So, as I mentioned, I had an appointment booked for MDS to come on 5 November - but nobody came! I had no notification, so I phoned OVO today.

The OVO system knows nobody came, but has no information on why that happened. I was told I’d receive the £30 penalty for them not turning up.

The main issue is comms between the gas meter and the dual-band hub, but the hub is no longer sending electricity data to OVO because that was turned off remotely on a previous visit. The engineer didn’t understand why that was done. I’ve since had an email exchange with OVO where they said the comms would be switched back on, but nothing has changed.
OVO know all this, so you'd have thought arranging a replacement appointment would be simple - not so!

A new appointment was arranged for the 26 November, and then cancelled because the OVO system said I had to have 2 appointments - one per meter.
This happened about halfway through the call.
I was then given 2 appointments on 27 November (same engineer, same time), because they couldn't offer them at the same time on the 26th! In other words, they couldn’t modify an appointment on the 26th to cover both meters.

Since the comms to OVO could be switched back on remotely, I don’t need an ‘electric meter appointment’ but that didn’t seem to wash.

As you might expect, I queried why all this was necessary, and was told there's a new appointment system - if that's the case, it's a weird system

In the course of arranging the "gas appointment", I was asked whether it was a low, medium or high pressure meter, and instructed to look for a sticker and report back what colour it is.
The meter is outside my house, so I'm glad it's not raining today. I've never been asked that before. Perhaps this new appointment system has forgotten what meters were installed.

The call lasted 70 minutes, not including the time for it to be answered (which was quick).

Are you aware that the appointment system has been updated with the effects I’ve described?

Hey @GrandpaG 

Sorry to hear about this, I’ve asked one of our teams about this. 

Let us know how you’re getting on.

I wonder if @Lukepeniket_OVO would be able to shed any light here?

Sorry for all of the trouble you’ve had with this, I know it’s been a long journey.

We had one of our specialists look into this for us and they’ve confirmed the next best step would be to have a full replacement of both meters and including an Alt-HAN bridge. This should allow both meters to communicate as the should.

As we can't book the appointment here for you if you call our Support Team and let them know you've spoken with a specialist on the Forum. They've asked you to call and say that you need both meters replaced and Alt-HAN is required. The advisor will need to ensure this is on the job report before the engineers attend the appointment as they'll need to bring the necessary equipment with them.

Please keep us updated once you've spoken with them and we'll keep an eye on this with you.

Hi,

Thanks for looking into this. However, I was advised 3 weeks ago by Blastoise186 on this forum that “AltHAN is currently suspended while a critical fix is being developed”.

Are you saying that this has been fixed and AltHAN bridges are now available?

Hey @GrandpaG 

I checked this with our FieldForce team yesterday who confirmed they're taking bookings for this and the work can be completed.

We’d been waiting a while for them to become available so Blastoise186’s advice a few weeks ago was correct at the time, however the team have confirmed they can now do this.

Thanks very much Abby.