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?
Solved
When will I receive my compensation for a missed engineer appointment?
Best answer by Tim_OVO
Updated on 03/01/25 by Abby_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.
What are Guaranteed Standards of Performance (GSOP)?
Guaranteed Standards of Performance are the promises we make to you, as your energy supplier.
We’ll always do our best to keep these promises. If for some reason we don’t meet the guaranteed standards, we’ll pay £40 directly into your OVO Energy account. This is our way of saying sorry. It’s sometimes called GSOP compensation, or a GSOP payment.
Meter appointments
Sometimes you might have to book an appointment for an OVO engineer to visit your home – for example, to fit a new meter.
If you contact us to book an appointment, we’ll do our best to:
-
Give you a date that’s as soon as possible (you’ll get a 4-hour time slot)
-
Let you know at least 1 working day in advance if we need to rearrange your slot
And we’ll do everything we can to make sure your appointment goes as smoothly as it should. That includes sending an engineer who has the skills, experience, and resources to do the job.
If we fail to do any of the above, we’ll pay £40 into your account.
Read more about what to expect when an OVO engineer visits your home
Reconnecting your supply
If you’ve been taken off supply because of unpaid charges, and these have now been paid, we promise to get your gas and/or electricity back up and running quickly. We’ll reconnect your supply within 24 hours.
Please note: if you pay your charges outside of working hours, we’ll aim to reconnect your supply the next working day.
If it takes longer than 24 hours to get your power back on, we’ll pay you £40.
Faulty meters
Think something’s gone wrong with your meter? Depending on what type of meter you have in your home, here’s what we’ll do about it.
Credit meters
We are committed to providing you with the highest level of service. As part of this commitment, we will adhere to the following timelines regarding the assessment of your meter:
-
Complete an assessment of whether or not the meter is faulty within 5 working days.
-
Agree on an appropriate action within 5 working days following the assessment.
-
Confirm the result of the assessment and the agreed actions in writing.
If we fail to meet any of these commitments, we will compensate you £40 per failure. Additionally, if we do not make the £40 payment within 10 working days of the failure, we will pay you an additional £40.
Prepayment meters
If you think your prepayment meter is broken and you’ve lost power, we will:
-
Arrive at your home, or fix the issue remotely, within 3 hours if contacted during a working day (Monday-Friday, 8am-8pm), or
-
Arrive at your home within 4 hours if contacted on a weekend or bank holiday
If you think your prepayment meter is broken, but your power’s still on, we’ll take action to:
-
Confirm whether the meter is faulty
-
Fix the fault, or
-
Replace the meter
This will happen within 3 hours if you contact us during a working day, or 4 hours on weekends and bank holidays. If you contact us outside of working hours, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can the next day.
If we fail to live up to these promises, you’ll get a £40 payment from us in your OVO account.
Final billing
Leaving OVO? We’ll be sad to see you go!
We’ll send you a final statement within 6 weeks after:
-
You tell us you’re moving out, or
-
Your new energy supplier tells us you’re switching
If we don’t meet that 6 week deadline, we’ll pay you £40 in GSOP compensation.
Refunding final credit balance
After we send your final bill, if you have a positive balance left in your account, you’ll get it automatically refunded.
If this doesn’t happen within 10 working days, we’ll send you a £40 GSOP payment.
15 working day switch
When you switch to OVO, we’re excited to get you up and running as quickly as possible.
With faster switching, changing energy suppliers will usually take around 5 working days, unless we have agreed a different date with you. There may be scenarios when your switch may take a bit longer, please see the “When switching might take longer” section of our Faster Switching Policy for more details. If we don’t switch you within 15 days then we will pay you £40 GSOP compensation.
We won’t pay any compensation where we take longer than 15 days if we don’t have all the information needed for the switch, we believe there is evidence of a fraudulent switch or your switch is delayed for any other reason outside our control.
Erroneous transfer
Have you been switched to OVO by mistake? If you get a welcome letter or a final energy bill you weren’t expecting, don’t worry. Just get in touch with your energy supplier to let them know.
If your supply was transferred to OVO without your permission, we’ll owe you erroneous transfer compensation. This will be £40 or more.
The amount you get, and which supplier pays it, will depend on the exact circumstances of the erroneous transfer. See Ofgem’s website for more details.
Find out more about erroneous transfers and why they happen
Electricity Distribution Networks and Gas Transporters
Electricity Distribution Networks and Gas Transporters are separate to your energy supplier. They’re responsible for the infrastructure (like towers and cables) that actually gets gas and electricity to your home.
