How far apart can my meters be to allow a smart meter upgrade?

I’ve noted OVO visit and respond when it suits. Apparently this Q doesn’t suit

I may not be charged for a failed install - maybe but how am I left? Intact as it was or some hybrid mess? Would I be charged for a repeat install, or extra work if necessary such as the clever devices you mention?  If a meter had to be moved who would arrange, carry out and pay?

See, so many questions that only a supplier can answer. But they won’t give clear unambiguous answers. - I have asked several directly. And I don’t want to try it and see, that’s the point. And why smart meters are not going to meet targets

Thank you for your attempts to help

That’s mainly because the Forum Moderators have stopped by and are satisfied with my answers so far - they might choose not to jump in if they’re confident the answers already present work for the community. Luke often stops by if we ask for his help, but it’s not his main job so he does prioritise his other tasks first and stops by when he’s got some free time.

The snag of what you’re asking though, is that it truly is something where there isn’t a 100% perfect answer without an engineer visit.

If you have to get a repeat visit or additional work done to complete the install, OVO would cover the cost - you won’t pay anything unless you smash the meters up with a baseball bat or tamper with the equipment. You’ll ALWAYS be left with a working supply either way.

Worst case scenario? You just get fancy and shiny - and far more accurate - new meters and push next the next mandatory replacement date back by at least another 20 years. If they don’t auto-send readings for some reason, you can just grab and send them yourself.

​@jc0107 thank you for your posts, and I’m sorry for the fact that you’ve been unable to get a definitive answer prior to an installation. 

Regarding your comments about how often my team get in contact directly on Forum threads; ​@Blastoise186 is correct in saying that we don’t always get involved if we are satisfied with the answers provided by other Forum members. What ​@Blastoise186has told you is true, and I can only echo what he has said, in that we’d recommend you book the appointment via our Support Team  or via your online account. The appointment is completely free of charge and, if any further work needs doing by our engineer, or if they need to re-visit, then this is also free of charge. You don’t pay anything for these appointments.

The OVO Forum isn’t a Customer Services channel. It’s a community where energy consumers can come to share their questions, answers and general discussion points, and the community will always do their best to provide the best possible help. There does come a point when sometimes things can’t be directly solved via the Forum, as we don’t have access to customers’ accounts. Anything that requires changes made to an account, such as making a smart meter booking, must be done via the Support Team, or via the online account where possible. 

I appreciate that you want a direct answer as to whether the appointment will be successful first time round but, unfortunately, this is one of those things that can only truly be determined once the engineer is on site, I hope you understand. Please rest assured you will not pay for the appointment. I’ve added some handy Forum guides for you below:

thank you for taking the time to reply

I’m afraid it is as expected another non-answer. Suppliers having been trying to roll out smart meters for over 14 years now, and yet still cannot identify sure-fire solutions at the first attempt. One day they will realise why the roll out has failed (all homes and small businesses by 2020, remember?)

It needs far better technical guarantees as well as service and finance ones

just to add, what I want - expect - is for the fitter to arrive fully prepared for whatever problems are encountered. If OVO and others have solutions, why do their people turn up unable to finish the job? If indeed OVO etc have the answers, use them to get things right first time, no hassle no complaints. Too radical?

Of course it would be ideal if every meter exchange could be carried out first time, but there can never be a guarantee that this would happen. If you’ve followed the sagas of some of the other customers who have come to this forum for guidance, or even in despair, you will see that there are all sorts of obstacles that the poor meter engineer couldn’t have foreseen.

For example, there is a customer whose incoming supply cable carries all three phases; two of the phases are used to supply the neighbouring properties on either side. The incomer is the responsibility of the electricity distribution company, and the three neighbours might each have a different electricity supplier. The meter engineer can’t do his stuff without interrupting the supply to the neighbours, and of course he can’t do that without giving adequate notice. 

Another’s meter is housed in a meter room in a block of flats. When it was originally set up, the electricity supply was in the hands of the electricity board, so all the meters were identical and neatly laid out with trunking to conceal the plethora of cables. Now this customer’s meter is due for replacement, but the modern smart meter he was expecting to get is too big to fit between the trunking. A creative solution is needed, but it can’t be deployed there and then. If the trunking has to be modified, that has to be the landlord’s headache. It might be possible to mount the two parts of the meter (one on top of the other) separately, but that requires an extender which just isn’t available at the moment. 

A meter engineer is not (necessarily) an electrician. He is trained to remove and install meters. He can also spot potential dangers with the electrical installation and take whatever action is necessary to have them mitigated by an appropriate party. He can’t usually fix things himself, so the meter exchange will in many cases like this have to be aborted. He isn’t normally a radio technician, either. If once a smart meter has been mounted, it fails to connect to the smart meter network, there’s not much an ordinary meter engineer can do. 

