Well that's not good. Only 10 months old. Just waiting for the recovery service (ETA 4 hours). Has anyone else had this? 2.0 manual, UK based. Was it just the 12v battery or something more serious?
Original thread is here: sudden surge in gas usage
For those who don't want to read the original thread, I was billed £660 by Octopus for gas usage in March. The additional charge appeared to be related to a number of days over a 2-3 week period where my gas usage increased by a huge amount - we're talking 800KwH a day. I complained to Octopus and they agreed it didn't look right. After much back and forth (46 emails and counting), on 18 April they admitted the readings were wrong. This was confirmed this to me in writing and they refunded the £660.
They then decided they needed to swap the meter for a new one. This was done on Friday. They took a final reading and then re-billed me the £660, claiming it was correct after all. I hit the roof (or rather as I'm British I sent a very firmly worded email). I gave them a week to reconsider and also submitted a SAR. This evening they have responded and reversed course again, admitting liability and confirming the meter was over-reading by a factor of 10.
"It appeared the half hourly data from the gas meter was clocking around 10x higher, creating a high usage - which is a rare fault to happen with smart meters and why we wanted to be thorough in our investigations with this. After speaking with EDMI, they suggested that we replace the meter, even after the usage appeared to return to normal, so that we could prevent this from happening again on the same meter and you would only be billed for your accurate usage."
They have taken 8 weeks to deal with this and I can honestly say they have been worse than useless. To cut a long story short, they have now stated "I would like to work with you to move this towards a resolution you are happy with, are you able to let me know what you would see as a suitable resolution?"
So, fellow Redditors, what would you see as a suitable resolution? I estimate I've spent a combined total of at least two days on this over the 8 week period and nearly 50 emails back and forth between Octopus and me. I know if I got to the Energy Ombudsman my compensation is likely to be minimal.
Has anyone been in this position before? What should I ask for? To be clear, if I had accepted what they told me yesterday and paid the defecit, Octopus Energy would have stolen £600+ from me and not given it a single thought.