Hi @snakey ,

I’m afraid the only upgrade path is to a Smart Meter, as there’s basically no longer any stocks of traditional non-smart meters anywhere in the country.

With that being said, solutions like Dual-Band Comms Hubs and AltHAN can extend the wireless range to more than three times as far as what Single-Band Comms Hubs can do. Unless you’re in some giant mansion with the meters 500m apart, they should work fine.

I had British Gas out before I switched to install a smart meter and they said it was just too far from my smart electric meter with brick walls in the way. To put it in context I live in a normal 3 bedroom semi detached house. The electric meter is just behind the front door and the gas meter is just outside the back door. Surely I can't be the only person facing this problem?

In that case, both AltHAN and DBCH would easily blast through that stuff. British Gas are just known for being somewhat incompetent tbh when it comes to deploying them.

Up to you really - other suppliers may be more likely to get it right.

So I just have to suck it up and wait for the smart meters to get better then? And have a credit plan for the electric and pay as you go for the gas?

Nope! Better smart meters already exist - OVO has been deploying tons of them recently. We actually know one of OVO’s engineers on this forum and he loves the new kit.

You just got unlucky with a dumb dumb supplier who can’t be bothered to do it properly.

I spoke to the chat last night who booked me a smart meter install,  but as soon as I got the email to confirm the booking I had another to say it was cancelled. Really don't know what's going on.

I’m afraid I can’t say either - I have no contacts at British Gas.

The best I can think of is that you consider switching away to another supplier. It’s worth remembering that BG were the supplier stupid enough to come up with a proprietary smart meter network in the SMETS1 days, where the meters would stop working if you switched to literally any other supplier.

No-one else was foolish enough to do that. Even to this day, it STILL causes nightmares.

No I'm with ovo now. I switched in the hope things would be fixed but clearly not.

I see. Bear with me - this makes things easier.

OK thanks.

Did you find out anything?

Gonna flag to moderators. Everything I’ve found so far suggests this IS possible. But it would have to be to Smart Meters.

That's great thanks. I really don't care what kind of meter I have as long as I'm not on prepay any more. Will someone get in touch with me then?

Not sure yet, that’ll be up to them rather than me.

But at very least, I can refer myself to get fact-checked just to be sure that I’m absolutely 100% on track.

OK thank you.

I have just moved into a new home and surprisingly discovered that it had an OVO pre paid meter installed. I obviously want rid of this and have either a credit or standard meter fitted

Anyone know how I can get this done?

Had my gas meter replaced today. It was a 1st Generation. It was originally set up as pay monthly, but it was faulty and stuck in pre-payment mode and couldn’t communicate. It ran out of credit, and I was without supply. 

New gas meter is 2nd gen. The engineer put £15 on it, so it’s in pre-payment mode. Originally it was pay monthly, so i was never given a top-up card, and my account is still in pay monthly.

How do I top up without a card or online account? And how do I change it back to pay monthly like it was meant to be originally? Many thanks :) 

Hey ​@richardson.craig ,

Sounds like you definitely want to ping OVO Support in the morning to get this sorted. They should be able to arrange a migration back to PAYM for you and figure out ways to keep you going in the meantime.

Try Live Chat via https://ovoenergy.com/help or OVO’s Social Media Team for the fastest responses. You can find their details below:

• Emergency contact info and our planned PAYG outages coming up - (Mar 2025) F.A.Q.

Thanks, I’ve just checked the meter and the in house display and they both say credit mode is this pay monthly or top up as you go, I don’t get the terminology thanks :)

Credit Mode = Pay Monthly. :)

Prepayment Mode = Pay As You Go

Hey ​@richardson.craig 

I’m glad to see one of our volunteers has already stopped by with some advice on this, I hope it’s been helpful to you.

Let us know if you’ve got any other issues we can help with.😊

The old decommissioned meter and its serial number is still active on my gas account, Do I provide you with the serial (Which I have) or will this automatically happen thanks :) 

Should auto-update in the next couple of weeks! :)

Hey ​@richardson.craig 

As Blastoise has mentioned, this should be automatically removed in the next few weeks - within 6 weeks of the change. 

If you’re still seeing that after the 6 week mark, feel free to pop back here to the Forum or reach out to the Support Team so they can take a look into what might be causing the delay.