I’m so sorry to hear of the communication issues you’ve experienced with your new gas smart meter, @mattwhyman, particularly as it means you’re still having to submit your gas meter readings manually.

It sounds like you’ve already been in touch with the team and they’ve been unable to get things sorted remotely,  which is why we’d need to schedule in another engineer’s visit. I appreciate the frustration that’s been caused by the lack of clarity over when we might able to get something arranged. We’d always try to get an appointment booked in as soon as possible but this is dependent on engineer availability in your area.

As you mention you’ve raised a complaint but weren’t happy to close the complaint without an appointment timeframe you should’ve been given the option to escalate your complaint. Even once a complaint has been closed it can be re-opened and escalated at any point so we’d encourage you to get back in touch with the Support Team to request this. You can see our full complaints procedure here.

Quite apart from the meter communication, if your meter screen is blank, or can’t be read due to condensation behind the screen this would be classed as a faulty meter for which we can schedule a faulty meter exchange.

It might be worth checking out the advice given in this related topic as we’d need to make that if the condensation is due to an issue with your meter box, this is fixed before a meter replacement is arranged. If you haven’t already I’d recommend taking some photos of the meter showing the condensation and emailing these over to the Support Team to make sure this can be addressed as a priority.

I’m hoping we can get the initial issue resolved quickly so you can enjoy the full benefits of going smart!

Hi again. Duly waited in for the fitter, as per the emailed appointment on the 19th Jan, but no show ! Spoke to cu and they rang the contractors, to be told they hadn’t received an appointment to attend !  Cu apologised and said they would get back to me with another appointment. Haven’t received any comms since ! Have sent two emails, asking for an update and still no response. Unfortunately the next will be a complaint.

I'm in shock ! Just received this email > if anyone can help please ? Tia

Hi @Steveo, let me offer some help with what you’ve outlined above, and first, an apology for this experience you’ve described. 

You’ll be owed a ‘missed appointment compensation’ payment for the missed slot on the 19th. If the installer wasn’t made aware of that appointment, then it’s OVO who will owe you this. Either way, for you nothing changes. Compensation is owed, unless there’s something I’m not aware of, such as contact being attempted to let you know the appointment was not going ahead more than 48 hours in advance. Our Support team can assist in this here.

That email we’ve sent you about amended charges. I won’t be able to offer too much advice on this as it’s so account specific. Your account will probably have an internal note attached. According to the email, it relates to your gas charges following this meter exchange you mentioned:

It also looks similar to this email reported earlier in the month, but I don’t want to get into the guessing game and suggest it’s the same issue. I’d recommend you address both things in that contact with our Support team:

@Blastoise186 

Hi again, hoping you can shed some light, Well from being in credit, we are  now £900 in debt and this was never on my account, until now. Will be taking this farce further. Any way would you know how long it takes to receive another appointment for this faulty gas meter exchange ? after receiving an  escalation ref number, 2 days ago. Interested to how are they working out our gas usage ? Carte blanche maybe. A very unhappy customer !! Tia

I’m afraid I don’t know unfortunately. Emergency appointments can be arranged at pretty short notice and in some cases, attract a four hour response time target. For everything else, it depends on things like availability of both yourself and an engineer.

If you’ve escalated to the Complaints Team, someone will be in touch soon. That’s about all I can say right now.

So sorry to hear that you’re still waiting on a replacement to the faulty meter, @Steveo. Worth mentioning here that same day emergency appointments are reserved for faulty meters which affect your supply as obviously these are the most urgent issues to resolve - that said we can usually arrange a faulty meter replacement with at least 17 working days notice so I’m surprised that this hasn’t yet been scheduled, if the fault has been identified. As @Blastoise186 mentions if you’ve raised this as a complaint, we expect you to receive a contact from our Complaints team within 5 working days to discuss things further. 