There are now something over 35 million smart meters in Britain. I’m sure that most of them have been installed without drama of any kind, and the proportion of difficult installations must be really tiny. No-one can give the guarantee you’re asking for, but that shouldn’t stop you going ahead. A glass half-full is always more appetizing that one half-empty. 

With over 30 million meters in the UK, it’s also physically and logically impossible to train engineers on literally every possibility - let alone equip them with a lorry full of parts.

There’s only so much capacity, so they’re often trained for the 99% of setups, with a few covering the remaining 1%.

I the fitters are trained to do 99%  of cases, why do 20% require repeat visits? re you trying to say that it would take a lorry load of parts to complete 

Of course there will be few extreme example but most of the issues are foreseeable - I have researched this well and I see the same things cropping up time and again. There is no learning.

Hence 20% of installations need 2 or more visits. And somewhere between 10 and 20% of installed smart meters do not function or not function properly (depending on how you define function), with some customers waiting up to 6 months for a fix (if they get one at all)

and if the fitter is not an electrician, I have to question whether they should be tampering with elec meters never mind gas ones

As we said, with 30 million+ installs, it’s inevitable that some won’t work - getting perfection in anything just isn’t possible. I think you need to manage your expectations a bit and try to be a bit more reasonable with your demands, otherwise you may struggle to make any progress.

my expectations are based on data - 20% need 2 or more visits. 20%of meters do not work or do not work properly. That is the problem which you actually seem to want to deny. 20% is not some its 20%, a lot!!!!

And to repeat, they have been at this for 14 years. Things have not improved, no learning and as far as I see can see no desire to learn or improve

Many of those second visit cases are down to reasons that could not have been foreseen - such as the customer not disclosing certain stuff or bad records from the past e.g. legacy suppliers not documenting things properly.

A Smart Meter is generally considered “working” if it’s fulfilling the primary function - taking meter readings and providing a way to read the meter locally. Everything beyond that is secondary. The % of meters that fail to do the primary function is barely any.

Most, perhaps, but not all. I don’t think the examples I gave are ‘extreme’ - perhaps just unusual, and indeed not foreseeable.
  

I’d like to see your documentation for this statistic - I’ve not heard it before. Would you mind sharing the source?
  
 

Dentists are not doctors, but we trust them to carry out medical and surgical interventions in their specialist area. Do you think an ordinary neighbourhood electrician would know how to install a smart electricity meter? Or a gas-safe plumber to install a smart gas meter? No, right? Installing and configuring a smart meter is no more tampering than triple bypass surgery is tampering with your heart. It’s a speciality like so many others in this complicated age we live in.

yea, all those customers and consumer organisations and surveys are wrong. Real world my friend, not assumptions and unverifiable excuses. But you have the last word, I’m out. This forum is as big a waste of time as suppliers when it comes to real help

Dentists undergo the same training as doctors. 5 year degree and a couple of years on the job supervised training. Choose who you talk to carefully if you are going to try to use such examples. So how long is one of these expert fitters, whoa re not electricians or gas fitters, trained for? a week? A bad dentist can cause loads of pain and problems. a bad doctor same or worse , death. A bad gas installation can blow the place up

Ludicrous stuff my friend, ludicrous

There’s a dedicated qualification for this. City & Guilds Level 2 Diploma in Smart Metering. It takes at least 16 weeks to complete that course. You MUST complete it (or something equivalent like MET1) before you’re even allowed to touch anything.

And that’s just the start…

Oh, and I’m trained very highly myself. My Level 5 BTEC Higher National Diploma in Computing and Systems Development took me four years to acquire - 2 years at BTEC Level 3 National Diploma in IT followed by two years of HND (Year 1 for Level 4, Year 2 for Level 5). I effectively have something equivalent to a Foundation Degree, just via a different (more practical/vocational) route.

But I’m also trained in a very specialist IT field that’s part of cybersecurity - that course took me only a week to complete and allows me to do stuff I’m forbidden from discussing here.

It’s all about the use case!

​@Blastoise186

You done similar to me. Except I'm in hardware / networking. 

IT is so diverse. Agreed there are many paths to get to the same goal. 

Ironically I work in the energy sector.. We kinda 'enable' it shall we say.... Ahem 'physically'... 

Cheers for your help through always appreciated. 

Hehehe, I’m also in hardware and networking too. I like to see myself as an all-rounder set up for cybersecurity, systems, networking and support. I’m multi-skilled but I don’t do coding/scripting stuff. I let someone else do that!