PAYG gas meter battery flat warning

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.

had old gas meter with £118 credit..gas went off went to check it said faulty battery phoned ovo got engineer out to replace it..when I asked for the credit to be put back on my new meter they said the engineer's report said there was no credit on my old meter but it was just reading faulty battery nothing else no reading..nothing..ovo said as I have no proof of topping up..we are payg they won't credit it back on our meter..very frustrating...any idea's 

I don’t have mains gas to the house so this may be wrong, but does the OVO Energy app not show the amount of credit you have in the same way as electricity? If you have an in-home display, that should also show the amount of credit.

Do you have a smart Pay As You Go meter, or a traditional card/key prepayment meter?

only had the home display for electric..they put in a smet2 gas meter then had to change my electric meter to a smet 2 got the money back from that as I had taken a screenshot of the credit..but unfortunately have no screenshot of the credit that was on my old gas meter as it just came up faulty battery and cut my gas off for 3 days...

Morning ​@Deant and a a warm welcome to the OVO Forum.

If the battery was flat on the meter then it’s not guaranteed that the engineer will be able to see how much credit was left on the meter, and so this will have to be worked out manually. I’m sorry that you’ve been told we’d only go by what the engineer’s job card said. If the job card said in writing that the balance was ‘£0’ with no photo showing this, then we can’t prove from the job card that the balance was £0. I can’t tell myself as don’t have access to your account, but there’s a chance this just hasn’t been handled properly.

To confirm - if the job card contains a photo of the meter balance as £0, then this will be a lot harder to contest.

Please contact in again, and specify that you wish to raise a complaint about the way this has been handled, and you wish for someone to look at this manually. If the advisor can’t resolve it to your satisfaction then the complaint will need to be escalated. The advisors will be able to see what top ups you have made to get an idea of your balance and, with luck, there may be historic reads to back this up.

Please let us know how you get on with this one.

Will do and thanks...