We downsized and received a sensible meter… why have our Octopus power payments rocketed? CRANE ON THE CASE

Two years ago, my husband and I downsized from a three-bed house to a two-bed flat. Since we moved, our energy bills have almost quadrupled.

Our supplier, Octopus, is charging us nearly £430 per month for electricity. 

In our former house, we paid about £90 per month for gas and electric (the new property has no gas).

When I queried this I was told nothing could be done unless I had a smart meter fitted. Octopus said this would make our bills more accurate, so I agreed.

I had to wait six months for an engineer and was then told it wasn’t possible to connect the meters. I have now had three separate meters fitted, but none have worked properly.

I have continued making monthly payments of £120 – the level our direct debit was set at when we first moved into the flat. 

As it stands we have a £1,859 debt on our account. 

We are finding this stressful and it’s impacting our health. M.D, Northumberland

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: As with many downsizers, you and your husband are pensioners and moved to a smaller home in order to trim your living costs – but the opposite turned out to be true. 

You told me your bills have never been right since you moved to the flat – but no one seemed able to pinpoint the problem.

It is a similar story to this couple, who found that the cost of making a cup of tea rocketed from 1p to £5 – in this case after they got a smart meter fitted.

You agreed to a smart meter. You got a new meter fitted – not once, but three times. 

You even checked how much your neighbours in your block of flats were paying for their energy, and found that it was far less than you.  But nothing seemed to make your bills go back to normal. 

You have made formal complaints to Octopus several times. Your last complaint was closed in July 2024, even though you told them problem wasn’t fixed. You were told you would get a call back the next week, but it never arrived.

Octopus reversed some of the charges on your account in April 2024 given the problems you have had, but in October your direct debit was raised again to £430 per month – far more than you believe you are using. 

You sent another complaint to Octopus customer service and to the CEO’s email address in October, but said it was not acknowledged.

I contacted Octopus to ask what was going on.  

It reviewed your account and carried out remote ‘technical checks’ of your meters, but said it could not see any problems with them. 

Your have an Economy 10 set-up on your meter, which involves a total of three readings across two meters. 

It records your daytime and nighttime energy usage separately, because they are charged at different rates. 

This is a common cause of energy bill confusion – but after its investigation Octopus said in your case it hadn’t caused any problems and that  the energy use it had billed you for was still correct. 

Instead, it believes there is a device in your house which is using far more energy than you think. 

You have no idea what this could be, as most of your appliances came over from your previous home where the bills were fine.  

‘In cases like this where someone doesn’t feel their energy usage is correct, but we can’t see any problems with the meter, we typically conduct a ‘creep test’ on the meter to identify if any appliances are using more energy than expected,’ a spokesman said. 

‘We should have tried to do this before we switched the meter in 2023, and the fact that a new meter still resulted in high readings means that there is likely to be something in the house using more power than M.D is expecting. We are very happy to help her investigate this further.’

But Octopus also said that it hadn’t handled your complaints as well as it would have liked, and in view of that it wrote off your £1,859 outstanding balance. 

It recommended having an electrician examine your heating system to ensure there are no underlying issues which could have caused the sky-high charges. 

When I told you about this, you didn’t buy it. You had decided you no longer wanted to be a customer of Octopus and instead decided to switch to another supplier, EDF. 

You hadn’t been able to do this previously as your account was in debt.  

You have since switched, and say that so far your bills seem much more accurate. 

You also think you have managed to solve the mystery of why your bills went haywire. 

When you joined EDF, it queried your meter readings as it said they seemed too low. 

You sent a picture of your meters to EDF and it explained how the three different readings work, and that one should refer to daytime energy use, one should refer to night time and the third should be the total. 

Having revisted your Octopus bills, you think it was adding the daytime reading to the total reading, instead of adding the daytime reading to the night time reading – which would explain the much higher charges. 

I put this to Octopus, but it didn’t respond to that specific question.

You have also lodged a complaint with the Energy Ombudsman, which means it will get investigated again. 

Whatever the outcome, I hope your energy bill worries are over and you can enjoy your retirement in peace.  

CRANE ON THE CASE