Smart meters are working but not communicating with OVO - why?

Sorry to hear about this, @Harkj9, it does seem to have been a bit of an ordeal.

Please give our team a message on Facebook or webchat via the Help Centre, they'll be able to look into this today. 

Hope this helps!

I've moved your posts over here, @AKWillows. We'll need to carry our a smart meter health check to determine the issue.

Send us a message on Facebook , Twitter or webchat via the Help Centre with your name, DoB and account number.

Hey @AliWilson,

It sounds like we're not communicating with the meter, so we'll need to get to the bottom of this to figure out what's going on.

Send us a message on Facebook, Twitter or webchat via the Help Centre so we can look into your account and find out exactly what’s going on, and see if we can get a time frame of when this will be fitted. 

Thanks,
Eva

My smart meter has stopped reporting since 21st January. It previously has been working fine since April. Is anyone else in SE Hampshire similarly affected?

Looks like it’s just me then. So why will it take OVO 2 weeks before it can tell me what it is going to do about it?

We’ll need to do a smart meter health check to determine the issue, @PeteW, the team will then decide the best course of action. You can message the team on webchat via the Help Centre.

So how long does it take to do a meter check?. 2 weeks are up now and still no further contact! Why do I get the impression that nobody at OVO cares?

Hi @PeteW 

I suggest getting in touch through webchat via the Help Centre.

I’m having difficulty in communicating with Ovo. I had a SMETS2 meter fitted on Dec 9th. Works great for electric but not at all for gas. I entered into e-mail communication in early Feb and was told I need a further engineers visit because the meter wasn’t commissioned. I don’t really mind that I have to take more time off work to sort out my gas meter and I can accept that Coronavirus may have delayed this being sorted out as I am not vulnerable and that’s where Ovo’s priorities rightly lie.

I am not sure however whether or not any record has been made by Ovo that the issue is unresolved. I have registered for e-mail reminders to send monthly readings but these have now stopped coming. I have been updating readings manually over the Ovo website but on my latest visit I find the website has changed and I can no longer input a manual reading (the buttons shown in the tutorial don’t appear on my screen). I emailed a request latest readings on 2 July and asked for contact by email or phone. Automated email by return advised I’d get a response in 48 hrs. I’m still waiting and my usage has usage has not been updated. I just want to keep my readings up to date and to make sure I am up to date in paying for what I use. What else can I do? 

Hi @BrendanC and welcome to the Forum.

You are one of many customers who are experiencing “issues” with Smart Meters and some unusual patterns of readings not being delivered to their In Home Device (IHD), or their My OVO page, or both.

Two factors have conspired against us to make it more difficult to resolve these problems:

• the introduction of a new Billing System to comply with Ofgem requirements
• the pandemic restrictions, which make it difficult for installation engineers to visit enough properties

Your situation does at least have a clear cause at the root of it. As the meter commands are actually generated by the Billing System, it simply won’t know how to handle a site which it is aware of, but receives no responses from!

For your peace of mind, I suggest that you continue to read the meters manually once each month. That gives you a time/date-stamped copy of what you’ve written. From their side, unless there’s something unusual about those readings, I’m sure that OVO will be able to use them as the basis of your monthly statements until matters can be put right.

If you’d like to discuss particular issues concerning your meters, then please post here again. The Forum is a good place to share these experiences because it helps to provide better feedback to OVO as to where problems exist.

Thanks for the response but is there a reason e-mails are not responded to ? I understand that there will be teething problems with new systems but I think repeatedly not responding to e-mail sent to a customer service centre is pretty poor. I can put up with most things if I’m kept informed. I need to know if Commissioning my Meter is on Ovo’s “to do” list ? , and I’m wondering if this would prevent me from changing supplier ?

Those are questions I can’t answer, @BrendanC. Here on the Forum we are fellow customers.

The Moderators are the same team as those who handle social media. So if you send in a direct message via on Facebook or Twitter and provide your Account Number, then they can chase this up with the Customer Services Dept. If you don’t use social media, then send a Private Message to a Moderator (ask if you don’t know how).

