I am elderly and have lost power to my house.  S Parrish power said it’s a supplier issue.   I have tried to contact OVO.   No joy.   I need the power on AsaP.  Please help 

Oh well no help then ????? 

This isn’t a direct route to OVO unfortunately and it’s mainly other customers who help here. 
If the area has no power, it’s usually the DNO who are responsible. You should reach them by calling 105

https://www.ovoenergy.com/emergency

Also, please be advised that the OVO Forum isn’t a 24/7/365 call centre with 2,000+ live agents standing by ready and waiting to take your call at a moments notice. It’s a community powered volunteer led forum where a small group of Forum Volunteers - including both myself and @BPLightlog - help out for free in our spare time.

To contact OVO Support, you’re after the options at https://ovoenergy.com/help .

With that being said, please provide us with more info. If there’s any advice we can offer here, we will try to do so.

Wondering if anyone can help because OVO support are about as useful as a chocolate teaspoon and completely unavailable/unhelpful

I have no electricity my smart meter says we have used up all emergency credit and we are now cut off. However we are not a prepayment account never have been but for some reason it's flipped us to it. OvO support said sorry your not prepayment I don't know what the issue is but also we are closing now, call back Monday. I'm without power for Saturday night and all of Monday. (My account is in credit by £320.)

This happened to us last year about 5 times and spent countless hours on the phone to support who have no clue how to fix it and being hung up on because they couldn't fix it. Don't know what they did in the end but it took about a month and 3 engineers coming in to add even more emergency credit onto the meter including replacing the meter twice.

Can anyone help us get power over the weekend please? Northern powergrid wasn't interested too and God knows how we plan to feed the baby.

Hi @Robbiek500 ,

I have flagged this to the Forum Moderators for advice. Please wait until they return on Monday morning. There’s unfortunately nothing I can do until then.

Please try OVO’s support team on social media. They should be there today, e.g. at https://x.com/OVOEnergy. Post a brief description of the problem (e.g. Emergency: we are off supply with a small infant, but the DNO can’t help), then follow up with a DM giving your name, address, date of birth, address and postcode and OVO account number. They have always sparked for me.

Hey @Robbiek500, 

I’m really sorry to hear this has happened. As @Firedog has pointed out, our Support Team is available through social media at the weekends, or we have team members who work our emergencies on 0330 175 9669.

Have you managed to speak with anyone yet to restore your supply? If you could update us, we can work on supporting you where we can! 

Hey @Odin, 

Thanks for @BPLightlog for stopping by and giving you the emergency contact options. Did you manage to get your power back on? 

@Blastoise186 has also offered to try and support if you’re still having issues. If this is the case if you could give more information on your current setup we can see how best to help! 

If you’re a Pay as your Go customer and have an emergency then you can find more information here: 

Keep us updated! 

Could you please expand on this, @Chris_OVO? We have been saying for years that sadly OVO has no support for off-supply emergencies unless you happen to be on a pre-payment meter, which isn’t the case here. Is that a general emergency phone number we can pass on?

@Robbiek500  I hope you read OVO’s article about dealing with emergencies. With an infant in the household, you are eligible to be registered for priority services. I’m not saying that being on the register would have made any difference in your case, but it might have done. It does mean, though, that any call to support should be handled by an agent trained to help OVO’s more vulnerable customers, especially when they’re in a bad situation.

Thank you it has been resolved. Was off supply for 24 hours but we eventually got through to support by calling boost instead who where more than happy to assist. They cleared the emergency credit and placed another £5 on till I could speak to the OVO team today.

Never been given a reason why this continues to happen sadly and we are on the priority register when this started happening as baby was only weeks old and had no way to heat up bottles. The issue actually affected both gas and electricity supply at the beginning.

Thanks for the help.

@Firedog  the number 0330 175 9669 doesn't actually work on weekends. Tried it just kept telling us they are unavailable and the opening times are monday-friday

Hey @Robbiek500,

Glad to hear that you managed to get back on supply. Apologies for the late response as I only got the notifications this morning from the volunteers. 

It’s a strange one as something must be causing your meter to “change modes”. I know you mentioned that the meter has been replaced a couple of times so it can’t be a hardware issue. The Care Team should be able to investigate this and find the cause. Did they advise they’d raised a complaint for you as you were left off-supply?? 

@Firedog for any PAYG customers the number I provided can be used for emergencies or any of the live chat/Whatsapp/Social Media channels can also be used.

For monthly customers we don’t tend to see many emergencies that would leave them off supply unless it’s something like a meter failure. In that case again Whatsapp (0330 175 9695) or Social Media (see link below) can arrange emergency appointments for an engineer to attend within 4 hours. 

https://www.facebook.com/ovoenergy/

https://x.com/ovoenergy?lang=en

https://www.instagram.com/ovoenergy/?hl=en

@Robbiek500 The number should work at the weekend. I’ll look into this please bear with me! 

