At my age and after many years of changing and,somehow,not feeling any better off at the end of the year and finally,after a time with a "no frills"energy company I was moved by OFGEM to Octopus with whom I am very satisfied.
Up to 4 weeks ago I too was very happy with Octopus and couldnt fault them in any way, I had been with Octopus over 7 years. A member of another forum discussed my account with Octopus which resulted in an email from Octopus stating they had noticed some unusual charging practices on my account. It went on to issue warning about T&C and actions they could take. I challenged Octopus to show me the practices they had 'noticed' for two reasons, the first being I hadnt done anything unusual or that contravenes T&C and secondly I knew full well that this was in response to the forum member contacting Octopus and discussing my account with them. I took great exception to this, a member of senior management contacted me and confirmed that I hadnt contravened any T&C and that the author of the email was wrong. Octopus never apologised for this libelous email which I find annoying and upsetting. I have never missed a payment with Octopus, always held over £500 in credit on my account and made lots of recommendations resulting in new customers for them. This was the final straw which initiated me looking around finding Tomato during the search
I feel I need to trust them as an honest company but the most important consideration to me now as I desparately try to keep up with teccy stuff is CUSTOMER SUPPORT. ie. real people. I am fed with trying to talk to bots as you can't discuss your issues eg. car/home insurance.
I have spoken with Octopus customer care a few times over the years. email can take a long time, typically 2 to 4 weeks, telephoning can be 60 minutes or so getting through, once you get through usually theyre ok although there have been many reports of incorrect information especially around their intelligent tariffs which the customer care operatives seemingly dont understand.
I recently attempted to renew my car insurance and could not get past the bot whichever 'phone number I tried but somehow managed to get to a real person - a delightful Irish woman who made me feel comfortable. We had a good laugh and when I said jokingly the price was too much she knocked off £60 - a bot is not programmed to do that!
I too have done insurance and breakdown cover renewal recently. I'm annoyed that every year I go this process with same result, car1 renewal £375 made the phone call and paid £260 same cover, car 2 renewal £330 after the phone call £225, AA renewal £38 after the phonecall £14. It really, really annoys me and clearly loyalty / good record counts for nothing.
I now always at a company's star rating for CS before going for them
Yeah, I know what you mean but theyre really not very accurate, for example my annoyance with AA, Octopus and others has never resulted in me giving low star rating. There are many companies now using AI to give +ve rating to companies, completely fictitious. Now I try to call customer care and ask some pertinent questions to see what the company is like, form my own opinion. In the case of Tomato, I call customer service 3 times, each time it was answered within 40 seconds and the operative gave sound, knowledgeable advice and answers. That gave me confidence to change to them with the bad taste left by Octopus. Time will tell if Tomato was a good choice and I will keep everyone update warts and all.
