I have three meters - Why is my Monthly statement wrong again?

With all the inconsistencies with reported usage data recently, 

My engineer appointment next week is carrying over the trend

My appointment is either between 10-2 or 9-1 or even 8-12

In the grand scheme of all things Ovo, the appointment time is irrelevant, but a simple single reference point supplying 3 different data points is a rookie error!

Tom....

Via email: 

Our engineer will be with you, ready to install your new smart meter on 13/10/2020, between 10:00 and 14:00.

Online account 

Or the app 

According to Ovo, the best time to supply my meter readings is today on the 10th of every month.

As I have a smart meter turned dumb & the 10th happens to be a Saturday, this is not as easy as it should be.

I have no option to enter my meter reading via the app or my online account.

The automated meter readings option via the phone comes  back with an error as not available.

As it’s a Saturday, nobody is manning the phones or web chat.

Am I right in thinking that if or when I migrate onto the new billing system, I will have the option to manually supply a smart meter reading online?

Is the failure on the automated meter readings via a phone call also due to the limitations of the old account system?

The only positive is that Ovo’s statements have always been missing or late for my electric supply, so hopefully the email with my meter reading might make it onto my account before my next statement has been completed.

Tom...

Hi @TomThumb - thanks for these posts. 

It really is two steps forward and 1 step back with this account, maybe a few side steps chucked in for good measure. I really appreciate your patience and perseverance with us, and your use of this forum to document the issues. It really helps. I’ll go into the nitty gritty now:

1 - Billing: great to see that a bill for all 3 meters has been generated. This sounds like a manual bill if you’re monthly bill is now due. Is it online now? 

2 - Calorific value: this is an automated element of your bill that doesn’t seem to be working. Has this been raised to our Support team at all this year? 

3 - Smart meter appointment time:   I have sent a screenshot of that comment to the product manager of the smart booking tool. Thanks for flagging!

4 - Customers with smart meters that haven’t sent us their readings for 5 or more days are able to submit them manually on the new billing platform / online account. But this confusing account has just got more confusing. As your meters aren’t in comms, but you’re on the old billing platform, but you have 1 non-smart meter. One question to help me to help you on this point: have you ever been able to manually submit meter readings online? 

@Tim_OVO  Firstly a big thanks for trying to keep on top of this. In response to your post above

 I’ve only posted this anomaly on the forum.

some of my statements show the correct formula, others do not. with no discerning pattern.

Now as of today I have noticed a change, I placed a call to ovo this morning to supply my electric meter reading, then a while later I checked my ovo account to see if the supplied reading had been applied, It had, but I now also have a manual entry available to supply my electric meter readings online, hopefully that option will not be needed next month, as my engineer appointment is tomorrow & fingers crossed it will result in full smart meter functionality being restored.

On a side note Tim, the cs agent this morning confirmed there is nothing flagged on my account that is keeping me on the old billing platform & the problems with my billing / statement is still an open case, so along with you, I suspect my last statement on the 6th Sep had been manually pushed.

I will post any findings from the engineer visit tomorrow in due course.

Tom...

Update 

The Ovo engineer has attended to my dumb electric smart meter & after pulling the main fuse to force a shutdown / reboot, all checks came back good & all communications have been restored, inc my iHD.

Also a comms refresh / update has been pushed to my unit to bring the grossly under reported ££ cost shown on my IHD  back inline to match the actual ££ costing for my gas usage.

So I just need to wait 24hrs for my ovo account & IHD to hopefully populate with the correct data.

Something for maybe @Tim_OVO  or @Transparent 

Last  month for a few days after my bill statement should have been produced, my Ovo account informed me that my recommended direct debit payments should be increased by about 20%, after a few days this figure dropped to about a 5% increase.

Again this month, Ovo account is flagging an increase of about 20% for my DD payments. with no new statement as yet, the billing system is pulling data from somewhere to calculate my projected usage.

(with the confirmation that I will not see any usage data for my 3rd meter) even when I migrate onto the new billing platform)

Is there a breakdown of projected usage data that separates my 2 gas meters?

How much of the projected increase is down to my 3rd meter?

As from past experience, the standard projected higher usage figures over the colder winter months are the opposite of my known usage figures of zero usage (Sep-April) for my 3rd meter for a 6 or 7 month period. 

I am now seriously considering setting up my 3rd meter on a separate account, there are many benefits in doing so, with very few negatives. 
Would there be any reason Ovo would object to my thinking?

Tom...

@TomThumbwrote:

after pulling the main fuse to force a shutdown / reboot, all checks came back good & all communications have been restored, inc my iHD.

I think there must be more to it than that, Tom.

My DNO pulled the power to my house this morning, but my IHD is still sulking and displaying 18:55.

I suspect @Tim_OVO will be quite pleased to hear that…

otherwise we’d have a load of customers pulling their Service Fuses to reset the Comms Hub. 

@Transparent   I cannot put my finger on a previous post relating to both my smart meters turning dumb from earlier this year.

In summary, Both my smart meters turned dumb for a 6 weeks period over the months of May-June, 

Full functionality to my smart meters & IHD had been only been restored due to a short over night power outage.

A none instigated power down / reboot of the comms unit back then, but with the same result as today.

Tom...

My Bad: found projected usage stats for corresponding meters on previous statements.

Tom....

I’ve had two sets of SMETS2 meters “go dumb”. On both occasions it was necessary to replace everything. The Resetting of the Comms Hub was to no avail. (But I have read the SMETS Spec, and understand how this is done and why.)

I’ve just had my second (planned) grid-outage of the day.

The Comms Hub and meters have rebooted as they should, but my IHD still hasn’t been picked up by the HAN being re-initialised. It hasn’t been synced for about 2 months now.

I’m unsure whether a SMETS_reset command being sent by OVO is at a deeper level than resetting a Comms Hub on site. But I think you’ve been particularly fortunate to have had systems recover as a result of a power-outage.

@Tim_OVO I have another couple of scheduled power-outages within the next four weeks. So it would be useful if you could have the S2 Engineers check what Tom and I have just discussed. I might be able to make good use of these two forthcoming events to try something.

If that's true it's unbelievable that my smart meter losing the connection with my energy provider means a new meter has to be fitted.

I think I will manage without smart meters and just give monthly meter readings, much less hassle.