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My smart meter fitting experience resulted in gas supply being capped as the engineer thought they identified a spillage with my gas fire appliance...

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
February 12, 2021
33 replies
4930 views

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd leave my tale of woe about my smart meter installation.

New smart meters fitted Jan 19th(already had smart meters which were working!!)for whatever reason. Installer fitted both electric and gas meters and gave me the Ihd for them.

He then tested gas meter told me I had a 2mbar drop on gas pressure (4mbar permitted),then he told me I had spillage in my gas fire and capped my supply off.

Opens his phone and tells me to look on yell.com(yellow pages) I need a gas engineer to come sort the problem out.

So Jan 19th no central heating and no hot water.... wonderful.

Electric meter installed working ok

Installer then turns the ihd device on and says this could take 24-48 hours to sort itself out.

Luckily for me I'm friends with a plumber who's gas Safe registered he came round redid the pressure drop test with a digital meter with printout (not the water gauge the installer used) and this recorded a drop of 0.79mbar which he said is absolutely fine. The condemned gas fire,he looked around the flue and the self contained fire and didn't see any spillage,no smell of gas so nothing really wrong. Uncapped the supply and lit the boiler and we were back on.

Now the point of this story is apart from the cost and hassle of getting a gas engineer out is I've now got 2 'smart' meters which do not talk to my Ihd or send readings to OVO on my online account in shows the correct serial number for the electric meter but no readings from 19th Jan.

The gas meter is not the correct meter serial number and I've not sent any gas readings since 19th Jan so I'm acrueing a very large gas bill when someone finally gets round to sorting my meters out.

I've rang OVO and filled out their detailed form about the new meters (type,serial num,readings,comm unit) and have since been told it's likely to take up to 45 days to be looked at by the smart team.

Overall a very poor experience with no end in sight.

In the meantime I'm racking up gas and electric charges.

Unhappy

Gooner1511 ☹️

Best answer by Blastoise186

Updated on 10/11/25 by Ben_OVO

You’re welcome.

Yup, that’s a good plan as well. If you try to enter the readings from a meter that’s not currently registered, it will almost certainly cause issues and either get rejected instantly, or throw your account massively out of sync. Your account credit should help to smooth things over once the next reading comes in though. As long as you keep making payments and don’t have a sudden surge in energy usage, there shouldn’t be any bill spikes!

As for the testing, I’m not really sure why the installer thought they found a problem, and as a forum volunteer I wouldn’t be able to access your account notes to see what happened. But it does seem a bit strange though.

What I also know is that OVO isn’t responsible for anything beyond the meter, for which we’ve got a guide for that at

As far as I’m aware, an engineer installing smart meters is allowed (and most likely required) to cap off anything that looks like a possible safety issue that they come across, in order to make it safe temporarily. But any repairs of appliances etc beyond that are beyond the suppliers control and that requires another engineer.

What is a 'capped meter'?

A capped meter refers to a gas supply that has been cut-off by inserting some sort of physical block into the ECV (Emergency Cutout Valve) or pipework leading to the meter. This doesn’t refer to a disconnection or dead supply. A capped supply can be uncapped, if safe to do so, by a gas safe engineer.

Removing a gas supply

Even if your gas transporter has capped your supply, you’d still be listed as having an gas supply on the national database and as you’ve found are liable to continue paying a standing charge. In order to get the supply de-activated so you can stop paying this standing charge, you’ll need to contact our Support Team to schedule in a meter removal. As a non-essential maintenance job there is a charge for this however we charge these jobs at cost price and once removed you’ll no longer need to worry about the continued gas standing charges.

Switching supplier with a capped supply

You’re free to switch suppliers, even if your supply is capped. It’s worth bearing in mind that your new supplier will continue applying standing charges and take over responsibility for the maintenance of your meter. If you decide to get the meter removed after a switch your new supplier will be able to arrange this and the cost for this job may vary from supplier to supplier.

Show previous replies

Blastoise186

Super User

Not quite, it’s generally meant to be 45 days from the case being opened, rather than last contact. Any new updates on a case, such as by calling in won’t affect that. Emailing in more than once can sometimes slow down a response because it has to go back to pending before someone has read the new email, so it’s not recommended to email in while waiting for a reply.

