Bulb Customers to be transfered to Octopus

[Krill]

Just saw it this morning and couldn't find it on the forum.

[Oldgreybeard]

Interesting, given the size of Bulb that's going to be a fair sized chunk of additional business for Octopus. IIRC, this isn't the first time Octopus have taken on customers from a failed supplier, so they have experience of handling it OK (more than could be said for one or two of the others that have tried this). Taking on Bulb will more than double the size of Octopus, they will go from having around 5.7% of the UK market to having about 11.6% of it, that's a mighty big increase.

I knew there had been a lot of failed energy suppliers, but was surprised to read just now that 49 energy suppliers have failed since 2016, with 27 of those failing since August 2021.

If nothing else that seems to show that there is wholly inadequate policing as to whether any new supplier is actually fit to do so. Given that we are all paying for these failed companies (via the big levy on everyone's standing charge) I think it's about time action was taken to prevent this sort of thing happening again.

[AE-NMidlands]

what is worrying is that Octopus say

Octopus is paying the government a nine digit sum and in addition will be paying a high proportion of any profits made through Bulb. The total amount Octopus is paying will be in the hundreds of millions of pounds.

I thought the reason that Bulb customers hadn't been picked up by any other firm yet was that not having hedged the additional volume of gas was likely to sink almost any company. They wanted millions if not billions to take on the additional volume.
I hope Octopus know what they are doing...
A

[Ken]

Its this notion of competition. How can you have competition when my leccy is exactly the same and costs the same as everyones. De facto price control by Ofgem works for me.

[Oldgreybeard]

what is worrying is that Octopus say

Octopus is paying the government a nine digit sum and in addition will be paying a high proportion of any profits made through Bulb. The total amount Octopus is paying will be in the hundreds of millions of pounds.

I thought the reason that Bulb customers hadn't been picked up by any other firm yet was that not having hedged the additional volume of gas was likely to sink almost any company. They wanted millions if not billions to take on the additional volume.
I hope Octopus know what they are doing...
A

So do I. More than doubling the size of the company's UK customer base in one hit is a big ask, especially given the costs involved. However, Octopus did take over Iresa back in 2018, and although that was only around 95,000 extra customers (compared with the 1.7 million Bulb customers) it did probably allow them to understand the challenges.

I believe that Octopus does have around 3.1 million customers overall, though, including all its non-UK customers, so maybe taking on another 1.7 million isn't that big a deal.

[Countrypaul]

More information appearing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63437352

It appears that Bulb has 1.7M customers and Octopus 3.4M so only taking on 50% more...

[Stan]

Do you think that, after the transfer, all new customers to Octopus will have to have a smart meter?

[Krill]

Disclaimer: I am with Bulb.

On a pragmatic level I want to know what is going to happen with meters.

I have a SMETS1 electric meter installed in probably 2000-ish when the house was extended, made by Landis+Gyr, and a none smart (analogue) gas meter installed in 2019. Neither of these are pre-payment tariffs.

Are they going to offer a choice of tariffs, or if they will not allow people to transfer to smart tariffs if they do not accept hte equipement, when will they fit suitable equipment (I just imagine the outcry if they refused!)

[Stinsy]

Disclaimer: I am with Bulb.

On a pragmatic level I want to know what is going to happen with meters.

I have a SMETS1 electric meter installed in probably 2000-ish when the house was extended, made by Landis+Gyr, and a none smart (analogue) gas meter installed in 2019. Neither of these are pre-payment tariffs.

Are they going to offer a choice of tariffs, or if they will not allow people to transfer to smart tariffs if they do not accept hte equipement, when will they fit suitable equipment (I just imagine the outcry if they refused!)

Seeing as they’re keeping the Bulb staff too, it seems probable that you’ll continue as you were on Bulb’s tech platform (rebranded to “Octopus”) and with their CS team for now. If you want an Octopus smart tariff you’ll have to switch to the Octopus platform and CS team (which will be remarkably similar to switching energy supplier).

[Oldgreybeard]

Do you think that, after the transfer, all new customers to Octopus will have to have a smart meter?

They can't do this, as there is a sizeable proportion of the Bulb customer base that live in areas where smart meters will not work. I believe that Octopus already accept this, and although they would far rather only accept customers that are in a smart meter area, they almost certainly have some customers that don't have them.

I've not been able to check recently (spent ages talking with Octopus CS to no avail) but when all tariffs were easy to obtain and compare, Octopus weren't very competitive for any non-smart meter tariff. They did used to offer a standard Economy 7 tariff that didn't need a smart meter, but they've been unable to confirm when I've asked if that tariff is still available for those that cannot have a smart meter.

We used to be with Bulb a fair time ago, and they did offer a pretty good Economy 7 tariff at that time, so there's a fair chance that Octopus are going to inherit a lot of non-smart meter customers. Dedicated Economy 7 smart meters are also relatively new, I believe the first 5 terminal E7 smart meter only became available about three or four years ago, so there is a fair chance that there aren't too many of them around yet.