single penny…..🤷🏻‍♂️

Reviving this thread, as time is running out and I'd appreciate any advice. Our electricity meter isn't working (shows the same reading as it did last December) and I've been asking Octopus since February to mend or replace it. They stall or ignore every email and broke the only appointment they made.

I've now told them i'm stopping our direct debit. I want to change back to Good Energy but its site says this isn't a good time to change suppliers, as prices are going up.

Does anyone know why rising prices make it a bad idea to change supplier?

And anyone else know how to make Octopus replace a broken meter?

Or any other advice? All advice welcome, thanks.

Phone Good Energy and ask them to set up the switch for you. Ask them about the broken meter.

None of the suppliers want new customers because they don't make any money from them. Plus a lot have had many forced on them over the last year, due to other suppliers going bust. They're probably still getting to grips with those. Plus the price is the same with each supplier so no point changing.

Re the meter, if you haven't already, I'd make a formal complaint. If you've already had lots of dialogue, you could try making it through resolver.co.uk as it walks you through the process, keeps all correspondence together, directs it towards the right person, and if it doesn't work, provides the mechanism to escalate to OFGEM.

Do you have any historical usage data and do you think you're still using the same amount? That will be useful if they try to get to pay for the unmetered energy you've been using recently.