Octopus Energy - September 2024
We contacted Octopus and it said that there are over 30 million smart meters now installed across Britain, and on the whole, they work incredibly well. Of course, with any technology, there are sometimes wobbles - such as when your mobile phone inexplicably loses signal.
It said it does have processes in place to pick up any rare issues with connectivity, which involve its systems automatically triggering a fix with the software ‘cloud’ which takes meter readings from the meter and passes it to the energy supplier. It said it initially tries this several times remotely, which usually fixes things - and if it doesn’t it will speak directly to DCC whilst it asks the customer to send it manual meter readings until it has fixed things.
Mr Locke’s smart meter didn’t send Octopus readings between December and March this year. It said it was in the process of fixing this remotely as described above (which fixes 90% of these rare issues), but when Mr Locke contacted Octopus to let us know he hadn’t had a bill, Octopus manually expedited the fix, and immediately corrected the issue to produce his bill back in April.
In Mrs Casey’s case, this wasn’t anything to do with the smart meter, which always operated correctly. Mrs Casey was a Bulb customer. For some reason, she had been put on a special tariff for EV customers at Bulb, even though she didn’t have an EV. It said Bulb billed its EV tariffs using two registers, whereas Octopus uses half hourly billing. It said it automatically put Mrs Casey on its equivalent EV tariff but because she doesn’t actually have an EV, the billing failed.
When Mrs Casey’s daughter got in contact with Octopus asking for a refund, its team member spotted this issue (probably the only one we have out of our 7 million customers), and added the owed charges to the account, waiving all the charges owed over 12 months old (so she’s received that electricity for free).
Octopus said it appreciates this still meant an outstanding bill to pay, and that it was confused by Carol’s comment that it doesn’t offer payment plans, as it does - in fact Octopus believes it is incredibly flexible (the lowest repayment amount it offer could be as little as £5 a week). It said it has looked at the account and can see that its team member didn’t explain this well at all – Octopus said it has already given them some clear coaching, and have also reached out to Mrs Casey’s daughter, apologised for this and added a goodwill gesture of £200 for the drop in customer service.
You can watch the show on iPlayer for 30 days here /iplayer/episode/m0020lm3/the-one-show-26062024?seriesId=unsliced
