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When will I receive my compensation for a missed engineer appointment?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 21, 2017
91 replies
21895 views

I signed up for a new smart meter and arranged an appointment to have it installed. The engineer failed to turn up and so I telephoned Customer Services to arrange another appointment. The agent went through her script and advised me that if I was not in when the engineer called there would be a £30 charge. I asked if that also applied where the engineer failed to turn up. She checked and said that it did and that she would arrange to credit my account with £30. So far I have not received the credit. When will it come?

Best answer by Tim_OVO

Updated on 03/09/26 by Chris_OVO

Sorry to hear about your missed smart meter appointment. As our Support Team has advised, if the engineer failed to attend without at least 24 hours notice of a cancellation, you may be eligible for a standard £40 compensation known as Guaranteed Standards of Performance (GSOP) payment.

The UK’s energy regulator, Ofgem, advises energy suppliers on Guaranteed Standards of Performance. This is sometimes called GSOP. Energy suppliers in the UK have to meet these standards for our customers, or we’ll owe you compensation.

You can find out more about Guaranteed Standards of Performance and your rights in the article below:

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Show previous replies

Tim_OVO

OVO Forum Legend

I’m really sorry to hear about this no-show appointment, @cloud - not a good move by OVO to follow that up with a survey and no contact about the failure to attend.

As others have mentioned, you’re owed £30 compensation if you weren’t given at least 24 hours notice of the cancellation. If that isn’t sent within 10 working days it gets doubled.

This should happen automatically, you don’t need to request it. Worst case scenario is you get twice the compensation. Of course if you wanted to rebook or find out why the engineer failed, our Support team can help (web chat closes at 6pm on weekdays). Not sure why you can’t send OVO a Twitter direct message, what happens when you press send?

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Blastoise186

Super User

Given how unreliable Twitter has been in recent months… I wouldn’t be surprised if you hit a Twitter bug and/or some kind of Twitter outage while trying to send a DM to OVO. Unfortunately, that would be beyond OVO’s control if that was the case.

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Jeffus

Rank 20

If the OVO Twitter DM messages aren't working for some people, the OVO Social Media team simply usually ask customers to send a direct message via the OVO Facebook page. The team can read both sets of messages.

It happens sometimes with both Facebook and Twitter over the years i have used them with various companies.

S

SarahH

Newcomer

We have had an appointment where the engineer did not turn up a few weeks ago . We've not received compensation.

An engineer did turn up on Monday but it turns out that OVO had muddled the booking and given him the information for meters based in Wales. I'm in Hampshire, England. So he couldn't do the job. I reached out to OVO, again, via email and phone call. No one has even acknowledged us, despite us being with the advance resolution team now.

This has been months and months of trying to sort our issue., with confusing and contradictory responses. It is immensely frustrating.

Jeffus

Rank 20

We have had an appointment where the engineer did not turn up a few weeks ago . We've not received compensation.

An engineer did turn up on Monday but it turns out that OVO had muddled the booking and given him the information for meters based in Wales. I'm in Hampshire, England. So he couldn't do the job. I reached out to OVO, again, via email and phone call. No one has even acknowledged us, despite us being with the advance resolution team now.

This has been months and months of trying to sort our issue., with confusing and contradictory responses. It is immensely frustrating.

Hi @SarahH

Welcome to the forum, i am just a customer like you.

In theory you should have got the £30 compensation for the first missed appointment within 10 days of the missed appointment.

An engineer misses an appointment
An engineer arrives after the agreed appointment time (outside the 4-hour time slot given to you)
The installer or OVO cancels an appointment at short notice (less than 24 hours before the agreed start time on a working day)
The engineer is unable to complete the work because they were missing ‘standard’ equipment or arrived with the wrong equipment (when there had been prior notification of what was needed - this must be cross-referenced with the booking to ensure it was booked correctly)
An appointment did not go ahead due to an agent booking error
System errors such as auto cancellation and not receiving cancellation notification.

If the payment wasn't made within 10 days, then you are entitled to another £30.

You are also entitled to £30 for the Monday appointment as they didn't come with the right stuff.

Again if this isn't paid within 10 days of the appointment you are entitled to another £30.

These are legal requirements on OVO.

If you haven't already, i would put in an official complaint

https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Make sure you get a complaint number and a named complaint handler.

If OVO don't sort it within 8 weeks, you can ask the Energy Ombudsman to intervene. The average compensation awarded against OVO was another £80 the last time I looked.

S

SarahH

Newcomer

We have had an appointment where the engineer did not turn up a few weeks ago . We've not received compensation.

An engineer did turn up on Monday but it turns out that OVO had muddled the booking and given him the information for meters based in Wales. I'm in Hampshire, England. So he couldn't do the job. I reached out to OVO, again, via email and phone call. No one has even acknowledged us, despite us being with the advance resolution team now.

This has been months and months of trying to sort our issue., with confusing and contradictory responses. It is immensely frustrating.

