Octopus Go, Go Faster and IO temporarily suspended for new signups and renewals

[Oldgreybeard]

Wall OK, no more visits from the local loony?

All seems to have died down, thank goodness. Wall's looking good, though:

The Wall.jpg (183.65 KiB) Viewed 1317 times

With fortune, the next couple of years will drive an unwanted development of the average power consumer.

I do hope so, but I can't help thinking that a lot of people just won't be able to understand what it is they are buying or how much they are paying for it. They may well just accept it costs a lot of money and put up with getting ripped off.

[nowty]

Agile is now back, a bit complicated though.

https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-pricing-explained/

[Krill]

Maybe I've just gone through a long week, but I have multiple degrees including one in Chemistry and that explanation battered my head.

What hope does Joe Bloggs have if Agile is the way of the future?

[Stinsy]

All the formulas are written in Excel format. I’ve met people professionally who confuse Excel maths for real maths. Excel is a format designed to be easily input into a computer, it isn’t the easiest way to communicate with humans. It is a sign that whoever wrote that has no real foundation in maths.

[Mr Gus]

In that case guys, to save a lot of non forum folk grief & in order to get them on the job of "plain english" ..email greg or whoever sits & reads the top mans emails in his name & get that across in the manner it is written here.

[Oldgreybeard]

Expecting all consumers to understand the Excel "MIN" and "MAX" functions, not to mention the non-standard notation used, is just appallingly bad in terms of making their tariffs clear and free from confusion, which is something they are supposed to do, I believe. It's all very well having good technical people working to provide services, but a serious error to have these same people on the consumer facing side.

[Stinsy]

Expecting all consumers to understand the Excel "MIN" and "MAX" functions, not to mention to non-standard notation used, is just appallingly bad in terms of making their tariffs clear and free from confusion, which is something they are supposed to do, I believe. It's all very well having good technical people working to provide services, but a serious error to have these same people on the consumer facing side.

As I said: “I’ve worked with people like that”. Their sole experience dealing with data is Excel. They don’t understand that the way Excel forces you to do things is excessively complex and concepts that are easy to explain to a human are presented as a garbled mess in Excel.

When did Octopus go downhill so badly? They used to be good at comms!

[Oldgreybeard]

Just an error by their PR team, or whoever runs their comms, I expect. Chances are whoever wrote that item on Agile didn't have a clue about maths and didn't think it worth checking whether the Excel format posted actually made sense to normal mathematicians. I know one company that got their fingers burned by allowing their technical guru to talk with potential customers. Caused them what they saw as hassle two or three times until they stopped that person from communicating with customers at all.

[nowty]

That feck for that, I feel my maths is significantly above average but I gave up with it half way, blamed the red wine and just posted it.

[Tinbum]

Due to new rules I was trying to do a vat return in Excel the other day to be able to send it as digital. (What a waste of time, I already do the accounts on software, but it's old, so now I print the return out, input it into excel, then upload that to a software company that then sends it to HMRC).

I'd used excel before many years ago, but OMG, it took me ages just to figure out how to add two cells together! What a crack pot system, it used to be easy.