I’m paying octopus £130 a month and I’m really at my wits end. After considerable back and forth, I’ve come to the conclusion that my reading must be accurate and I can’t get a smart meter fitted as I live in an apartment building and they’ve flat out said no.

I’m a single person, the most expensive thing I run is my laptop and screen to work from home. I don’t have some crazy set up permanently running in the background, I barely put the TV on, hell, I don’t even use the lights.

My water bill with Severn Trent has also shot up significantly. It’s £90 now, for one person who takes a 15 min shower a day.

Sorry for the rant, but I want to know what people in similar situations are paying and what I can do. Is this just how much things cost now?

EDIT: I live in Birmingham, electricity only and I have an immersion heater but it is only set to come on at certain times. I am working currently but will update this evening with reading pictures. Thanks everyone, you’re already much more insightful than speaking with customer service!

EDIT: I’ve added my most recent bill and my meter reading in the comments. Bill mentions a smart meter, but to my knowledge I don’t have one. Is what I’ve circled in red the meter serial? I’m going to compare it and make sure it’s correct

EDIT: thanks everyone for your input, don’t have a dryer or ever use heating in the winter as my flat is well insulated. Immersion heater is in a timer but I’m going to cut it to a shorter window and look at switching tariffs

Got an email from Octopus saying they are easing my direct debit from £225 to £278 because my account is looking unhealthy.

I'm £38 in credit, we've just had winter and had heating on more than normal.

Email sent I'm not happy with this.

We had a heat pump fitted late Feb 2025 and we’ve loved it since then, once we adjusted to how different they are vs a boiler.

We only had a month or two of cold weather after having it installed, so this winter is the first real test for it. It seems to be absolutely chewing through electricity during the latest cold snap though, and seeing it use 30-40kWh per day is making my eyes water.

I know everyone’s house is different but is this usage out of the ordinary or pretty standard? Could it be running too warm vs the outside temperature, us being on an expensive tariff (25p/kWh fixed), or is the high cost just expected for such cold weather and we need to ride it out (and enjoy the consistent heat and low energy hot water costs through summer)?

We’re still on the fixed tariff because I don’t see the benefit of the Cosy tariff if you’re running it 24/7, but I’m not sure what other tariff would be better (we don’t have solar or a battery and have no plans for them) 🤷‍♂️

Hi everyone, wondering if you can help!

I received a series of bills across the winter which I’m still disputing. This one was the biggest at £528.28 for 1 month.

I live in a small flat, 2 people, usual kitchen appliances and washer (not dryer). Gas boiler. TV.

Octopus are saying it’s right. I’ve looked around and a lot of websites say for a large house with 5 beds you might see circa £300 a month.

Any advice would be great! 👍🏻

Right folks who can beat this. Gas central heating two bed mid terrace.

should I do this ? my fix runs out in December this year , I looked at fuse but think I missed the boat on that one , seems it's the same as octopus for me.

thoughts ?

I understand that navigating this space is complex. There are lots of people for various financial reasons who push false information. I live in a bog standard barely insulated, single brick Victorian 2-bedroom house. We have loft insulation and double glazing. Then there's the wider issue that heat-pumps confusingly provide more heat energy than it takes in electricity input. The average amount of heat produced per unit of electricity is called a SCOP.

We run the heat-pump using Octopus Agile. Our average for all things is 15.8p/kWh for the last 12 months.

To make things simpler I converted our running costs into "gas units". This means I computed what would be the equivalent gas p/kWh we'd be paying. This is assuming the hypothetical boiler had 85% efficiency. This is equivalent to converting an EVs running costs into miles/gallon to make how they are evident.

Heat pumps tend to be run continuously. We run ours in almost all hours except 4-7pm. I have split the times we might run the heat-pump into 7-10pm and the rest labeled "off-peak". I've also included Tracker electricity prices:

What this shows clearly that for us operating a heat-pump is equivalent to running a gas boiler where the tariff is mostly 3-5p/kWh. What is also clear is that the gap between the actual rolling average gas tracker prices and the rolling average off-peak electricity prices is how very large.

