M
1/5
For the most part, I loved Octopus as a customer. They were generally responsive and helpful (except when my smart meter monitor stopped reporting gas usage and I was fobbed off, which should have rung alarm bells for me) and had well-priced plans. However, here are the reasons why I knocked off 4 stars.
The first (one star off) was that they regularly sent me emails saying my monthly DD was too low to maintain a credit balance and suggesting I increased it. This despite my balance always being in credit, even in March/April after heavy winter use of gas. A simple spreadsheet showed that I was never going to go into debt with them, so why ask for more money? Perhaps they make good interest on all those credit balances or it offsets the people who are in debt to them? Either way, it was unreasonable pressure to bank more money with them.
The second (three stars off) is when I left. I had a credit balance of about £350, which they said would be refunded in 30 days. (Bank transfers take 2 hours, so this in itself is a questionable delay.) After chasing a few times and being told that the transfer had been held for some reason, they refunded me £120 and a revised bill after "reviewing my account". All of the adjustments related to my first year with them, over 4 years ago. I spent the next 3-4 months trying to get a meaningful explanation, which I never got. I was told I had used more energy than they originally thought (no I hadn't, the usage on the revised and original bills was more or less identical), that my customer readings were very different to their readings (I checked, no they weren't, and I had smart meters so this would be corrected in real time), that a billing specialist had reviewed the bills and it was correct (not an explanation), and that they had overbilled me by £400 and then re-reviewed it and realised they had also underbilled me by about £600, hence the deduction (this is just nonsense). I reminded my complaint handler about the rules on back-billing (it is illegal to reclaim money after 12 months for an error on their part) and she said she knew about them; but still she ignored them. Finally, they told me the bill had been checked again and was correct (not an explanation), but would offer me £20 for my trouble. I rejected this. They escalated to a manager (which should have already happened because I requested a manager review in response to an automated email 4 weeks before this, but it never happened). After 2 weeks, someone rang me to say that due to the back-billing rules they were going to refund all of my money. They implied the issue was due to my complain handler not understanding the rules and needing training (she had said she did understand them, and they aren't rocket science), but I do not believe this was the result of one rogue person. This involved whoever/whatever reviewed my account originally and decided to deduct a random number of pounds from it, the complaint handler and the billing specialist who reviewed it twice (or two specialists?) and said, both times, that the deduction was correct and valid. So, that's at least 3 systems/people involved, which suggests this is at least a corporate culture and maybe even policy. According to their website, Wired described them as, "the answer to a broken, inefficient market". After my experience, I think they are just another bunch of chancers milking a market for all they can.