If they cause a fault or an issue, they might be required to pay you compensation. Sometimes, we’ll be asked to make that payment on their behalf.
If that happens, we’ll pay it straight into your OVO account. If you don’t get it within 10 working days, we’ll add £40 to it.
What isn't GSOP?
In some situations, we might not offer a £40 GSOP payment. These include:
-
If one of our engineers is unable to make it to your appointment because of a situation beyond our control, such as severe weather conditions
-
If you tell us that you don't want us to do anything about the problem you reported
-
If your meter's been tampered with
-
If we can’t get access to your meter or home
-
If you turn down our offer to fix a faulty prepayment meter
-
And remember: all of the information on this page is subject to change if Ofgem publishes new guidance.
If you’ve not seen the payment applied after 10 days reach out to our Support Team. If you’re eligible but the payment is delayed you might be owed double! 🆒
OVO member but not got a smart meter yet? - Book today!
Interested but not yet an OVO member? - Check out our plans!
Updated on 03/01/25 by Abby_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.
What are Guaranteed Standards of Performance (GSOP)?
Guaranteed Standards of Performance are the promises we make to you, as your energy supplier.
We’ll always do our best to keep these promises. If for some reason we don’t meet the guaranteed standards, we’ll pay £40 directly into your OVO Energy account. This is our way of saying sorry. It’s sometimes called GSOP compensation, or a GSOP payment.
Meter appointments
Sometimes you might have to book an appointment for an OVO engineer to visit your home – for example, to fit a new meter.
If you contact us to book an appointment, we’ll do our best to:
-
Give you a date that’s as soon as possible (you’ll get a 4-hour time slot)
-
Let you know at least 1 working day in advance if we need to rearrange your slot
And we’ll do everything we can to make sure your appointment goes as smoothly as it should. That includes sending an engineer who has the skills, experience, and resources to do the job.
If we fail to do any of the above, we’ll pay £40 into your account.
Read more about what to expect when an OVO engineer visits your home
Reconnecting your supply
If you’ve been taken off supply because of unpaid charges, and these have now been paid, we promise to get your gas and/or electricity back up and running quickly. We’ll reconnect your supply within 24 hours.
Please note: if you pay your charges outside of working hours, we’ll aim to reconnect your supply the next working day.
If it takes longer than 24 hours to get your power back on, we’ll pay you £40.
Faulty meters
Think something’s gone wrong with your meter? Depending on what type of meter you have in your home, here’s what we’ll do about it.
Credit meters
We are committed to providing you with the highest level of service. As part of this commitment, we will adhere to the following timelines regarding the assessment of your meter:
-
Complete an assessment of whether or not the meter is faulty within 5 working days.
-
Agree on an appropriate action within 5 working days following the assessment.
-
Confirm the result of the assessment and the agreed actions in writing.
If we fail to meet any of these commitments, we will compensate you £40 per failure. Additionally, if we do not make the £40 payment within 10 working days of the failure, we will pay you an additional £40.
Prepayment meters
If you think your prepayment meter is broken and you’ve lost power, we will:
-
Arrive at your home, or fix the issue remotely, within 3 hours if contacted during a working day (Monday-Friday, 8am-8pm), or
-
Arrive at your home within 4 hours if contacted on a weekend or bank holiday
If you think your prepayment meter is broken, but your power’s still on, we’ll take action to:
-
Confirm whether the meter is faulty
-
Fix the fault, or
-
Replace the meter
This will happen within 3 hours if you contact us during a working day, or 4 hours on weekends and bank holidays. If you contact us outside of working hours, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can the next day.
If we fail to live up to these promises, you’ll get a £40 payment from us in your OVO account.
Final billing
Leaving OVO? We’ll be sad to see you go!
We’ll send you a final statement within 6 weeks after:
-
You tell us you’re moving out, or
-
Your new energy supplier tells us you’re switching
If we don’t meet that 6 week deadline, we’ll pay you £40 in GSOP compensation.
Refunding final credit balance
After we send your final bill, if you have a positive balance left in your account, you’ll get it automatically refunded.
If this doesn’t happen within 10 working days, we’ll send you a £40 GSOP payment.
15 working day switch
When you switch to OVO, we’re excited to get you up and running as quickly as possible.
With faster switching, changing energy suppliers will usually take around 5 working days, unless we have agreed a different date with you. There may be scenarios when your switch may take a bit longer, please see the “When switching might take longer” section of our Faster Switching Policy for more details. If we don’t switch you within 15 days then we will pay you £40 GSOP compensation.
