PAYG gas meter battery flat warning

Howdy @DarrenO505 ,

Bear with me! I’m digging up resources now, this may take a little time.

Just so you know, if you’re trying to do that “Martin Lewis Prepayment Trick/Hack”, please be advised that it won’t work. The meter will likely already have the next set of rates programmed by now and/or will do so as soon as you next top-up ready for the 1st October, or at very least OVO would know you’ve underpaid and charge you the difference anyway by placing a debt on the meter. The rates you have to pay are what’s on the account, not the meter.

Either way, OVO has options to salvage lost credit from broken meters. It’s 1,000% easier with Smart Meters, but may be possible with Traditional Prepayment too - it just takes more effort. If the salvage is successful, OVO’s policy is to restore the lost credit onto the replacement meter, but it can take a while in some cases.

With that being said… It may be worth upgrading to Smart Meters now anyway, not least so you get a fresh gas meter battery, but also so that your credit gets backed up to OVO’s systems every night. That way, if something happens, OVO can more accurately and more rapidly figure out how much credit to restore if needed.

@DarrenO505 From other comments I’ve seen on here the battery gives a warning some time before anything stops working but appreciate you are on PAYG which is an important flag to make sure that something is done sooner rather than later. @Blastoise186 is good with these things so he should make sure that you are dealt with in a timely manner.

Peter

See. Told you he would find a fix. He's so useful we've considered cloning him but we need to know where he lives but he seems to have developed a cloaking device.

At my last flat I had a pre-pay gas meter (non-smart) where the low battery warning came up.

I called British Gas and an engineer came and took a look, said it’s fine for years yet, and did nothing.

3 years later when I left that flat the meter was still working fine and still showing low battery.
So they do keep working for a long time even with a low battery.

The present location of Blastoise186 is: A Sekrit Underwater Lair somewhere on the Internet.

The present location of the user behind Blastoise186 is: Unknown. The user is an anonymous internet ghost and no-one knows where to find him.

Blastoise186 is the online username of a mysterious individual which has existed on the Internet for nearly 25 years. It is rumoured that Blastoise is his favourite Pokémon and that he has extensive knowledge of many things, alongside various skills that many consider mind boggling. It is also rumoured that he is a scuba diver, which is another reason behind his nickname Blastoise186.

The only things known about the user behind Blastoise186 is that he is a well known volunteer in a few different places and that he works in IT. No traces of the user have ever been found in the public domain. It would appear that he uses his online identity as his only public presence, in order to create an image of mystery and mischief.

I’m retired myself and like to help others. OVO just happen to provide a useful platform to aid that. 
I don’t understand why anyone would react so negatively to anyone trying to give help to others. 

FYI @BPLightlog, @Peter E & @Blastoise186, 

I’ve removed the user from the Forum so you may see a few gaps in this conversation. 

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Hey @DarrenO505, 

We recently met with one of our engineers and some of our volunteers. We learned that the engineering team has system alerts for low batteries. They can generally get to these before they power off, but if you have any concerns, you can ask for more support from our Customer Care team. 

If you don’t get any further forward, we can ask our Forum engineer to take a look at this with you! 

Keep us updated if you get this resolved. 🙂

My auntie has recently had her boiler service/gas safe check (local authority tenant) and they looked at her PAYG meter as well and informed her that the battery was low and to contact her supplier to get it replaced/fixed.  She has contacted OVO but been told that they won’t do anything until the battery dies. She’s worrying about losing supply when the battery runs out and is constantly checking it.  I’ve found conflicting information online - can someone advise what to do next?

Do you happen to know how old the meter is?

The reason for the question is that it’s usual for a meter to be changed as they are not allowed to carry batteries. 
There will be a date on the meter - someone can check if you want to post a photo

Meter batteries do last for years after they start showing the ‘Low battery’ warning.

At my last property the PAYG gas meter started showing Low battery in 2018, I was told to ignore it until it went altogether - When I moved out in 2021 the meter was still working fine and still showing Low battery.

PS. It was never even mentioned on the yearly gas safety checks, it isn't  a safety issue.

Hey @LeleyD,

Our volunteers have made some excellent points. Could you please post a couple of pictures of the meter? This will help us understand the setup and identify which meter your aunt has. As @Nukecad  mentioned, the meters use very little energy, and even though the battery is showing as low, it could still last a considerable amount of time before it runs out. Unfortunately, we can't replace just the batteries; the entire meter needs to be changed. If it stops working for any reason, we can schedule an emergency appointment for your aunt to replace it within 4 hours.

We've had this discussion before and I can't remember if the PAYG credit is stored in the gas meter as such. Is there a risk of losing the credit if the meter is changed?

With Trad Prepay, the current credit balance at any given time is on the meter itself and basically nowhere else. Recovery from a failure is a nightmare. Recovery from a meter swap also takes ages.

With Smart Prepay, the current credit balance is backed up to supplier systems on a nightly basis, making failure recovery much, much easier. Recovery from a meter swap can be much faster - it’s literally just a few SMETS Commands IIRC.