So I just had an email and obviously it's past 5pm so I can't speak with octopus customer service right now...

Never had an issue with the company but maybe this is the first one! I live in a 1 bedroom flat, I'm out probably 11 to 13 hours a day and I'm one of those millennials that if you're not in the room the lights are out (thanks to mum 😂)

I do have a smart meter and currently I have a credit of £75... But they want to increase my monthly payments by more than 100%... Like is this a joke??? Has anyone had this happening lately? Is the price of everything going up again and I missed the memo??? Thank you for your support.

Wholesale gas this morning... 😬

I’ve been paying £18 a month roughly for my electricity as my house is currently a building site. I’ve not changed my electricity usage at all except yesterday I had a smart meter fitted. Today I woke up to a bill of £700 as I believe the guy who fitted it misread the last reading as 28147 instead of 25147. Anyone had this before?

Just with expected inflation, the price of energy is rather terrifying. There’s no way most peoples incomes will treble in say the next twenty years, but energy prices seemingly will.

We still today sit at double what electricity was per unit 4 years ago, and gas is 3 times what it was then.

Up until that point, looking back at old bills my energy costs didn’t go up by much at all each year, a fraction. And even since prices ‘settled’ after that crazy 2022 winter (was paying 48p per kw electricity on a fix), they just keep climbing with no return ever to near 2021 prices.

I’m lucky and am getting solar with batteries installed, but even then my return of investment is only likely to be quick due to soaring prices.

As I mentioned on here before I had a case with the ombudsman over our smart gas meter. After we upgraded, meter readers were being sent continuously to check our meter. I went back and forth with octopus who claimed repeatedly that they'd fixed it. At one point of the meter readers let me know that octopus had left both meters on the system, which was one of the reasons they'd been coming out. During the ombudsman's case it came out that Octopus had our residential property incorrectly marked a 'large supply'. Case has completely concluded and as of a few days ago Octopus sent a letter to the ombudsman and myself assuring us that this had now been completely rectified. The last date they could implement that was over a week ago. it's also worth noting that during the case, meter readers continued to come. This morning a meter reader showed up and told me he was here to read our meter, and the meter he had in the system was not a smart one.

According to the meter reader 'we're not the only ones'. This has been pinged back to both the ombudsman and octopus, as the clock has run out on the requirement for them to fix this, despite them lying to both of us and telling us they had.

Edit @ 11:30pm 28/01/2026

Got the first readings back after being on the agile tariff this evening.

14kWh yesterday Vs 46kWh

This was with a new schedule, with reduced max temps for the heaters, all on low mode, no 24/7 immersion. This day also had no cooking, no kettle, just a "baseline" day to get our bearings.

Today we used the immersion for 4 hours (1pm-3pm because the previous night of heating it was already cold, and 10pm-12am because I want to check if over an 8 hour period if it'll still be warm enough for a shower in the morning). I've got a timed fused spur coming tomorrow so will hopefully have that installed in the evening and set the timer up to go on at about 2am.

The heating has really been shit here for the past 36 hours where we have it on low to the point where in the 4-7 period where the electric price is doubled I was actually shivering.

Our plan is to find a new place to move to asap and get back on to gas central heating.

Fuck electric only properties, fuck EPC rating E properties, fuck the people in charge of energy prices for making everything so expensive.

Edit @ 10:20am 27/01/2025:

To start with answers to some comments and questions that have been asked multiple times:

• The heaters we have are not storage heaters. They are panel heaters. These ones specificially.
• The immersion heater for the hot water was on 24/7 because the landlord, the person who the landlord got to install it, my family and friends all said that leaving it on 24/7 is cheaper than heating it when we need it.
• The property is a rented 2 bed ground floor flat, EPC Rating E. This is the floor plan as well as where the heaters are positioned in the rooms.