Thank you. I just had my gas go off supply and do the same. Spoke to ovo and they are clueless to the reason. Was put on emergency credit because they have two systems and one system says I'm on prepayment for electric and credit for gas and the other system says I'm credit for electric and prepayment for gas and the operator was beyond confused. 

Hey @Robbiek500, 

It sounds like something is commanding priority and altering any changes the care staff are making. I seen this when I worked in tech before that sometimes you’d be presented with an issue that you’d resolve and it would either revert immediately or gradually over time. It would normally take a little bit of digging to find the root cause so I imagine that’s what care are looking into for you just now. I can only imagine how frustrating this is for you. 

I’ve been asking about the call lines at the weekend so once I have an update i’ll come back to you. 

I would like to update and say this issue is resolved but it is not.

We are currently at the stage where I call up and get told there's nothing we can do I'll top up your meters. Please wait until a case handler is in touch.

Today alone we where off gas for most of the day. It took 2 hours on support to convince someone to top the meters up. She still didn't understand and said she was loaning us the credit ( My account is £355 In the plus. )

Would also like to mention the phone line opening times on both ovo and boost websites are all wrong. Monday to Friday 9am to 8pm but it's actually 9am to 6pm.

If anyone has any suggestions to put this to bed that would make my year at this rate.

Hey @Robbiek500, 

I’m sorry to read that this is still an ongoing issue for you. I’ve asked our Forum_Support to reach out so look out for a private message here soon: https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview.

Totally nightmare to come home at night to find on.power.

After hours on phone (having to take day off work) and engineer visit found l had been switched to pay as you go....without any warning and a credit of over £500 on my account. 

My simple question is WHY ?

Impossible to get through and can't afford to spend hours on hold.

Appreciate any comments

Thank you.

There is a codicil to Murphy’s Law which says that if something is going to go wrong, it will go wrong at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon.

Get on to OVO support on social media: 

Social links -
https://www.facebook.com/ovoenergy/
https://x.com/ovoenergy?lang=en
https://www.instagram.com/ovoenergy/?hl=en

Whatsapp - 0330 175 9695

These support agents have access to your account and can see what’s going on. They’re also there longer hours than those on other channels (phone or webchat), also on Sundays. 

I’ve used the X (Twitter) option with excellent results in the past. Post a brief description of the problem, then send a DM giving your name, DOB, postcode and account no. with full details of what happened. Post again to say you’ve DM’ed them - they’ll soon get back to you.  

If it’s really important to get the power back on - e.g. there are infants or aged parents in the household - they’ll fall over themselves to help.

Hi all, this morning I topped up my key with £99.00 put it in my meter and it went on ok. Went back to shop to top up another £99.00 to beat the October rise. And the second £99.00 on my key won’t go on the meter?? Please help? I was told by an OVO lady on the phone I could top the meter up to £250

@FingerBiscuit If you’re doing that Martin Lewis “Prepayment Hack” to try and hack/cheat the meters and get the cheaper rates for longer, then I have some advice for you - DO NOT attempt it. That “hack” was fake advice and it doesn’t work which resulted in Martin Lewis actually having to retract his claims and apologise publicly for misleading millions of customers. Your meters will switch rates on the 1st October regardless because it’s already been programmed in and if they don’t, OVO is entitled to claw back underpayments anyway without needing your consent.

The maximum permitted meter balance at any given time is £255 total - you’re probably trying to push it over that limit. Please use up some meter credit first and then transfer the credit from the key once you’re below £150 on the meter. It should work then - do NOT top-up the key in the meantime.

Hi Blastoise

thanks for the advice, the woman on the OVO call centre also said to do this ‍♂️‍♂️ so at the moment meter says £106 and won’t let the other £99.00 go on the meter!! Will the £99.00 stay on the key ok?

Yup. If it’s on the key now then it will remain on the key until you transfer it over to the meter. However, do not lose that key or you risk that credit going up in smoke along with it. As soon as the meter balance dips below £100 you’ll absolutely want to get that credit shifted over ASAP. If it still doesn’t work, ask OVO to check what’s actually on the key - IIRC they have a way to do that.

Either way, I would recommend you consider getting Smart Meters soon - this will let you top-up more easily and will make sure your credit is always backed up on a nightly basis so that meter faults don’t cause your entire meter credit to go bye bye - and perhaps more importantly - eliminates the risk of lost keys!

If you’re up for it, have a chat with OVO and they can make the arrangements. Just so you know, once you upgrade to Smart Meters, there’s no going back and no downgrade path, so please make sure to drain the key onto the meter before the engineer arrives!

Hi @Tiggy777,

I’m sorry to hear this. 

Our forum volunteer has already given some great advice here.

Did you manage to get through to someone about this?