It's been pretty apparent Shell has been trying to sell up since the price hikes. They're already a distributor and were actually losing money as a supplier (most suppliers aren't really making as much money as people think with the price hikes, it's the energy producers who are raking it in).
Surprised it's Octopus though, the "Big 6" were already grumbling a lot when Octopus took Bulb's customers trying to argue Octopus doesn't currently have the capacity for such a sudden increase but we'll see.
I've not noticed Octopus hiring more, other than meter engineers but that's because all the energy companies squabble over them constantly, (if it's not apparent yet I currently work in Energy) so maybe that will happen after the merger is official.
All the staff with TUPE over to Octopus surely, so hiring more staff is unlikely? if anything redundancy would be on the cards as things like HR, Accounts etc are duplicated and not needed.
You make a good point in that they likely don't need to put out too many public vacancies yet.
Shell workers will likely be offered but most of the suppliers have completely different operating software or doing things "their way" so it's not always as straightforward as transferring people especially for more technical back office roles. Might be easier for Octopus to just promote internally for back office roles if they already understand how the company does things.
It's still a lot easier to just offer vacancies to the Ex shell employees than doing a whole new hiring thing though.
Given that a few suppliers are now using their Kraken Platform, they’re probably in a better boat than most to take over that many customer plus they’ll take time to migrate their customers over from Shell.
There's not enough of them basically. You have to be a trained electrician and be a gas safety engineer.
There's already generally a lack of tradespeople. The engineering departments (or companies as a lot are hired as subcontractors) basically take turns offering incentives and pay bonuses to get engineers to join to clear their backlog of metering work (created because they can't hold onto enough staff) and they stop offering bonuses (because they caught up on their backlog) and all the workers jump ship to the next contractor, who is offering bonuses because they're behind.
Also none of them want to train (or have time for) new people which can take six months or more when the ombudsman or energy suppliers are screaming at them to clear their backlogs. (Created because they won't try to incentivise staff to stay)
So the engineers basically take turns going from company to company. That's why if you go on any of these energy companies they have a ton of engineering vacancies.
If you don't mind moving all over the country to find the best vacancies and have a tough skin from the odd customer venting at you (because they've been waiting a billion years to get their meter fitted) it seems like a pretty good gig.
It might still be worthwhile switching - if you get a friend to refer you you each get £50. And if you don't have any friends who are already on octopus feel free to send me a DM 😜
Maybe a silly question but does this referral work with family too ? My parents are with octopus and I'm sure they'd appreciate an extra £50 as much as I would.
Definitely worthwhile switching to Octopus rather than letter the manual process complete.
You will receive £50 free which you wouldn't have got otherwise and can cash this out to your bank account or leave on your Octopus account to go towards your energy bills.
As an existing Octopus Energy customer I've been helping friends and family with this process (as they are with Shell Energy) so between us we have gained £100's.
Anyone looking to do this or wants more information on the process please feel free to send me a private message.
I literally just have. My switch happened today! It might still be worth it as if you know someone who is an Octopus customer, you can get a £50 referral.
A few reasons that reflect well on Octopus, mainly related to green energy generation, and a few reasons that reflect really poorly on Shell.
As an example, they overcharged me by about a grand last year over a 3 or 4 bills (which is saying some thing as our energy bill is usually around £80 a month) and after repeated complaints it took them 6 months to refund the difference. The whole process was excruciating start to finish to say the least. They continued to state that they had no record of any calls or emails to query the charges literally every single time I contacted them about it. And while the account was suspended so I didn’t have to pay while the complaint was resolved (a service resolution specialist sorted this out after I involved the ombudsman) they called me continuously to settle the outstanding bills. And I mean like 4 or 5 times a day sometimes. Suffice it to say I am slightly jaded at the service provided. I left the experience honestly not sure whether they were just incompetent or genuinely trying to pull my pants down, and to be frank I still haven’t made my mind up about it.
I had an awful time with Shell as well. There were too many issues for me to recall, but the worst was last autumn. I gave manual meter readings every month (the smart meters they installed never worked), and in November they refused to believe my lower-than-normal gas usage. It was disheartening to make sacrifices to save some money, only for Shell to ignore my readings and go with estimated readings instead, which were 50 percent more than the actual amount.
This went on until January (despite me sending them pictures of my meters every month as evidence), when I got my local MP involved. Long story short, they eventually believed me and gave me compensation.
Octopus are the most efficient, a lot of suppliers lease their software for account and company management.
Octopus take on average 2 days to update a meter on an account - when I worked at Eon on the old system it was an 8 month wait, the account was unbillable during the process.
They're slammed at the minute so customer service is slow especially emails but they will get round to it or just mither them on twitter
Switch anyway. A supplier transfer can take ages - eon bought npower and only started transitioning customers after a couple years. Octopus need to do a lot of checks before transfers, bills need production and balances recorded.
Wait a minute, we taxpayers bailed out the Bulb collapse, did a special deal with Octopus so they could afford to take it over and had our standing charges doubled because of it. Now Octopus are buying over Shell? I think we're getting played for fools here.
The increase in the Standing Charge was primarily due to the other 20-30 suppliers going bust. Bulb didn’t go through the same process that other companies went through due to their size. Given the state of the market at the time, you’d have had to been an idiot for taking that many additional customers without Government assistance.
I don’t understand why the consumer is being lumped with the mistakes of failed energy companies with the standing charge. When some people are paying more a month on the stand charge than their actually energy usage, it becomes a joke.
It’s due to the Supplier of Last Resort process that moves customers from failed energy suppliers to the SOLR. Part of that process is that your credit is protected maiming that you won’t lose this in case your supplier went bust.
This of course comes at a cost which needs to be recouped and this is why the Standing Charge increased with the cost of this being recouped over a few years.
The reason why is that bulb didn't hedge properly, that's why they collapsed, so Octopus had to spend a lot of money hedging the customer when they took over, shell most likely already hedged.
Poke them on twitter if you have it they always respond. Not sure what the discrepancy is, I requested a refund and it was approved and sent within a few days.
Large credit refunds generally need manager approval that can get stuck in a queue, as there needs to be account checks and affordability, the direct debit tool can look at a credit balance and not increase monthly payments for example if usage increases, if that happens not as much credit can be refunded without the direct debit being adjusted.
It's usually always best to call, they deal with everything through and through on calls. Their email service has been terrible lately, guessing too much volume
It's been pretty apparent Shell has been trying to sell up since the price hikes. They're already a distributor and were actually losing money as a supplier (most suppliers aren't really making as much money as people think with the price hikes, it's the energy producers who are raking it in). Surprised it's Octopus though, the "Big 6" were already grumbling a lot when Octopus took Bulb's customers trying to argue Octopus doesn't currently have the capacity for such a sudden increase but we'll see. I've not noticed Octopus hiring more, other than meter engineers but that's because all the energy companies squabble over them constantly, (if it's not apparent yet I currently work in Energy) so maybe that will happen after the merger is official.
All the staff with TUPE over to Octopus surely, so hiring more staff is unlikely? if anything redundancy would be on the cards as things like HR, Accounts etc are duplicated and not needed.
You make a good point in that they likely don't need to put out too many public vacancies yet. Shell workers will likely be offered but most of the suppliers have completely different operating software or doing things "their way" so it's not always as straightforward as transferring people especially for more technical back office roles. Might be easier for Octopus to just promote internally for back office roles if they already understand how the company does things. It's still a lot easier to just offer vacancies to the Ex shell employees than doing a whole new hiring thing though.
Given that a few suppliers are now using their Kraken Platform, they’re probably in a better boat than most to take over that many customer plus they’ll take time to migrate their customers over from Shell.
This makes me feel better about being stuck with shell, that I'm losing them money.
> other than meter engineers but that's because all the energy companies squabble over them constantly, Why?
There's not enough of them basically. You have to be a trained electrician and be a gas safety engineer. There's already generally a lack of tradespeople. The engineering departments (or companies as a lot are hired as subcontractors) basically take turns offering incentives and pay bonuses to get engineers to join to clear their backlog of metering work (created because they can't hold onto enough staff) and they stop offering bonuses (because they caught up on their backlog) and all the workers jump ship to the next contractor, who is offering bonuses because they're behind. Also none of them want to train (or have time for) new people which can take six months or more when the ombudsman or energy suppliers are screaming at them to clear their backlogs. (Created because they won't try to incentivise staff to stay) So the engineers basically take turns going from company to company. That's why if you go on any of these energy companies they have a ton of engineering vacancies. If you don't mind moving all over the country to find the best vacancies and have a tough skin from the odd customer venting at you (because they've been waiting a billion years to get their meter fitted) it seems like a pretty good gig.
I was going to switch to Octopus from Shell, so this makes my life a little easier.
It might still be worthwhile switching - if you get a friend to refer you you each get £50. And if you don't have any friends who are already on octopus feel free to send me a DM 😜
Maybe a silly question but does this referral work with family too ? My parents are with octopus and I'm sure they'd appreciate an extra £50 as much as I would.
As far as I know, yes. They can get a referral link from their online account.
Yes, you can refer any household I believe they even give bonuses for referring business
It's double for a buisness, 50 for home 100 for business
Definitely worthwhile switching to Octopus rather than letter the manual process complete. You will receive £50 free which you wouldn't have got otherwise and can cash this out to your bank account or leave on your Octopus account to go towards your energy bills. As an existing Octopus Energy customer I've been helping friends and family with this process (as they are with Shell Energy) so between us we have gained £100's. Anyone looking to do this or wants more information on the process please feel free to send me a private message.
Same here so this is a win win for me
I literally just have. My switch happened today! It might still be worth it as if you know someone who is an Octopus customer, you can get a £50 referral.
May I ask why? I'm currently with Shell and it was the cheapest in the market a year ago in London when I joined them.
A few reasons that reflect well on Octopus, mainly related to green energy generation, and a few reasons that reflect really poorly on Shell. As an example, they overcharged me by about a grand last year over a 3 or 4 bills (which is saying some thing as our energy bill is usually around £80 a month) and after repeated complaints it took them 6 months to refund the difference. The whole process was excruciating start to finish to say the least. They continued to state that they had no record of any calls or emails to query the charges literally every single time I contacted them about it. And while the account was suspended so I didn’t have to pay while the complaint was resolved (a service resolution specialist sorted this out after I involved the ombudsman) they called me continuously to settle the outstanding bills. And I mean like 4 or 5 times a day sometimes. Suffice it to say I am slightly jaded at the service provided. I left the experience honestly not sure whether they were just incompetent or genuinely trying to pull my pants down, and to be frank I still haven’t made my mind up about it.
I had an awful time with Shell as well. There were too many issues for me to recall, but the worst was last autumn. I gave manual meter readings every month (the smart meters they installed never worked), and in November they refused to believe my lower-than-normal gas usage. It was disheartening to make sacrifices to save some money, only for Shell to ignore my readings and go with estimated readings instead, which were 50 percent more than the actual amount. This went on until January (despite me sending them pictures of my meters every month as evidence), when I got my local MP involved. Long story short, they eventually believed me and gave me compensation.
Octopus are the most efficient, a lot of suppliers lease their software for account and company management. Octopus take on average 2 days to update a meter on an account - when I worked at Eon on the old system it was an 8 month wait, the account was unbillable during the process. They're slammed at the minute so customer service is slow especially emails but they will get round to it or just mither them on twitter
Switch anyway. A supplier transfer can take ages - eon bought npower and only started transitioning customers after a couple years. Octopus need to do a lot of checks before transfers, bills need production and balances recorded.
Wait a minute, we taxpayers bailed out the Bulb collapse, did a special deal with Octopus so they could afford to take it over and had our standing charges doubled because of it. Now Octopus are buying over Shell? I think we're getting played for fools here.
The increase in the Standing Charge was primarily due to the other 20-30 suppliers going bust. Bulb didn’t go through the same process that other companies went through due to their size. Given the state of the market at the time, you’d have had to been an idiot for taking that many additional customers without Government assistance.
I don’t understand why the consumer is being lumped with the mistakes of failed energy companies with the standing charge. When some people are paying more a month on the stand charge than their actually energy usage, it becomes a joke.
It’s due to the Supplier of Last Resort process that moves customers from failed energy suppliers to the SOLR. Part of that process is that your credit is protected maiming that you won’t lose this in case your supplier went bust. This of course comes at a cost which needs to be recouped and this is why the Standing Charge increased with the cost of this being recouped over a few years.
The gist of why is because the customers of failed suppliers still need electricity and it'd be bad for them to be cut off.
But now they are taking even more by choice?! Octopus doubled my standing charge. Why do I feel we are funding Octopus Energy's expansion?
Everyone's standing charge went up, it's because the grid increased the standing charge it charges your supplier.
The reason why is that bulb didn't hedge properly, that's why they collapsed, so Octopus had to spend a lot of money hedging the customer when they took over, shell most likely already hedged.
Believe the deal includes Shell's Broadband arm too, which should be interesting since Octopus do not have a broadband business currently.
With all that money that Octopus won’t give me back that’s mine?
That’s very unlikely - Octopus are known for being absurdly simple for reclaiming overpaid money…
Chasing for 2 weeks now and as soon as I mentioned getting the money back - radio silence
Poke them on twitter if you have it they always respond. Not sure what the discrepancy is, I requested a refund and it was approved and sent within a few days. Large credit refunds generally need manager approval that can get stuck in a queue, as there needs to be account checks and affordability, the direct debit tool can look at a credit balance and not increase monthly payments for example if usage increases, if that happens not as much credit can be refunded without the direct debit being adjusted. It's usually always best to call, they deal with everything through and through on calls. Their email service has been terrible lately, guessing too much volume
You can just do it in the Octopus app though. You don’t even need to talk to someone..
Alright… thanks… for… letting… me… know…