Anyone else seeing incorrect £ values on Octopus in-home display?

I noticed today that our IHD was showing a much higher value for electricity cost. We are on a fixed tariff until October so shouldn't have been affected by the cap change. I dug into the data with the Octopus export vs what the past week shows on the IHD for each day, seems since 1st April it has been reporting incorrectly:

Night rate units used: 3.27 * £0.1527 = £0.499
Day rate units used: 0.53 * £0.3306 = £0.175
Standing charge: £0.5405

Total for 31st March 2024: £1.21 (In-home display shows £1.21)

For 2nd April:

Night rate units used: 3.54 * £0.1527 = £0.541
Day rate units used: 0.25 * £0.3306 = £0.083
Standing charge: £0.5405

Total for 2nd April 2024: £1.16 (In-home display shows £1.42, £0.26 more than it should)

I have tried restarting the in-home display but the cost showing is still incorrect, however the tariff information looks to be correct. Every day since midnight 1st April I have worked out to be showing incorrectly:

1st April: Actual cost: £1.23 - IHD: £1.49
3rd April: Actual cost: £1.28 - IHD: £1.54
4th April: Actual cost: £1.28 - IHD: £1.52
5th April: Actual cost: £1.37 - IHD: £1.62

Anyone else seeing this? I have emailed Octopus so hopefully they will have it fixed soon - this will be the third time in less than two years they've cocked up tariff details.

chris_p Is it a coincidence that the clocks changed recently ? Perhaps it's not the tariff numbers that have changed, but the hours that it considers night and day ?

DD It could be that but I'm going to be annoyed if it is because I checked on 13th December 2023 with Octopus CS and got this reply:

Thank you for reaching out to us. I can confirm that the Economy 7 hours are currently from 12am to 7am. These hours do not change during British Summer Time. Having a smart meter does not affect the Economy 7 hours. Your smart meter will automatically record your energy usage during the designated Economy 7 hours.
Your smart meter doesn't automatically update to BST (British Summer Time), it will remain clocking round as GMT. So this means that your economy 7 times (when we register your day/normal and night/low usage) will remain an hour out during BST.

EDIT: I've check the data for 2nd April and no matter what 7 hour I period I choose, I cannot get it to match the IHD value. I've changed my charge time window to 02:35 to 5:55 which should be inside whatever the 7 hour window is, so will see tomorrow.

Yes my display has been displaying 2.0kwh as 0.02kwh but the cost is correct (sort of). I turned it off and turned it back on again and its improved. However since its been playing up the GE app; the Smart Tariff section has been iffy and doesnt display export details correctly.

Check the daily standing charge. Mine has gone up by 8 pence!

I never trust the display and always refer to the half hour data detailed in my bill if I have any queries.

While on the topic of bills, for those who export to Octopus, do you get regular monthly export credit statements? My export meter went live in December, but while the Monthly statements came in for my Electricity / Gas consumption I had to push them to get my export earnings which didn't turn up until March.

Tenkaykev I did have to push them the first few months. I think they now do appear on the standard monthly statement.

I don’t even look at the in home display any more. I should unplug it. The tariff rate is completely wrong so its pretty useless telling me I am over budget.

My Octopus bills seemed to be very infrequent, I got one after 3 months and then nothing for a while.
Contacted Octopus and I’m now getting reliable bills around the 3rd of every month for the preceeding full month (they asked me what day of the month I wanted the bill). Import and Export both in the same bill.

Average agile import price for March, 11.17p/kWh which I’m quite happy with

geoffreycoan Our latest bill is now being "manually reviewed" (before we've even got it). Third time in four months & this time I have evidence that its not the meter or DCC, its Octopus who are losing data.

We'll see what happens this time but next time we're asking for £30 every time it happens. That covers standing charges plus enough to buy a pint. Seems fair given we've had to contact/complain to them more in 9 months than we have in the last 30 years of suppliers....

Tenkaykev
My export meter went live in Sep. Every month since the end of Sep I have got a bill which includes that month's export credit.

PianSom
Thank you, I will chase them again. In my original enquiry I asked how often and when the export was created, they just sent a generic reply that my export would be credited in a few days.

anthonypar My standing charge for electricity ever since time change has been 0.00 but gas still shows as it should, its really weird.

I keep my IHD connected as I note down the electric and gas meter readings daily so I can see if anything is amiss with either very quickly and its a nice lazy way of doing it by checking on IHD rather than going down into cupboard and then into alleyway, I don't really pay too much attention to the cost as it doesn't align with tracker gas or agile for leccie.

We haven't been charged for electricity imports since the middle of January. We had a power cut lasting about 1.5 hours to change the transformer oil in the local substation. When I raised the lack of bills with Octopus they said they were chasing up two missing half hour readings with the DCC. I said they will be zero as there was no power and even when we do have power we run from battery at that time but they insist in chasing it up for months.

Quite happy to have free electricity as we still get credited for exports. No sure why as presumably there were the same number of missing readings then as its the same meter.

nophead Their systems are broken and routinely lose import data which requires manual intervention. They appear to have no automated method to pull "missing data" again.