However, you’re not out of options. If you haven’t already, give this one a try. It’s probably the fastest way to get this one resolved with the least amount of effort.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!

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gooner1511Author

Rank 2

Not quite, it’s generally meant to be 45 days from the case being opened, rather than last contact. Any new updates on a case, such as by calling in won’t affect that. Emailing in more than once can sometimes slow down a response because it has to go back to pending before someone has read the new email, so it’s not recommended to email in while waiting for a reply.

However, you’re not out of options. If you haven’t already, give this one a try. It’s probably the fastest way to get this one resolved with the least amount of effort.

Probably take 45 days to respond

LOL😂😂

In all seriousness I think I will have to make a complaint then they will have to respond in a timely period...I hope 🤞

Gooner1511

Blastoise186

Super User

Np, that route actually gets a pretty fast response, so you can expect to hear from someone with some kind of update by this time next week.

There’s actually some other massive improvements that OVO are currently working on to improve customer service stuff. I’ve been invited to try those out but I’m not currently able to reveal the details as it might corrupt the results. But I can definitely say that the improvements being trialled massively speed up response times and overall customer experience is probably 5,000% better. Keep an eye out for a future blog post from me, as I plan to publish one when I’m able to.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!

Jess_OVO

OVO Staff

In all seriousness I think I will have to make a complaint then they will have to respond in a timely period...I hope

Really sorry to hear that you’re still waiting for an engineer’s visit to get the Smart meters communicating, @gooner1511. If you’ve been added to our revisit list, we’ll be in touch as soon as there is an available appointment in your area, however I appreciate this has been quite the wait in your case.

As @Blastoise186 mentioned it might be worth contacting us to log this as a formal complaint. This gives us the chance to investigate exactly what’s happened on your account and escalate the issue to come to a fair resolution. Once escalated you should receive a response to your complaint within 5 working days.

Hope we can get this sorted ASAP for you.

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gooner1511Author

Rank 2

Update…

Complaint made today hopefully this might prompt some sort of communication.

🤞🤞

Gooner1511

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pinball13

Newcomer

@gooner1511 I had a similar experience. I had to pay for a Gas Safe engineer to inspect my gas hob after the OVO engineer who fitted my gas smart meter said it was unsafe. There was nothing wrong with it and 10 months later my gas smart meter still doesn’t work!

Blastoise186

Super User

Hey there @pinball13 !

I’m really sorry to hear about the trouble you’ve had. It goes without saying that this definitely isn’t the experience you should be having. I’m afraid the Community Moderators might not be available now until Tuesday outside of an emergency, but I can try to assist anyway in the meantime.

What kind of issues are you having with the gas meter exactly? If you can describe the trouble a bit more, I might be able to give some advice that can help.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!

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gooner1511Author

Rank 2

@gooner1511 I had a similar experience. I had to pay for a Gas Safe engineer to inspect my gas hob after the OVO engineer who fitted my gas smart meter said it was unsafe. There was nothing wrong with it and 10 months later my gas smart meter still doesn’t work!

I feel your pain,the company seems completely understaffed to be able to cope with the amount of customers and complaints/problems which have arisen.

The guys on here give some good sound advice but it doesn't ease the frustration towards OVO.

Gooner1511

Blastoise186

Super User

Actually, things are turning around there with customer service and complaint handling. Forum volunteers such as myself are just an extension to what the main Support Team does, but the reason that it might seem as if the Support Team is or was understaffed has already been resolved as far as I’m aware.

There’s also a trial going on right now which aims to test out a new and ingenious way of doing customer service. I’m one of the members involved in that trial but I’ve been asked not to reveal too many details. I will give away a slight clue however. Let’s just say that the trial makes things get a little more… Dedicated… In actual fact, the average response time to my emails during the trial has plummeted from the usual three days, to under three hours.

But that's nothing compared to the average response time on the forum… :wink:

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way! Remember, I'm just like you - AI Powered Evil Geniuses aren't Staff!

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pinball13

Newcomer

@Blastoise186 Thanks for the support, but I’m not expecting help - just whining! My gas smart meter has never sent any readings. I’ve contacted OVO via chat, email and phone many times and jumped though all the hoops. They say I need and engineer revisit but they won’t do anything to provide one.

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