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Yipee!  THTC customers in Northern Scotland will continue to be ripped off!  Great news!

As soon as I get my storage and immersion heaters removed I will be DEMANDING the removal of my THTC meter and you will never see me again as an OVO customer.

Not necessarily - as many THTC Customers as possible will be removed from THTC permanently, as long as the DNO allows it.

I won’t hold my breath.  I certainly won’t be sticking around with OVO on the vague promise of maybe something further down the line when other providers offer FAR better tariffs and customer service.

But at the same time, I do need to manage your expectations a bit. I can’t 100% promise you’ll ever get off of THTC - and IIRC it’s not OVO who decides which customers must remain on it.

I can try to dig deeper to find out more, but it’ll take time.

I understand that and that is why I will be changing my heating and hot water system and disconnecting everything from the RTS meter.  Once I’m free of that second meter then there is absolutely no compelling reason to stay with OVO.

Hi @SittingWhilePosting,

I’m really sorry to hear this and understand your frustration.

It may be worth contacting the Support team who’d also be able to advise further.

As soon as we have any further news about the RTS shutdown, we’ll update all related topics. 

Just to let other THTC meter users I have just received email yesterday 21st of August 2024 from OVO asking to phone to arrange New Smart Meter replacement of my 31 year old THTC tariff Meters.
Phoned up today and earliest we got was 4th September 2024. Finally going to happen.

I live in Dundee area DD4 postcode. 

When you phoned OVO to arrange the smart meter installation did they discuss what tariff you would be moved to and were you given a choice of tariffs?

We're DD8.  When we phoned we were given the choice of a single tariff meter, Economy 7 or Economy 10.  It's being changed tomorrow. We can barely contain our excitement!!

Thanks for this information.  Can you please keep us up to date as to how the installation went e.g. did they have to modify any wiring going into your consumer unit(s) or any other changes they performed apart from the meter change and the removal of the THTC meter?  This would help the rest of us enormously.  Incidentally, I am AB33.

There will be some wiring changes, but the engineer can do those for you. Pretty much 100% of them are just meter related - your consumer unit wouldn’t be touched.

Update everyone...... Engineer was due at 10am. At 9.45am he phoned to say he can't change the meter because it's a THTC meter We have to phone and get the tariff changed first!!! We've been trying to do that for 3 years and can't because it's a THTC meter.  They are all completely clueless.  The engineer didn't even give the number to phone.  

To say we are incensed doesn't even begin to describe our feelings...... 

Update on the update ...... Apparently the person booking the meter change appointment didn't click the button to say which meter we wanted despite going through all the questions!! This wasn't noticed until the engineer looked before coming to the appointment.

Not exactly sure we believe that but another appointment made for Tuesday 17th September.  We're so utterly fed up with this.....

Hey @Cassie511, 

I’m sorry to read this. I know it’s incredibly frustrating for you. It looks like something went wrong, and we need to find a way to fix this for you ASAP. 

I’ve asked our Forum_Support team to contact you. If you can keep an eye on your private messages here, they’ll do so. ​​

It appears that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.  I have been deliberately holding off getting the smart meter installed because, from what I have read on various THTC and smart meter forum topics, OVO seems to be clueless as to what is required to complete the installation of the smart meter and the removal of the RTS meter.

It makes no difference whether it be the call centre, support, or meter installers all we seem to get are platitudes like those from @Chris_OVO above saying how frustrating it must be.  How many times has he said that? You have no idea how frustrating it is unless you are at the customer end of it and I do realise that he is at the supplier sharp end and it must be frustrating for him to be continually apologising but OVO really need to get their act together and speak with one voice.

Incidentally, I have just been speaking with  a neighbour and OVO are replacing his meters next week.  I find it strange that OVO are doing his next week (OVO contacted him and offered E10 and nothing else) when they could have written to all the residents in our estate (123 of us and we are nearly all on THTC) and scheduled the whole estate to be done at the one time.

I can tell you that this thread is being actively monitored by all of the Forum Moderators and Forum Volunteers. We’ve got ways of flagging things up rapidly if needed. By rapidly I mean it takes me merely two clicks to alert the Forum Moderators to an issue and they’re pretty quick to catch on too. If you need a hand, feel free to post here and we’ll swing by.

We’re probably going to take this backstage to discuss and I sense an opportunity later this week to talk about it with someone who might know useful stuff. This thread will be added to the agenda.

Bear with us - we’re definitely not going to ignore this!

I’m totally fed up with OVO too. I’ve been trying to get info on upgrades for years from Hydro/SSE/OVO and, despite many promises, I am still in the dark (thankfully, not literally). Many promised change dates have come and gone and it has got to the point where I cannot trust what OVO ‘Customer Care’ are telling me as it sometimes changes overnight. I can’t change supplier as I’m on THTC (I have tried to change!), I can’t change my current tariff as I’m on an “exotic” meter apparently, I don’t understand all the abbreviations, and it looks my future choices won’t be choices at all. I have no idea what my bills will rise to.

Meters are the responsibility of the supplier, so OVO would only ever write to its own customers. Do you know that all of the residents are still with OVO? Granted, if there’s only one meter installation contractor in the area, he might save himself and the customers a bit of time by concentrating his efforts on a single estate, at the expense of course of all the others not on the estate waiting patiently for their turn. That would involve a major coordination exercise between customers, suppliers and installers, but I agree it might make sense. There’s a month’s work to be done, after all, at the rate of 6 meter exchanges a day.

You ask....Do you know if all the residents are still with OVO??

Almost certainly, because NO OTHER SUPPLIER WILL ACCEPT OUR METERS.

Believe me, we've tried. A few seem to have managed to escape but I've no idea how they did it. 

Hi, apart from those residents who have ditched their storage heaters and installed oil fired boilers to their homes (a couple of dozen at most) everyone else, to my knowledge, have the RTS meter and, as no other supplier normally takes these customers on because of the RTS meter, I conclude from that that customers will still be on THTC tariff from OVO.  In our village there is another large estate which is similar to ours in that they have storage heaters also (no mains gas in our village).  OVO could send a squad of installers to our village and would be fully occupied for weeks.

Interesting. How old are these installations? Meters should have a certification stamp on them giving the date. It should theoretically make it a simpler exercise to exchange a lot of identical old meters for identical new ones, assuming that OVO’s new metering stuff can cope with the current arrangements. 

There is some prioritization of sites to be dealt with, but I’ve no idea how it works. We may have something more to share about this in a couple of days’ time.

The two housing estates that I mentioned were built in the mid to late 1990’s and, when built, all had THTC tariff electric storage and panel heating installed although some residents have since installed oil fired boilers. 

My normal domestic meter is the one installed when new in 1996 (certification stamp 96) and the RTS meter was changed in 2004 (certification stamp 04).

An update.  I have just received an email from OVO asking me to phone them to arrange for a new meter to be installed.  Will keep you up to date.

We’ve just had a very, VERY good chat with someone from OVO who knows about this stuff. This contact of ours is an OVO Engineer who just so happens to know an absolute ton.

Long story short, he agrees that in an ideal world, you would have a few engineers swing by to the estates you all mentioned and just speedrun the entire lot at once. But it’s not always that simple.

We’d suggest getting as many of your neighbours as possible to book in for similar dates and OVO will try to figure this out. Extra engineers can be called in if needed.

Hope this helps!