What are others doing ? do we keep the points for promised exchanges in the future or convert them straight away for money to pay the energy bills. Not sure if it's going to be only Octopus merchandise or will you be able to trade them in against activities or travel like club card points etc. Anyone got a heads up ?
Annaka I just redeem them and then when I request a refund I get the cash in my bank. Until they say otherwise no point letting them earn interest when I can
We keep ours until we find out what the exchanges will be as they might be beneficial compared to cash. I think we have made about £50 so far, so small change compared to our gas bill at this time of year.
Has anyone been awarded their Octopoints for the last 4 sessions yet? Thats 12th, 14th, 15th, and 19th....
Nope
No, I expected to get the 12th yesterday or today as it has always been a week later up to now.
I redeem the octopoints. But don't see any point in cashing them in.
I let Octopus subtract them from my bill. For example, my latest bill was for £47, but I only paid about £12, as I already had Octopoints credit in the amount of £35.
Our direct debits are far too much because we got solar a few days after transfering to Octopus, so the account is £400 in credit, so not much point in adding to that.
nophead You should be able to adjust your direct debit on the Octopus website. I have around £500 credit on mine and I've reduced it to just £1pm, months ago.
TimHutchings Depends how long he's been with Octopus - you can't change the amount on the website until they've had a certain number of months data. You can change it if you call them, just not on the website.
nophead That is why im on variable, pay for what I use, could you not just refund some of your balance?
Annaka Money off bill, 100% but ill still pay it into bank to stockpile some money for rainy day and to help pay back for the system overall.
Jellybaby Variable DD here too, seems to work well although of late it has been taking longer each month for the actual bill to be produced (12 days and waiting...).
I don't earn enough from the saver sessions to worry about who gets the interest, so I'll let it lie until April.
Can you have a variable DD with Octopus? My previous provider offered pay as you go but it was was a top up system, so when you run out the meter cuts off.
nophead yup, but for some frustrating reason they cant do bill one day then take money the next, they can be quite some time apart and unless you do proper direct debit you cant pick days so ill just have to deal with it, I would have preferred getting bill at end of month and paying on the 1st so I could see easily how much every month has cost.
EDIT
Example latest bill for Dec 12th was £84 (brought down by export which comes in separate bill) but they wont take payment til 28th.
Bit of an odd way of doing things, updating account then taking money on same day or day after would be nice and as I said even better if they could do it at end of month but hey ho saves having to faff about with refunds and additional paymens should they arise and whatnot.
Jellybaby DD guarantee states they must give you at least 10 working days notice if the amount will be different to the last payment, so that's why there's a delay between bill and payment amount for variable.
I do variable DD too. Otherwise they base the DD amount on previous bills, which in my case would have been based on what i used before solar was installed. If you can handle a couple of expensive months over the winter it's idea, cos you run off solar in the summer and pay nothing, and any excess payments from export is held in your account and set against your bills when solar drops off. Electric bill this month £1.81, as I have finally used up what i accumulated over the summer!! Now I'm holding onto my Octopoints from the saving sessions to set against Januarys bill.
Karen Is it something you can change online? I only see an option to change it to a different fixed value.
Cdent Until recently my readings were taken on the 8th, billed on the 10th, and debited on the 25th, suggesting they allow 15 days between bill and debit.
Since having an export tariff that gap between readings and bill has been growing; no bill yet based on readings taken on the 8th, so the DD will now be well into next month. Not sure if this is usual where export tariffs are involved.
Just came through
Two of ours came through together, like buses, the 12th and the 14th. No sign of the 200 bonus points we were promised for signing up though.
KevinH they're allowing the right time then. But export shouldn't affect the time between bills, should still be monthly. I know when my meters were changed the bills were irregular but hopefully now it's all sorted they should be back to monthly
nophead I rang up to change mine. I did it at the same time as I swapped to Octopus
Karen My wife phoned up today and changed it over the phone and the account shows "You are paying a variable amount depending on your usage", so thanks for that.
The guy said it will take payments from our balance until it is exhausted and then start debiting, so we won't have a bill until the summer probably.
We got 200 bonus points for taking part and 400 for coming in the top 20% of savers today but we think we should have a second 200 bous for taking part in another one.
They announced the exchange for merch scheme but we are not impressed. The merch seems about twice the price that it is worth and you get vouchers for twice the value of the octopoints. It is all Octopus promotional material that you might expect free as it is promoting their company.
When I swapped to Octopus I made the mistake of putting in my estimated annual consumption with the heat pump, and not subtracting anything for the Flux export generation. So my DD's were set to £300 a month which you can't change online as others have said.
Eventually I phoned them up and asked them to change it, its now £100 a month and we're up to £700 in credit as every time they run a power up event we get the credit back from that, but of course they haven't billed yet for the actual consumption in the power up event.
I know my consumption is going to be high in Winter so no point in claiming a refund until we're back into Spring. Am treating the Octopoints the same way, leaving them to accumulate for now (£50 worth) and will probably swap them for account credit if there's nothing better offered in the Spring.
New 8th anniversary bonus Octopoints Gregs treat in the app:
