Problems at Octopus - check your account

[IanJ]

It appears that Octopus have recently had problems with consumption data and it would be prudent to check your account.

Yesterday I was looking at my Octopus data online and was shocked to see that since I last looked I had moved, in the space of less than a week, from a healthy credit balance to owing over £3k. Delving into the data I could see that Octopus reckoned that on 11 Jan between 0500 and 0530 I had consumed 8,590kWh. I live in a normal sort of house not a palace so this is obviously wrong and physically impossible to draw so much power at 230V through a 100A main fuse!

I contacted Octopus and was told that they were aware of a data collection problem affecting thousands of customers and it would be corrected at billing - phew!

[Powerstar]

Thanks for your message.

I noticed similar last week, seeing a single day spike of sufficient scale to suggest I had been supplying the whole village!

The readings had been corrected a few days later thankfully.

[YorkshirePud]

For some reason I like to have a good "natter" with energy suppliers etc, especially in a case like above where they charge you for lighting up Blackpool tower then I point out the new smart meter that is only a month old which has recorded my real usage. How can a smart meter, that gives a reading every 30 minutes be ignored when the "usage" jumps x 1million kwh. I have noticed that Octopus are charging me 7.14p per KWH ... no matter what time of day I charge the car ! I cannot see them doing that for ever.

[Ken3966]

For some reason I like to have a good "natter" with energy suppliers etc, especially in a case like above where they charge you for lighting up Blackpool tower then I point out the new smart meter that is only a month old which has recorded my real usage. How can a smart meter, that gives a reading every 30 minutes be ignored when the "usage" jumps x 1million kwh. I have noticed that Octopus are charging me 7.14p per KWH ... no matter what time of day I charge the car ! I cannot see them doing that for ever.

The car will only be charging at the time scheduled by Octopus, which can also include slots outside of the off peak period. 7.14p is 7.5p after vat is added.

All your electric use will be 7.5 during these scheduled slots.

[IanEV]

I have a similar problem the car has started charging whenever I plug it in and Octopus haven’t sent me a bill since September. When I asked for a bill all my car charges have been at a higher rate! They are currently investigating!

[Ken3966]

They don’t send a bill unless they have a meter reading. Mine missed a couple of months of gas usage.
The problem is if they are not getting the 30 minute meter readings they will not be able to determine what was peak and what was off peak usage.
My meter did this over Xmas 2022 for about 3 months, fortunately before I had an EV and off peak rate. They had to come to house to reset meter and there was no data for that period apart from the current meter reading. Bill was about £400, but had been paying anyway so plenty of credit.
Now on off peak and charging car so it would have been huge error.