Hey ​@rjay63,

Welcome to the community 🎉

How did you get on yesterday with collecting your new card? Hopefully you’ve now picked it up and can top up your shiny new meter. I’ve left a couple of articles below that you might find helpful:

Thank you for your replies.  The card collection itself went fine as I managed to find a location that stocked OVO Gas Meter cards and the shopkeeper knew what they were doing with the Tag Code.  The card synched to my meter when I put it in and accepted the subsequent £5.00 top-up I bought afterwards.  However from this point, things veered off course slightly.  Due to the emergency credit being activated (£30.00 from the engineer), most of that £5.00 went towards clearing the Emergency credit and the debt/penal rate charge.  I still had a previous £5.00 top up on my old gas card that I could not redeem on my old meter (since it broke down) or now my new meter.  Therefore the agent provided me with a RTI code for £5.00 that I could redeem at a shop.  However the shop in question made some errors and managed to put £10.00 on my gas card without redeeming the £5.00 RTI.  I therefore gave the shop £5.00 for one of the top-ups and they said they will try to redeem the code via their management/accounts.  Anyway I didn't loose out financially as far as those top ups were concerned.  The £10.00 top up then cleared the emergency credit and I went into credit.

However I then received a loud knock on the door this morning, asked who it was and got a muffled response in return.  I saw through the glass it was a courier.  They didn't want to wait around and just shoved a package through my letterbox and went away.  The packagae was addressed to me and when I opened it, there was a new gas card inside.  I do not remember being told that I would be receiving a gas card by the post so now I have two of them for my meter.

Overall I am a couple of pounds down from the experience (due to being stuck on emergency credit for 3/4 days with no means to top up the new meter) but I can live with that.  

I was rather surprised that the engineer replaced my broken meter with exactly the same traditional PAYG model I had before (no Smart meter).  Not that I'm complaining as I've been using these meters types for the past 26 years and they suit my needs fine.  Apparently my traditonal PAYG gas meter was refurbished in 2023; here's a picture of the sticker.  

Just to note here that there is no such “penal rate”; you don’t pay any extra for using emergency credit.

What you saw was the way that emergency credit works with the daily Standing Charge.

When you are using emergency credit the meter only charges for what you actually use and does not charge the daily Standing Charge.
Instead it defers (saves up) the daily Standing Charges to be paid later when you put enough paid-for credit on.
That’s simply because emergency credit is needed for usage, and you don’t want your emergency credit to be gobbled up by Standing Charges.

Of course that means that when you do top up by enough the meter will take those ‘deferred’ Standing Charges for however may days you have been on the emergrncy credit.

(PAYG electricty meters do the same when on emergency credit - they don’t apply the daily SCs and ony take them when you top up enough).

Hey ​@rjay63,

It sounds like your issue has been resolved, and I'm glad to hear you're now in credit. You should be able to continue topping up your working card without problems. For the second card, I recommend keeping it aside in a safe place for now.

It's good that your new meter is like your old one, as this will be familiar to you. Your previous meter was likely removed due to a dead battery and taken away for a replacement. Our engineers have recently started replacing batteries on certain meters, but often the meters are taken to a safe location for this process.

Please let us know if you have any further questions

Hi there - This week I was low on credit for my gas pre payment meter -  I stuck my card in and knocked on the emergency credit.  Ive been busy so I was using the emergency credit - it ran out so the meter has closed a valve or something to stop the gas as no money in.  I put £30 on my card tonight and when i tried to top up my meter beeped 3 times and then showed “ Call Help”.  I have tried to do everything i can think of - which is not much - I called ovo they said they cant help until tomorrow.  With this error code is there anything i can do ? what causes this code? i had it once before around 7 years ago - they gave me a replacement meter - i dont think it was a new one just one they had fixed before or something like that.  any help would be useful . thanks

Hi ​@dgould ,

Sounds like a dead meter to me. There’s not much you can do to clear that fault I’m afraid.

I also can’t tell you what may have caused it - Call Help is a generic error intended to make it easy for you to alert the supplier without overwhelming you. The real reason could be one of 20+ things if memory serves.

Please reach out to OVO in the morning - they should get this sorted for you.

Hi - thanks for taking the time to reply to this thread.  Yeah ive been trying to look into the reasons for it.  From dusty card readers to a valve not opening and beyond.  Thought might have been a work around but clearly not - Looks like ill need to get the fan heater out tonight then.    I tried tonight about 5 to 8 and they said oh we dont wanna know now we have homes to go to ( that may not be verbatim lol )

Thanks again

Hmm… They really shouldn’t be saying that…

The idea is that if you get through during opening hours, I would expect OVO to serve you. I am disappointed to hear this.

While I’m usually highly positive about OVO, I cannot defend them in a situation like this and I reserve the right to hold them accountable if I feel the need to do so.

This incident will be flagged to the Forum Moderators. Thanks for letting me know about it.

Hey ​@dgould,

I’m really sorry to hear that you’re having trouble with your meter! If you're without power, our friendly Support Team can quickly arrange for an emergency engineer to come to your property within three hours. Just reach out to them through the link below, and they'll be happy to help!

​@dgould you’ve mentioned:

I tried tonight about 5 to 8 and they said oh we dont wanna know now we have homes to go to

I appreciate this may not have been the exact wording used, but please can you confirm if this was during a conversation with OVO? If so we can get calls listened to and get this dealt with internally - I’ve never heard of this sort of service during a metering emergency.

Please let us know when you’ve got an emergency appointment booked in. As ​@Chris_OVO says - we can arrive within three hours to put a new meter in place.