We won’t pay any compensation where we take longer than 15 days if we don’t have all the information needed for the switch, we believe there is evidence of a fraudulent switch or your switch is delayed for any other reason outside our control.
Erroneous transfer
Have you been switched to OVO by mistake? If you get a welcome letter or a final energy bill you weren’t expecting, don’t worry. Just get in touch with your energy supplier to let them know.
If your supply was transferred to OVO without your permission, we’ll owe you erroneous transfer compensation. This will be £40 or more.
The amount you get, and which supplier pays it, will depend on the exact circumstances of the erroneous transfer. See Ofgem’s website for more details.
Find out more about erroneous transfers and why they happen
Electricity Distribution Networks and Gas Transporters
Electricity Distribution Networks and Gas Transporters are separate to your energy supplier. They’re responsible for the infrastructure (like towers and cables) that actually gets gas and electricity to your home.
If they cause a fault or an issue, they might be required to pay you compensation. Sometimes, we’ll be asked to make that payment on their behalf.
If that happens, we’ll pay it straight into your OVO account. If you don’t get it within 10 working days, we’ll add £40 to it.
What isn't GSOP?
In some situations, we might not offer a £40 GSOP payment. These include:
-
If one of our engineers is unable to make it to your appointment because of a situation beyond our control, such as severe weather conditions
-
If you tell us that you don't want us to do anything about the problem you reported
-
If your meter's been tampered with
-
If we can’t get access to your meter or home
-
If you turn down our offer to fix a faulty prepayment meter
-
And remember: all of the information on this page is subject to change if Ofgem publishes new guidance.
If you’ve not seen the payment applied after 10 days reach out to our Support Team. If you’re eligible but the payment is delayed you might be owed double! 🆒
OVO member but not got a smart meter yet? - Book today!
Interested but not yet an OVO member? - Check out our plans!
I have had a booking for today at 2-6pm for a site visit to get my smart meters installed .. had the day off work and they have text me at 2:10pm to say
..
Hi this is the meter engineer from Siemens. Unfortunately I will be unable to attend your appointment as OVO currently have no stock of smart meters. I will get them to contact you regarding a new appointment. Sorry for this inconvenience ...
This is not acceptable.
..
Hi this is the meter engineer from Siemens. Unfortunately I will be unable to attend your appointment as OVO currently have no stock of smart meters. I will get them to contact you regarding a new appointment. Sorry for this inconvenience ...
This is not acceptable.
Sorry to hear your appointment didn't go ahead,
If you haven't heard from the engineers yet, you can rebook an appointment here.
hi ,i was due an engineer to install smart meters,on 24 july.he did not turn up but,i got a phone call from him at 12pm on wed 24,to say he did not have any.needless to say i am leaving ovo,but have requested the 30pounds compensation from ovo.i have not received anything from ovo.hope my refund which i am in credit goes more smoothly,otherwise legal action will be the only option.
You are entitled to a £30 payment which usually goes into your account this is called a gsos payment
Thanks for reply Amy,I phoned customer services and they replied that it was investigated and that I was due 30pounds.he informed me it would be added to my account fairly soon.thanks to all replies.
1 person likes this
I'm still waiting for my £30 credit, 6 weeks after the engineer failed to turn up. I did receive a text message (sent to my land-line) asking to complete a survey about how the installation went despite me reporting that the guy hadn't turned up. And sending the survey by text to a land-line isn't that clever either.
1 person likes this
+1- Plan Zero Hero
- 7965 replies
Hi there
I’m sorry to hear about the trouble there. Would you be able to have a chat with the support team again about this? Live chat tends to be the fastest option. If you log into your account over here first before starting the chat, you’ll also get through security much faster.
I hope this helps.
Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!
1 person likes this
Blastoise186 wrote:
Hi there
I’m sorry to hear about the trouble there. Would you be able to have a chat with the support team again about this? Live chat tends to be the fastest option. If you log into your account over here first before starting the chat, you’ll also get through security much faster.
I hope this helps.
I called after the 1st 2 weeks and then used the web chat 2 weeks after that. Still waiting. Maybe they can use the £30 to pay my early cancellation fee?
+1- Plan Zero Hero
- 7965 replies
I understand.
Let me see if I can get
Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!
1 person likes this
What a frustrating delay,
It’s worth pointing out that this compensation is acquired from the engineer team or company, and only if they agree it was missed. I’ve seen examples where the engineer has actually visited and couldn’t get a reply when knocking for example. Not saying that has happened in this case though!