Hi @SarahH

Welcome to the forum, i am just a customer like you.

In theory you should have got the £30 compensation for the first missed appointment within 10 days of the missed appointment.

An engineer misses an appointment
An engineer arrives after the agreed appointment time (outside the 4-hour time slot given to you)
The installer or OVO cancels an appointment at short notice (less than 24 hours before the agreed start time on a working day)
The engineer is unable to complete the work because they were missing ‘standard’ equipment or arrived with the wrong equipment (when there had been prior notification of what was needed - this must be cross-referenced with the booking to ensure it was booked correctly)
An appointment did not go ahead due to an agent booking error
System errors such as auto cancellation and not receiving cancellation notification.

If the payment wasn't made within 10 days, then you are entitled to another £30.

You are also entitled to £30 for the Monday appointment as they didn't come with the right stuff.

Again if this isn't paid within 10 days of the appointment you are entitled to another £30.

These are legal requirements on OVO.

If you haven't already, i would put in an official complaint

https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Make sure you get a complaint number and a named complaint handler.

If OVO don't sort it within 8 weeks, you can ask the Energy Ombudsman to intervene. The average compensation awarded against OVO was another £80 the last time I looked.

Thank you! I appreciate your time. I do have an official complaint put in. Twitter put that in for me in January. I've a reference number, is that the same as a complaint number?

I don't have a named complaint handler. I've had a few different people from the Advanced resolution team contact me over the intervening time. I'll make sure I get one.

Jeffus

Rank 20

We have had an appointment where the engineer did not turn up a few weeks ago . We've not received compensation.

An engineer did turn up on Monday but it turns out that OVO had muddled the booking and given him the information for meters based in Wales. I'm in Hampshire, England. So he couldn't do the job. I reached out to OVO, again, via email and phone call. No one has even acknowledged us, despite us being with the advance resolution team now.

This has been months and months of trying to sort our issue., with confusing and contradictory responses. It is immensely frustrating.

Hi @SarahH

Welcome to the forum, i am just a customer like you.

In theory you should have got the £30 compensation for the first missed appointment within 10 days of the missed appointment.

An engineer misses an appointment
An engineer arrives after the agreed appointment time (outside the 4-hour time slot given to you)
The installer or OVO cancels an appointment at short notice (less than 24 hours before the agreed start time on a working day)
The engineer is unable to complete the work because they were missing ‘standard’ equipment or arrived with the wrong equipment (when there had been prior notification of what was needed - this must be cross-referenced with the booking to ensure it was booked correctly)
An appointment did not go ahead due to an agent booking error
System errors such as auto cancellation and not receiving cancellation notification.

If the payment wasn't made within 10 days, then you are entitled to another £30.

You are also entitled to £30 for the Monday appointment as they didn't come with the right stuff.

Again if this isn't paid within 10 days of the appointment you are entitled to another £30.

These are legal requirements on OVO.

If you haven't already, i would put in an official complaint

https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Make sure you get a complaint number and a named complaint handler.

If OVO don't sort it within 8 weeks, you can ask the Energy Ombudsman to intervene. The average compensation awarded against OVO was another £80 the last time I looked.

Thank you! I appreciate your time. I do have an official complaint put in. Twitter put that in for me in January. I've a reference number, is that the same as a complaint number?

I don't have a named complaint handler. I've had a few different people from the Advanced resolution team contact me over the intervening time. I'll make sure I get one.

That should be the complaint number then if you asked via Twitter for a complaint to be raised. Luckily you will have an audit trail of the conversation on Twitter.

You should now be able to go directly to the Energy Ombudsman as the 8 weeks is up.

You can always ask OVO for a deadlock letter as the 8 weeks is up, but it isn't necessary.

If for any reason OVO didn't actually raise a complaint that really is their issue if you asked for it in the Twitter conversation.

S

SarahH

Newcomer

Thank you! I appreciate your time. I do have an official complaint put in. Twitter put that in for me in January. I've a reference number, is that the same as a complaint number?

I don't have a named complaint handler. I've had a few different people from the Advanced resolution team contact me over the intervening time. I'll make sure I get one.

That should be the complaint number then if you asked via Twitter for a complaint to be raised. Luckily you will have an audit trail of the conversation on Twitter.

You should now be able to go directly to the Energy Ombudsman as the 8 weeks is up.

You can always ask OVO for a deadlock letter as the 8 weeks is up, but it isn't necessary.

If for any reason OVO didn't actually raise a complaint that really is their issue if you asked for it in the Twitter conversation.

Great, that's really helpful. I've got a document written with a full time line and complete trail of evidence. Thankfully I hate talking on the phone, so there's only a couple of points of contact that aren't recorded.

In todays email I gave OVO notice that if there wasn't a swift resolution that I'd be taking them to the ombudsman. So I'll give them a couple of days and then do that. We just want working smart meters so we can access time of use tariffs.