I expect the CS Manager will be none too pleased to hear that a customer has failed to receive the required email responses. That’s a breakdown in the procedures that needs checking.

OVO repeatedly scores highly in the annual Which? survey of domestic Energy Suppliers because their customer support is better than their rivals. This is also depicted in the low level of complaints that get taken up by the Office of the Energy Ombudsman.

We’re not ignoring you intentionally, @BrendanC, we’ve discovered an issue which meant emails haven’t come through to us. This has now been resolved and the team are working through the emails as quickly as possible so you’ll get a reply soon.

Don’t forget you can also reach out on social media and we’ll be happy to help. 

And that’s an important reason why customers should be discussing issues here on the Forum. It enables us to see if a fault, such as missing emails, is being noticed by several customers.

I’m writing on behalf of my stepdaughter.  She transferred to OVO in 2019 and had smart meters installed in October 2020. All was well until she told me this week that her IHD wasn’t showing any meter readings. I had a look and sure enough, it wasn’t. It displayed gas but no readings and no electricity at all. What’s more, it constantly reboots after several minutes. I investigated further and found that the electricity meter stopped sending readings to OVO on August 6th. Before that it was fine so what would cause it to suddenly stop? The WAN/HAN lights are flashing every 3 seconds so there is a connectivity issue but why after a year of no problems? OVO have never alerted her to the fact that they are no longer receiving readings, they just send estimated bills. Why? What’s going on?

Hi there @Albourneboy !

Is your stepdaughter anywhere near Bilsdale by any chance? Because if she is, then I think I know what will explain the root cause of this outage. It’s very likely that the fire at the Arqiva Bilsdale Transmission Station back in August is related. This is beyond OVO’s control I’m afraid and it knocked out basically everything coming from that mast - including the Arqiva WAN service that’s used by Smart Meters in the Northern Territory in that area of the country.

Suppliers can’t easily detect these outages, but I’d definitely recommend asking the Support Team to take a look just in case they’re able to find a solution. Please be advised though that if her meters are meant to be serviced by the Bilsdale station, then I’m afraid it could be a while before that service is fully operational again.

Based on your description and the details over on SmartMe, it sounds as if the meters are trying to re-establish the connection - so it’s likely that there’s a comms outage somewhere. I think the reboots of your IHD are related to it trying to re-establish a link as well, but is unable to do so. Let me grab the expertise of @Lukepeniket_OVO just in case he can help too.

Hi all, hope everyone is OK!

So by the looks of it above you've sent a few details in to be checked. If you are in Arqiva Bilesdale then it's just going to be a wait until the mast is repaired.

If you are in another area the back office team will look at your system with the use of the smart meter health check but ultimately an engineer visit may be required. 

Nothing to do with Bilsdale for 2 reasons. Firstly, the fire was at the end of August, her meters stopped communicating with OVO on 6th August. Secondly, she lives in Scotland 🤣🤣

We've had a couple of members affected recently who came here to ask for help, so it's currently one of the things I like to check until the mast gets fixed permanently.

Based on everything mentioned, it definitely seems like a fault has developed somewhere. Please ask your stepdaughter to contact the Support Team and go through a Smart Meter Health Check so that it can be investigated. They'll keep you posted. 

Hi @Albourneboy and welcome to the OVO online community.

Sorry to hear about the issues your stepdaughter has noticed with her smart meters not sending us meter readings. Our helpful community members have given some great advice on this one:

We’ve got a handy guide to the smart meter health check for our SMETS 1smart meters here and SMETS 2  smart meters here - it involves checking some details on the meters, including the lights which are flashing. Once she’s checked these details she can forward these on to our Support Team, who’ll advise on the next steps.

In the meantime, It’s worth noting that the meter should still be clocking her usage so we’d recommend taking a manual meter reading and submitting this on the ‘Meter Readings’ page of her online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS).

Hope this helps get things sorted. Let us know how you get on -  We’re always happy to offer advice here where we can.