If you’re off-supply, it’s considered an emergency matter with a massively faster response time - usually four hours.

If you’re on supply with tons of credit, you could be waiting several weeks.

It’s ridiculous I’ve just been switched over to ovo and the first time I top up it creates a fault on the meter. 

Over an hour on the phone only to result in 
the web page stating that I should get an engineer before I run out of credit, by one member of staff that I have to have 99p or less credit, and by another that I have to have zero credit before they will book an engineer.

To add insult to the already conflicting information I was told that if there is the wrong amount of credit in the meter when an engineer calls I would be charged a £20 call out fee.  

How is it right that the people on pre payment meters (usually because of a tight budget) are the ones that have to use all there credit before they can have an issue resolved? 

If  this is the customer service I can expect I think it’s gonna be bumpy ride. 

Not all issues are handled in this way. There are ones that get handled faster regardless, all depends on the scenario. However, you will NOT be charged the callout fee if the issue is identified as NOT being your fault.

CALL HELP on a gas meter usually means the meter has suffered a serious fault that it is unable to recover from by itself - this often (but not always) means the meter has to be replaced. It can be caused by various things like tampering, card slot failure, meter damage, valve failure and various other triggers. Just because you switch supplier is not enough to trigger that message.

Hi @Traceyryan Did your issue get sorted? 

This morning my metre shows ‘call help’ message. Credit 0, I topped up but nothing happens. Call help but all lines are closed. I am a vulnerable customer. What sould I do?

Hi @Koolkat66 ,

You’ll need to either call OVO in the morning, or use the blue button on this page to speak to OVO today.

The chat is closed today

At the moment I have an old PAYG meter and I really would like to keep it, would that be an option?

Not guaranteed at all. All meters only last for a maximum service life of about 10 years after which they must be replaced. The next one you get will almost certainly be Smart.

Traditional PAYG also relies on support still being in place for top-up keys/cards. Right now, it’s a supported method with the caveat that it’s considered legacy - support for which will probably get slowly phased out over the next decade or so.