Octopus Energy vs British Gas (September 2026)

Introduced an Operations Academy for Ongoing Excellence so we can continue to ensure our people have the skills to be industry-leading energy specialists. We’ve grown our teams, meaning more people to respond and help you with anything you need. Expanding training, with refresher courses run each month for all specialists, making sure they are always giving you the most up-to-date information. Introduced more opportunities for our Energy Specialists to partake in our Academy for Ongoing Excellence and improve their skill sets. Those specialists can become team experts, enabling everybody to better support their customers.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that our communications are as clear as possible, with more information on our statement emails that is tailored to the customer. We’re also offering more comprehensive answers to frequently asked questions. We’ve tightened restrictions around back billing to ensure that customers aren’t charged for energy they used more than 12 months ago. Reviewing our billing system to improve innovative billings products such as Intelligent Octopus and Fan Club Improving the meter reading submission journey to make it easier than ever to submit readings quickly and correctly. Improving training for our operations teams, to ensure that all of our staff are equipped to deal with complex billing queries.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that our communications are as clear as possible, with clear information on our Smart Tariff bills which are tailored to give a great understanding of where the costs originate from. We’re continuously working to ensure that the number of customers who haven’t had a bill is kept to an absolute minimum, by instructing our tech system to retrieve missing consumption data in instances where a bill hasn’t been issued on time. We’ve introduced routine training sessions to help all of our energy specialists to manage tricky Smart Tariff billing issues to ensure all of our customers can be helped. Continuing to improve and streamline the automatic process of our tech system creating your Smart Tariff bills without the need for an Energy Specialist to be involved. Improving training for our operations teams, to ensure that all of our staff are equipped to deal with complex billing queries. Continuing to improve the way we identify and solve billing failures for customers on our smart products in order to ensure our customers receive their statements on time.

We’ll regularly review Direct Debits to help ensure customers are paying the right amount for the energy they use to avoid building up a debit. We'll always work with customers to make sure the amount they pay each month is affordable for them. We expanded our Octo Assist Fund, setting aside £40m to help those worried about paying for their energy this Winter. If you're an Octopus customer worried about your energy bills, you can access our Financial Support form here – a quick and simple online tool which asks you a series of questions about your financial situation and helps us to understand how we can best help you. We’re supporting customers through the rise in energy costs. We’ve made it easier for customers to tell us that they’re concerned, and we’ll work with them to provide the support they need. Customers can see projected balances on their online account which lets them see how their account will look in 6 months' time with their current payments. Lead the industry in recruiting our own in-house team of qualified Social Workers, able to offer bespoke solutions and work with organisations to support our most vulnerable customers. We’re partnering with organisations to make completing affordability assessments simpler and more accurate including a service that checks if customers are entitled to claim further benefits or support beyond what Octopus offer. We lead the way by providing free electric blankets to customers who need them, recognising that heating a blanket costs a fraction of what it costs to heat an entire house. We offer bespoke solutions as required that can include standing charge holidays, reduced payments or schemes to provide financial support where circumstances suggest people need a little extra help. We constantly review the support we provide to all our Specialists to ensure that they are well equipped to resolve payment issues.

Over the last 12 months we've increased our operating percentage by 0.40%ppts Over the same period our smart metering base has grown by over 1.3 million working meters Our installation success on the date of appointment is over 97% and for that 3% which aren't successful on the day, we have a number of automated retry processes in place to resolve those within 24 hours. We're actively replacing hundreds of thousands of non working smart meters....In the last year alone we've replaced over 350k smart for smart replacements. In 2026 we'll do even more than that. In the last year we've upgraded nearly 4 million smart meters onto newer firmware upgrades, contributing towards improvements in our operational performance. We're pioneering new technology, switching to 4G comms hubs from Q4 2025, as well piloting Wifi based solutions. We continue to offer all customers the Octopus Home Mini, improving the level of granularity and control you get from your smart meter. Empowering our frontline energy specialists with customer-friendly technical instructions that allow the commissioning of meters remotely, resulting in reduced time without smart metering capability. Continuing to grow our own in-house installation team to ensure that the customer service delivered when installing meters is in line with Octopus Energy's overall customer service ethos. Teaming up with industry-leading EV manufacturer Tesla, to bring new service propositions, special tariffs and features to benefit the exploding electric vehicle market.