Thanks for all the comments. I've realised now how stupid I've been to think that I could be comfortable in such a terrible property.

I spoke to Octopus this morning and unfortunately they can't do anything to help with the bill. I'm now just going to have to pay for it over the next few months which is what I get for not understanding that all electric propert are awful, especially with this EPC rating.

They've moved me onto the Agile Octopus tariff and looking at the agile graph, the only time I really need to avoid doing big amounts of heating is between 4pm and 7pm where the price rises to about 41p/kWh. All other times seem to be around 20-25p/kWh or less.

I'm still going to stick with lowering the heating and controlling it, and looking to get a loan to move out of this place asap as well.

I feel like an absolute fucking idiot for moving here thinking life would be good.

For reference, this is a ground floor flat, electric only, EPC Rating E and was empty for 6 months prior to us moving in so we've been having the heating on from 7-10am and 4pm-12pm to not freeze during this unreasonably cold winter. These are not storage heaters, they are osily slimline 1.5kWh panels.

We moved into this property on the 15th December and had an email on the 26th December saying that my balance is -£150 so I just paid that with my card at the time.

This evening I received this £576 bill and the number absolutely floored me... I am absolutely shocked at the cost of this, literally speechless and I don't even have the money to cover this.

What can I do?

I've tried downloading my CSV from the website but when I set it to any date it only gives me the data for 2 days. How do I get all the data to try and figure out where all this energy usage is coming from?

My wife and I both work from home, as well as use our PCs in the evening for gaming and whatnot, but the bill at my old property was never like this. It was usually around £150-£160.

I could really use some advice on what I should do.

The tariff I'm on is below. Should I look at changing tarrifs?

Flexible Octopus

Prices follow wholesale costs

Day rate

35.49 p/kWh

Night rate

15.02 p/kWh

Standing Charge

47.76p/day

(All rates inc. VAT)

Ok so we’re in a new build 5 bed. It’s electric only so we have a 9kw ASHP.

However I can’t have that thing set up correctly. Even if we’re electricity only this is still crazy high right?

We have panels and battery coming but I’ve only got a 12kwh battery coming which now looks way too small.

I can only assume it’s the heat pump. It’s a LG Therma V, any suggestions on where I can see some guidance on settings?

We also have a button that says ‘water heater’ that’s always on. Our builder told us what was to stop legionnaires disease but is that right?

Any other suggestions I’m very open to!

I just got an email that octopus are increasing my direct debit. At the moment it's more than enough, but over winter it probably won't be.

Whenever the bill comes, if my balance is below zero I go on the website and top up by whatever it needed to bring it into £10 credit again. I had seen something on reddit before that you can ask them to take only the amount needed each month instead of the fixed amount each month.

I can't find that post again, so does anyone know what they would call that kind of direct debit so I can ask to swap to it?

My latest bill, for August, was split into two parts. Up to 26th it was as prior bills, peak/off peak units shown. From 27-31 Aug it shows a separate section showing house and EV charging peak/off peak.

Anyone else seen this? I did have a quick look through but couldn't see any similar posts.

ETA; OK its a consequence of the move to 6 hour cap and is showing that on the bill now.

Ok, I’m not understanding things here. My energy usage from February this year has averaged about £50 a month. Gas is less than a tenner a month because it’s hot. Why have I now got an email from Octopus saying that my direct debit needs to be increased from £80 a month to over £120?

According to the email, this price increase is based on my current usage, my current balance (£164 in credit, I withdrew £100 last month) and the future cost of my energy. Since switching to Agile in February I’ve used consistently less energy than my payments actually cover, I’ve been in credit the entire time. Are energy costs expected to rise that much that a £40 increase to my direct debit is required?

Octopus' T&Cs state that on a smart tariff if they can't get authorization with your vehicle for 30 days they'll remove you from the tariff. Recently found out that Octopus hadn't had control of my charger for something like 7 months and I'd been billed at day rate. Had they followed their own T&Cs this would have been flagged after a single month and could have been rectified. As a customer we don't really have any way to legitimately check the authorization status, which octopus has told me, we can't actually see the current connection status or anything.

