Struggling to pay your bills? We can help

Many people experience financial difficulty at some point in their lives, and in those moments, we all deserve a helping hand. Energy bills make up a big chunk of the average household’s monthly expenses, and research shows that millions struggle to pay every month —the most recent figures (from 2023) suggest that 3.26 million people in this country are living in fuel poverty.

We’re committed to helping our customers. We’ll treat you with the respect and understanding you deserve, and we’ll do whatever we can to help take that burden off your shoulders.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to reach out and ask for assistance – so, from the offset, we want that call to be the easiest you ever make. There’s no judgement here. Just a friendly, professional team who want to understand what’s going on and help you in any way we can.

Ways we can help:

If you fall into debt for any reason, we can assist by:

Standing up for customers at Octopus Energy

Part of the reason so many people struggle to pay their bills is a legacy of rip-off tactics from Big 6 energy companies. These giants penalise their most loyal and long-standing customers — taking advantage of people’s lack of understanding and time to charge extortionate prices to boost their profits.

At Octopus, we're committed to fighting for fair energy pricing for all. We promise honesty and transparency around your energy prices. We don’t ‘tease and squeeze’ our customers — meaning we keep our default or variable tariff as close as we can to our fixed term prices, so nobody is rolled onto an expensive variable tariff when their first year deal ends.

We’ve campaigned fiercely against the dirty tricks of the Big 6 legacy suppliers by rallying behind an energy price cap which limits ‘tease and squeeze’ behaviour across the entire industry, for the sake of vulnerable customers everywhere.

Combatting surprise debt

Confusing processes and unclear bills in the energy industry mean that many customers can find themselves in surprise debt.

What does that look like? You’ll be making regular energy payments, and only realise months later that they weren’t enough to cover your energy use when you’re presented with a giant bill to pay off your accrued debt. This issue arises when a supplier hasn’t spotted the issue early in and let their customer know. This means that when that customer wants to switch, they could get handed a surprise bill for hundreds, or even thousands of pounds.

Surprise debt has led to a real lack of trust.

The best way to prevent surprise debt before it becomes a problem? Be completely transparent.

That’s why, at Octopus Energy, we check your account health 45 days after joining, and every three months after - while also giving you full control over your account.

If you want to read more about surprise debt, and what we’re doing to combat it, check out this blog post about ‘surprise debt’ for more details.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch

If you are having any trouble at all, we urge you to get in touch in the way that suits you best.

Whether we can assist with your account balance, help you to become more fuel efficient and spend less, or pass you on to another organisation who can offer specialist advice, we’re here to help you in any way we can.