My gas meter has failed and I have no heat. I'm an OAP and cannot get through to anyone!

Hi ​@nasuffolk ,

I’m afraid service hours are more limited than normal right now due to the Festive Break that pretty much all OVO staff are taking. You can still reach OVO’s Social Media Team via DM on Facebook/Twitter, otherwise OVO’s teams will be back in the office on Monday, allowing all contact options to work.

I will, however, notify the Forum Moderators about this thread.

Just in case you’re around ​@Chris_OVO ​@Bradley_OVO ​@Emmanuelle_OVO ? ^^

UPDATE

No one from OVO replied to this forum post.

Simultaneously to posting here, I wrote a message on the OVO Facebook page and after an hour I was able to get through to a contractor who handles their emergency service on the weekend. An engineer is now on his way and will be here in the next four hours, so it looks like my issue will be resolved.

But, what a palaver. There were about ten different Facebook pages, some of which were obviously scams, and they all wanted my personal information. I took my best guess at which was the official one and I guessed right, but what if I hadn’t?

I am very disappointed in OVO. It’s close to freezing and I’ve had no central heat or hot water for about 12 hours now. It shouldn’t be this hard to get help.

It’s worth remembering the OVO Forum is volunteer led and primarily patrolled by the Forum Volunteers, such as myself. OVO Staff don’t tend to post here outside of either the Forum Moderators (who don’t work at weekends) or a handpicked few OVO Staff who have permission to post publicly, but they too don’t tend to work weekends. If you require OVO Staff to respond, you’re actually better off using the options at https://ovoenergy.com/help rather than asking here.

Getting help from them is usually much easier than this. You just got unlucky in that your gas meter suffered a fault at Christmas, the one time of the year where OVO - and in fact, basically the entire industry - temporarily suspends just about everything that’s not critical to give everyone a break.

Normal services will resume in the New Year. For now, please see the Festive Opening Hours below:

​@Blastoise186 If you read my post, you’ll see that I tried the  https://ovoenergy.com/help link and got nowhere. That’s why I posted on here, in the hope that someone who knew how to get help would be monitoring it. Instead, I figured it out on my own, but that’s my whole point: why should I have to read various Facebook pages to get help? Why wasn’t that number front-and-center on the OVO page? Also, I don’t accept that when it comes to a basic human need such as heating one’s home, I should be at the mercy of luck, as in “Golly, it was bad luck her heat went out and she froze to death the week we were off for Christmas.”

​@Emmanuelle_OVO Thank you for the information, but I can’t believe your company has a 42 hour period where its customers are on their own. I have been keeping my house warm by burning logs in my fireplace since Saturday,

I was promised a call from OVO this morning, but after waiting two hours, I had to call them. They had no record of my call on Saturday, of them dispatching an emergency engineer, or to call me this morning to schedule a follow-on appointment. The earliest they can get a contract engineer out to fix my system is January 6! I guess I’ll be burning some more logs.

Thank you for the information about the emergency register. That was the first I had heard of it, but I have signed up for it now.

Gas Meters rarely fail in a way that kills the entire supply, especially those that aren’t PAYG. It’s far more common for the boiler to give up the ghost than the Meter. The industry also doesn’t consider Gas to be as critical as Electricity, which is why emergency options are weaker for Gas than for Electric.

AFAIK OVO pretty much has someone on the Social Media Team active more or less 365 days a year so there’s always someone around. The lines were also open every day last week except for Christmas Day/Boxing Day, albeit with reduced hours, but there were still agents in the office.