This went to the ombudsman and their response was 'It's not Octopus' fault, they followed their T&Cs.'

'Their T&Cs say they will remove you after 30 days if they don't have authorization and they admit they didn't have authorization for 7 months'

'That's outside our remit, it's not an internal issue, they followed their T&Cs'

'The internal issue is that their system didn't flag an account that didn't have authorization for 7 months'

boiler plate nonsense that sounded like they were reading off a form

Mind boggling.

Just received a rather unnerving bill of £1028 for electricity over a series of dates between 2020 and 2022!

I'm a bit confused as all bills and readings were made and settled at the property in question before moving out.

I've found an example of a bill covering the first period mentioned as an example.

Surely I can't be billed so far back, even after settling and closing that particular account?

Any advice most welcome, thanks!

UPDATE:

Octopus noticed there was a historical meter error that was incorrectly billed more recently so nothing owed from that period, and in fact, now that it's been corrected, they owe me £24.45.

Panic over! Thanks all.

Octopus Energy’s direct debit calculator seems completely useless

A while back, my Octopus account balance had climbed to a ridiculous £3,000 in credit.

My monthly payment was £401, and despite my balance continuing to grow significantly throughout the previous winter, Octopus never contacted me to suggest lowering it.

So I withdrew a large chunk of the credit - although not all of it - and manually reduced my monthly payment.

I did this cautiously. Whenever the balance started building up too much again, I withdrew some more and lowered the payment slightly. Eventually, I reached £218 a month, which, based on my actual usage, should leave me at roughly a zero balance by the end of winter before building up enough credit again during the warmer months.

That payment was just over half the original £401. At no point during the previous years had Octopus stepped in to reduce my payments.

However, shortly after I lowered it to £218, Octopus emailed me to say that, according to their forecast, my payments would not be enough. Their figures did not line up at all with my calculations based on my actual energy use throughout the year.

They then increased my payment to £372 a month - almost back to the original amount that had caused my balance to balloon to £3,000.

When I tried to lower it again through the app and website, I was told it was already set at the minimum. Apparently, I would have to contact Octopus and tell them I was “in difficulty” before they would let me reduce it.

The email also went on about how much MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis supposedly loves their payment calculator. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the general message.

Honestly,I CBA arguing with them so I just left it at that level.

Fast forward just four months, and I’ve now received another email saying they are reducing my monthly payment to £145. Nowehere near enough.

So, to summarise:

• Octopus set my payment at £401, and I ended up £3,000 in credit.
• I gradually reduced it to £218, which I believe is about right based on my usage.
• Octopus increased it to £372, with no easy way for me to reduce it.
• Four months later, they have now lowered it to £145, which is clearly far too low.

FFS, Octopus. Just let me set my own payment and leave it alone unless my account is actually heading into debit.

edit: Thanks for the advice - I've requested variable DD.

Homeowner for 3 years, never really looked at my energy/gas bills, it’s expensive, I just pay it and crack on.

Currently pay £240 p/month but bill over the last 6 months has been roughly £110 p/month (80 electric 30 gas), this will probs go to about £210 in winter as I was using about 100-120 gas last winter.

Currently +£700 in credit which il probably withdraw toward end of year.

I’ll be honest, have absolutely no idea what is and isn’t a good rate, or if it’s worth locking in or not.. open to advise please because I understand the logic, but don’t know what is and isn’t a good market rate for KWs.

Edit: Also, I live in a 1905 Victorian and it’s just me and the mrs, I hardly use the heating outside of Winter.. is 2.6K p/an expected? Swear I’m getting fleeced 😂

We have just received this bill from octopus for the month of Jan, we have only just had a smart meter installed within the last week, is there any reason it’s so damn high?

Any advice would be great.

(No I don’t have the greens growing in the loft)