The good news here is that if compensation of this kind isn’t paid within 10 working days, the amount is doubled! So if it’s confirmed you’re eligible, it sounds like you’re owed £60. Reach out to us one more time on web chat to get an update, send them a link to this topic, and they can also help get the appointment rebooked, here.
Carbon neutral - we need a community to get there! My green tech: Aclara SGM 1411-B smart meter, Chameleon IHD6
Thanks.
I reported it on the day they failed to arrive, 15th October. Followed up by webchat a couple of weeks later, then again by phone last week. No credit yet.
I'll try webchat again and ask for £60. Is webchat only available during normal hours?
In the meantime, new smart meters have been fitted, now waiting for a "random quality assurance visit" next week. I hope he turns up!
+1- Plan Zero Hero
- 7965 replies
Hi
Sorry I didn’t manage to reply sooner. I usually take Thursdays off from the forums due to other commitments.
I’m glad to hear the meters are installed now. The live chat is open from 8am to 6pm on weekdays. I think it sometimes opens on Saturday mornings as well. When you get in touch, please give the agent a link to this thread, let them know you’ve been chatting with myself and Tim here and ask them to go through the thread. It will help speed things up.
There’s also a new feature that’s been added recently, which can help get the chat session going a bit faster too. If you login to your account over here before starting the chat session, you can jump straight through security almost instantly.
If you don’t get anywhere, please let us know here and we’ll see what we can do.
90 minute web chat with Jayson concluded that I should receive a £60 credit within 5 working days. We'll see what turns up....
+1- Plan Zero Hero
- 7965 replies
Thanks for letting us know
If you still don’t get the credit by this time next week, please give us a shout and we’ll see what we can do.
Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!
1 person likes this
Pleased to report that I finally received my £60 credit. It took another phone on the morning of the last day of the promised period, but we got there in the end.
1 person likes this
Why did the OVO engineer (Yasser) never turn up to instal my gas and electricity meters at the scheduled time (date Friday 13th August, between 12 and 4 and Arrau nged months in advance)?
Robert Neden
+1- Plan Zero Hero
- 7965 replies
Hi there
Sorry about that! Unfortunately, forum volunteers can't access your account so I can't check the reasons why the engineer didn't attend. But this is definitely not what should have happened.
It's possible that the engineer was off sick or got diverted to an emergency job at last minute though. Did you ever get a tracking text message from Localz? It should have kept you informed via the tracking link.
If you let the Support Team know, they will probably be able to find out what happened and rebook the appointment on the next available slot. Which is probably not too far away.
I hope you're able to get the upgrade on the next attempt. It's definitely worth it.
Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!
This happened to me too. I received £30 compensation (and then another £30 because the 1st £30 wasn't paid within 30 days). Doesn't help much if you've had to take a day's holiday to be there, but it's better than nothing. Ask for it when you rebook.
Smart meter fitted in March 2022, the installation Engineer reported that it was not connecting and not submitting meter readings. I subsequently made two more call to report the fault. Finally managed to get an appointment for an Engineer to come out on June 17th, today. Rang today customer services and they confirmed the Engineer was booked between 14:00 and 18:00 and I was a priority customer repair.Engineer never appeared, still waiting at 20:00, no text, phone call or email to explain what has happened. Very unhappy as I have had to take a half day off work to wait in.
Still submitting meter reading on line.
Hi
I’m sorry to hear a non-communicating smart meter and missed engineers appointment has bought you here. I appreciate the frustration this must’ve caused, particularly as you mention taking time off work to make sure you’d be around. As cancellations can be caused by engineer sickness or other appointments over-running, sometimes we’re not able to give you notice of this cancellation. In this case there is a standard £30 compensation which our Support Team can apply for on your behalf. You can find out more about this in the topic below.
If you haven’t already, we’d recommend getting in touch with the Support Team who can investigate why the engineer failed to attend your scheduled appointment and make sure another visit is booked in.
I hope this helps get things back on track.
Hi Jess
Thank you for your reply, I did ring Customer Services before hand just to make sure that the Engineer was coming out and one of you staff assured me that there was no issues and he would be out as planned. Is there a possibility that I can book another appointment for this Friday between 14.00 and 18.00. I am a teacher and struggle to get time off.
Regards Sean
I’m so sorry to hear this,
Unfortunately we’re not able to get an appointment arranged via this forum. I’d recommend reaching out to the Support Team to request this re-scheduled slot and missed appointment compensation.
Reply
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