ERRONEOUS SWITCH (AGAIN)

This isn’t usually either supplier’s fault, but rather a third party who made a mistake. See the article What is an Erroneous Transfer (ET)? | The OVO Forum 

When you say your smart meters have stopped working, do you mean they’ve stopped measuring your consumption (blank screen or unchanging readings)? Or that they’re just not sending data to OVO? Or something else?

It’s unusual for a smart meter to stop measuring - that’s their primary task, after all - but for more than one to fail in this respect at the same time at the same site is pretty well unheard of.

Yes BOTH Smart Meters have stopped sending readings 

OK, thanks. That’s not strictly the same as ‘stopped working’ - I suppose you can still read the meters yourself and submit readings manually, just like you would with non-smart meters. 

This page explains how your readings are supposed to get to OVO: How do smart meters send readings? | Smart DCC. It’s the Communications Hub (CH) on top of the electricity meter that sees to all this, so both meters can be working as intended, but if the CH can’t communicate, readings won’t make it to the supplier.

You could try using this little utility, which will tell you if (a) the CH is communicating with the smart meter network (WAN), and if it is, (b) whether the devices on the local Home Area Network (HAN) are working properly:  n3rgy data Smart Meter check.

• Enter your MPAN (the 13-digit ID part) and tick the tiny confirmation box, then click Check meter.
• If you then see a detailed report, you can safely ignore any warnings about expired certification or missing firmware updates. Any other warnings may help explain why your readings aren’t getting through.
• If you can’t make sense of the report, copy it and paste it into your reply here. Please obscure any GUIDs and MPAN/MPRNs in the report before posting: they could be misused by any criminals watching.

PS It would be a good idea to submit manual readings tomorrow morning, on the first day of a new quarter. This should ensure that the next bill isn’t based on estimates.

Hi ​@PurpleArmy72, and thanks ​@Firedog for your help here as always.

​@PurpleArmy72 you’ll need to get in touch with our Support Team who’ll raise the Erroneous Transfer case to Octopus if you’ve been switched to them. We’d also recommend contacting Octopus  to let them know what’s happened, and to ask them to switch you back to OVO. If you contact the erroneous new supplier this normally speeds things along. Sorry this has happened - it’s normally when a new supplier tries to take over a neighbouring property, but takes the wrong one by mistake. 

As for the smart meters not working - this may be because of the switch of supplier, and Octopus haven’t yet got in communication with the meters.

Let us know how you get on 🤞

Smart Meters haven't been sending readings since the 3rd March 2025. Was informed I cannot book an engineer until 32 days have passed in case they start working. 

It's extremely inconvenient trying to take readings as my electric meter is 6ft on a wall which means having to climb a ladder.

​@PurpleArmy72 this is the case with smart meters - they do normally start working again, however after a month of them not working we would book an appointment. If you’ve already taken reads recently then don’t worry too much about taking them most days - we would only take monthly reads from a customer with traditional meter generally. 

Have you raised the Erroneous Transfer with us yet?