Hello Forum Members,

We are in need of some help!

We moved in to a rental property in April, with a Prepay stick meter with SSE.

We booked a new meter installation (as instructed by SSE) which was installed by the end of June due to long waiting lists.

Shortly after our new meter was installed we were abruptly switched to OVO.

Since the switch to OVO, we were told we were not allowed to change to a direct debit, initially because the meter broke when they switched it over. This took 2 months to resolve.

We finally got confirmation that our account had been switched to pay monthly Direct debit on September 7th, and we paid off the remaining debit and set up the Direct debit payments. In the switch over we lost all the credit we had pre-paid and when I spoke to the accounts team he told me ‘ I have no idea if you will ever get that back’.

Since September 7th OVO refuses to switch our account on the national database, and we have no access to our online account. The online account simply says ‘you now have a prepayment meter’.

Every time we speak to customer service we are told to wait 24 hours, or 6 weeks, depending on who we speak to, all of which has long passed. On occasions the customer service representatives have been rude, unhelpful, and unwilling to fix this mess.

We have been paying monthly, and want nothing more than to have access to our account. On top of this, we have been told we are not allowed to open a new gas account as a direct debit until we have the electricity account sorted out as pay monthly.

We have no contract, no idea what we are paying for, no idea what rate we are on. All we are trying to do is have a normal electricity plan split across the year.

We are being held hostage by OVO, and are unable to change to a new supplier due to them refusing to change us on the national database. We are trapped.

I can’t spend every single day calling OVO, as we have jobs, and an email communication has not resolved the issue either. We have run out of ways to try and get this sorted out.

In almost 20 years of renting, we have never experienced such awful customer service from an energy company in relation to creating an account at a new property.

We are waiting for another few weeks to take this to the Ombudsmen regarding refusing to switch us on the national database, as I don’t think it is legal to keep us trapped here.

We have come to the forum to ask for help, as we have run out of options speaking to the OVO customer service people online and on the phone.

Many thanks

No one here has access to accounts so it’s difficult to make many suggestions. 
If you’re getting nowhere, it may be worth raising this with the CEO team which is noted on the complaints page 

https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Hi @AnnEL 

Have you made any progress?

No progress still. I’ve contacted complaints. Still no access to the account and still wrongly registered on the national register.

Is there any way that I can get my prepayment gas meter upgraded to a non-smart meter? It seems due to my meters being too far apart that I cannot get a smart meter.

Hi @snakey ,

I’m afraid the only upgrade path is to a Smart Meter, as there’s basically no longer any stocks of traditional non-smart meters anywhere in the country.

With that being said, solutions like Dual-Band Comms Hubs and AltHAN can extend the wireless range to more than three times as far as what Single-Band Comms Hubs can do. Unless you’re in some giant mansion with the meters 500m apart, they should work fine.

I had British Gas out before I switched to install a smart meter and they said it was just too far from my smart electric meter with brick walls in the way. To put it in context I live in a normal 3 bedroom semi detached house. The electric meter is just behind the front door and the gas meter is just outside the back door. Surely I can't be the only person facing this problem?

In that case, both AltHAN and DBCH would easily blast through that stuff. British Gas are just known for being somewhat incompetent tbh when it comes to deploying them.

Up to you really - other suppliers may be more likely to get it right.

So I just have to suck it up and wait for the smart meters to get better then? And have a credit plan for the electric and pay as you go for the gas?

Nope! Better smart meters already exist - OVO has been deploying tons of them recently. We actually know one of OVO’s engineers on this forum and he loves the new kit.

You just got unlucky with a dumb dumb supplier who can’t be bothered to do it properly.