They tried the DCC one with us and I pointed out that n3rgy had the data so it was their own incompetence to blame. Never heard back from that but the account was corrected eventually. Same again this month except this time its going to be a formal complaint and compo as its the 5th time in 6 months.

Seriously unimpressed with Octopus "customer service"......

Edit - I wouldn't mind so much but they take "charges" and don't provide a bill of any sort.

I'm not on Octopus but the reported costs in the app are out by 3 decimal places, I suspect all this relates to the BST time change

Vestas We switched from fixed charge to variable direct debit so they don't take anything for the electricity we use. I don't care, I am not going to chase it up as long as the credit us for exports I am happy. We get bills with gas and exports but no section for imports.

The last two energy suppliers we have used also made huge errors in our favour as well and they never got it back because we moved on.

nophead No I mean they put charges on the account each month and don't provide any bill. We have to chase it up etc as there's no real indication of what you're being charged for - like the 5 seperate charges in December, all rescinded in January when we got recharged 3 times and eventually got 4 bills IIRC.

They're bloody useless.

Vestas By way of balance, I’m quite happy with Octopus.

Have had some teething troubles, them not progressing my Export application (forwarding on questions the DNO had raised to me) nor responding to my emails, resulted in me talking to the DNO,resolving the query, getting the export MPAN and then telling Octopus of it.
Got £30 customer service credit for that.

And then they credited me for exports each month but never billed me for imports. After about 5 months of this I queried it, they fixed it straight away and monthly bills thereafter no issues.

I find Octopus customer service quite good. Especially if you DM them on Twitter/X, you get a response back usually within the hour and they’re always super courteous.

Eon on the other hand, different kettle of incompetence. I spent 18 months chasing and chasing and chasing the fact that my smart meter didn’t work. Emails I sent were ignored and when I did get a response usually a month or more later it didn’t answer my issue. Eventually I raised it as a formal complaint and stopped giving them meter readings until they sorted out the meter. Eventually eventually after a further 9 months and I think 4 meter swaps (I lost count in the end) I ended up with a working smart meter, collected the customer service goodwill payment for all the problems and promptly swapped to Octopus.

I noticed in the Octoprice app that there’s a function to display missing meter reads. I’m assuming its getting this off my Octopus account details rather than the DNO. I think I had 1 in February and about 4 in a block from last November. Not that I noticed anything in the bills about it.

Odd, they do charge us about 1 day before we get the bill but we haven't had any charges without a bill. We just don't get electricity import bills anymore and no charges for import. Since we switched to variable debits we have just survived on the credit we had built up. As we go into summer the exports will pay for the gas, so I expect the credit to increase.

geoffreycoan Especially if you DM them on Twitter/X, you get a response back usually within the hour and they’re always super courteous.

As opposed to email where you're lucky if you get a response in two WEEKS. Or the phone, where they just want to get rid of you ASAP to maintain their personal metrics.

Being on an American "social network" run by right-wing racists (both of them) shouldn't be a requirement for decent customer service from a UK business!

...and when the bills finally did turn up (after a complaint) they're total nonsense. Crediting us for export already paid 6 months ago and claiming we haven't exported anything since then. They couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery so this is going formal then ombudsman.

There's a reason Octopus complaints have risen by over 1000% in a year - they are incompetent liars.

Vestas I suspect that complaints are up because they've taken on so many customers from failed energy providers.

Like you I've found Octopus to be very slow and not altogether knowledgeable about how things should work - I've only stayed with them because of the tariff.

Eon, who we left over a year ago were just as bad, however, just last month sent my wife £70 as a customer service gesture for missing meter replacement appointments - only a year late. Perhaps Octopus will do the same after failing to turn up for an unnecessary (IMHO) Smart Meter replacement earlier this year.

SJB I suspect complaints are up because they didn't train enough people to deal with the staff/customers they acquired from companies they bought up. Like you, if anyone else offered similar to Agile I'd be gone tomorrow.

Their internal systems simply do NOT work and I now have zero confidence in their billing accuracy.

How is it even possible to have all the consumption/production data for the last month and produce a bill which isn't anywhere near accurate?

I mean we're not talking a few pence here, its nearly £100 out. Again.

Time for the ombudsman to take a look, since the regulator won't.

Vestas How is it even possible to have all the consumption/production data for the last month and produce a bill which isn't anywhere near accurate?

I wish I knew, I had a similar problem - the data was there, I could download it, but they couldn't use it to pay for my exports. That got resolved with a customer service gesture, but it's very frustrating when it goes wrong again and again.

You need to keep your eye on Octopus. They are nice people, but not well trained and know less that the people on this forum. I would be surprised in E7 is still midnight to 7am. In my area it used to change to 1am to 8am in BST. Very usefull to have breakfast at the W/E on E7. I would press them again for an answer. I had to watch my meter change over to Day from Night at 8am to confirm I was correct, despite them telling me E7 did not changed for BST. They were wrong.

Roberto You're not wrong. Frankly anyone with "in your face" sales agents at the exit of Asda/Tesco/Morrisons (not Aldi as they don't allow it) isn't a company I'd usually choose to use.

Its the tariffs though....