If we’re not currently receiving the smart meter readings remotely and the reading can’t be taken manually when the engineer removes the meter, we’d calculate your usage either based on your historic usage or the usage recorded by the new replacement meter, if we don’t have sufficient historic usage data. This is something that should be advised when arranging the faulty meter replacement. In the meantime it’s possible that the charges on your account are being estimated which might explain the out-of-line charges.

I’m hoping the Complaints team are in contact to get things sorted - If you’re still waiting on a response after 5 working days it’s best to chase this directly with our Support Team here.

Well after waiting in again for the am call to exchange our gas meter……No Show ! What really upsets me is, I specifically contacted the support teams to confirm the appointment with your technical team smsl, which they did, after the no show again, which btw happened exactly the same on the 19/1/22, I spent more time on the phone chasing, why it didn’t happen, they contacted smsl to be told they hadn’t an appointment to replace my gas meter. Someone is being misled surely, and cannot understand why this keeps happening ? Any ideas OVO ?  I have sent yet another complaint, asking for both meters to be upgraded to the newer gen2 asap, as out gas bills are horrendously being over estimated. I’ve had enough of being kicked around and lied to. I am building a case for an independent ombudsman and anyone else that can help.  Totally unbelievable ! and very stressful.

Well this was really disappoint to read, @Steveo.

I appreciate the frustration these missed appointments have caused. It’s worth mentioning here that if you’d previously received confirmation of an engineers visit and the engineer fails to visit within the agreed timeslot, without giving at least 24 hours of any cancellations, you may be eligible for a standard £30 compensation payment.

Our Support Team should be able to apply for this on your behalf as well as reopening/escalating any previous complaints you had raised relating to this issue. If we’re not able to get a complaint resolved within 8 weeks of being raised you can then refer this on to the energy ombudsman for independent review.

I’m really hoping the team are able to get this resolved for you with the need to escalate things further.

Thanks for your reply. I have asked for compensation payments on several occasions, but they haven't even done that !  I will be starting work on my case tomorrow, for Ofgem and also be contacting the  BBC, the CAB & our local consumer radio station. Doesn't surprise me that Ovo was fined over £8.9 million for over charging customers !! All I want is fairness, and  be able to pay for what I use ! Not much to ask is it ?  Disgraceful.

I’m really sorry to hear that the standard compensation wasn’t offered, @Steveo.

Unfortunately without access to your account  we’re not able to further your complaint here. If you’ve already raised this one to the team and haven’t been offered the solution you’re after they should be able to get your complaint escalated to our complaints team. You’ll then be assigned a dedicated complaints agent who’ll work with you to try and reach a resolution. If we’re not able to get things sorted within 8 weeks of the complaint being raised you’ll then be issued a letter of deadlock which explains the process for escalating your complaint to the ombudsman.

Once again I’m sincerely sorry for the difficulty you’ve had trying to get this faulty meter replaced.

Thanks @Jess_OVO 

It would be acceptable to deal with one person. How do i get to speak to a complaints agent ?

Have spoken to Gan Kuret (spelling) on the 4/3/22  from advanced complaints solutions, and received an Ovo meter exchange appointment for Tues 29/3/22. Should have both meters exchanged for Smets 2 ! Third time lucky ! if nobody turns up, the deadlock letter will have to be the next step.

Hopefully that should fix everything! Chances are you’ll probably get an S2 Aclara 1411-B electric meter and an S2 Flonidan UniFlo gas meter too, which are rock solid for reliability. Make sure you also get a Chameleon IHD6 off of the installing engineer too, as any existing S1 IHDs will stop working once S2 meters are installed. If the engineer doesn’t have one handy, OVO will be able to post one out to you for free.

However, I need to tell you something important. S2 meters can take up to six weeks to fully commission and start submitting readings, so I’d recommend allowing for this to happen before requesting a deadlock letter as there’s no way for anyone to speed up that process, even if the Energy Ombudsman asks for it. The gas meter might also take a bit longer to fully commission than the electric meter as well, due to the half-hourly heartbeats.

Hopefully you won’t need it though.