Octopus Energy have been recommend by Which? consumer magazine for many years. But Which? now recommends other suppliers with higher levels of customer service, such as Ecotricity. Octopus have fallen in the CAB energy customer service rankings.
Many promote Octopus as cheaper due to their Tracker and Agile tariffs. But that is not a fair comparison; whether these tariffs suit a customer depends on their attitude to risk, and if they don't want to spend headspace on ever-changing rates, you cannot recommend a tracker without a clear understanding of the customer. Not everyone will want to commit to checking unit-rate trends every couple of weeks to mitigate risk. Perhaps to plan and budget, they want to fix and forget, even if they then pay now a high forward buying hedging premium due to volatility in prices via Octopus rather than take risks themselves under Tracker.
Several other suppliers such as Good Energy use Octopus' Kraken IT system but in case of Good Energy and Coop, also customer service. They have different energy mixes and purchase from different sources, but both support renewables. Good Energy removes meters and caps gas supplies for free, as Octopus used to.
Octopus Energy, like many suppliers, has a referral scheme that gets spammed onto various consumer energy forums, despite Octopus Energy's rules:
8.2 You will not be eligible to refer customers to us under the referral scheme if: 8.2.6 (was 7.5.6) "We have reason to believe you are sending or advertising your Personalised Link to people who are not known to you or if you are in any way trying to benefit from our referral scheme on a commercial basis rather than for personal use. We may review any account we think might be "taking the mickey" particularly if we receive complaints from other customers, or if you have referred over 10 people in any 12 month period and we reserve the right to deactivate your Personalised Link or move you to a different scheme."
They use a two word combo refferal link code schema
Anecdotal evidence is that their response times have got longer, and so many suggest contacting their social media team to get a quicker response. But I suggest you avoid the cesspit that is X /Twitter now.
Although many like the Kraken platform for it monthly billing and ability to handle complex Time of Use tariffs, since March 2024 it has been misbilling slightly, billing some usage for rates on an adjacent period, due to BST/GMT mismatch in one case.
Octopus are pro-electrification and pro-heat pump, as their podcast, where they state that switching to natural gas was due to government subsidy when it in fact saved more than the investment in change cost, over continuing with Town Gas even after previous switch to naphtha-based production from coal. As an investment that paid for itself many times over. They rule out switching to Hydrogen for home heating due to conversion losses. What matters is deliverability that works for customers, and economics. In the same interview, they give this as a reason not to fully optimise heating-replace designs and instead design to higher flow temperatures so you don't need to change radiators, even though there are big savings in running costs with lower flow temperatures and weather compensation.
Here are some related links, including other suppliers using Octopus Kraken Tech and the electrification of heat below.
If you use Facebook then many Octopus Energy groups some dedicated to specific tarrifs. For complaints and rants aginst Octopus with less fans than other groups try Octopus Energy - Complaints & compliments. Also those with Octopus Energy share experiances on Energy GB Facebook group.