Who to contact to have a single meter installed instead of two meters (getting rid of storage heaters)

Economy 10 is tricky to handle with Smart Meters at the moment. I’d recommend waiting a few more months regardless of supplier.

Hi, 

I think I didn’t explain. I don’t want economy 10, I just want a single meter so I can get rid of the storage heaters and put in electric radiators. Ovo can’t change the meter, it needs to be the DPO. I googled what / who this is and contacted them this morning. 

They suggested I email with the following:

“Please can you arrange for my meter to be changed to a single meter by sending a Logical Disconnection Dataflow request to SSEN. Please quote 'D0132 dataflow' when making the request”.

Just had someone phone me and ask me to explain my email!!!! I give up. How do you contact someone in the UK? I had someone phone me when they mistakenly set up my smart meter appointment for last week. He was UK based and knew what he was talking about but I keep ending up with someone at the other side of the world who don’t understand. I’m getting so annoyed with this bunch and wish I hadn’t agreed to go with them. 

It’s often difficult to get sensible answers from random Google searches

A DNO is the Distribution Network Operator and they maintain the cables, switches and the network from the overhead system to your house. 
For any meter swap, you would normally contact your supplier (OVO in this case) so I’m not sure why they’ve referred to your DNO. 
Without a fault on your meter, it probably entails a different route to get a meter changed. There are some guides here 

• Non-essential meter maintenance, relocation or removal - Engineering work we can arrange and job costs Tutorial

Hi,

Thanks for your reply and the link. Strangely, no-one had said there would be any charge for this change. 

I had to Google ‘DNO’ because this acronym kept getting repeated to me by the customer care advisor yet she had no idea what it stood for or could give a phone number to me.

The reason the DNO was mentioned is because last week an OVO engineer was due to come out to fit a smart meter that they had suggested to me, but someone at OVO realised the day before that it couldn’t be done as I have an economy 10 tariff (this man told me he was constantly having to phone customers to say a mistake had been made when wrongly promising smart meters to customers on economy tariffs - I was his 11th call that morning).

This man told me I needed to phone the customer care team again and ask them to ask the DNO to fit a single electric meter, which is what I did this morning, however the customer service adviser told me to phone SSE (the DNO) myself. 

I gave up phoning and emailed them. Only to have the response “what do you mean by your email”.

Finally, I contacted them by Messenger this afternoon. After 2+ hours I still hadn’t had a proper response, they were still looking into it - only to find that someone had emailed me midway through the Messenger conversation with an appointment with a ‘Skilled Engineer’ without telling me in the chat. I have no idea whether this engineer is from OVO or SMS (I’ve since found out SSE now use this third party). 

So I have another appointment but if it’s an OVO engineer then it’s another waste of time as OVO tell me they cannot change my meter. Not only that, I’ve spent 4 hours!!! today on this simple request, let alone the time wasted with previous phone calls. I though British Gas was pretty bad and I was so pleased I was moving house and could start afresh with a better supplier……………..

I’m finding it difficult to get sensible answers from random customer care advisors at OVO :). At least Google could explain what DNO stood for :) 

Hi, 

Thanks, I think the problem has been the lack of knowledge or training of the ‘general’ customer care team from the start. The guy who phoned to cancel the first smart meter appointment understood the problem and said that I would need to have the DNO fit a standard single rate meter first (and they would tell the national grid to make the economy MPAN obsolete) and if I then wanted a smart meter OVO would be able to switch this easily enough.

I hope the ‘skilled engineer’ is either from OVO and can do this work (as Jeanne L in another thread had done) or from SMS and can do this work. I am trying to find out who will be coming as of now. I was definitely told by OVO that SMS needs to do the first meter…………… The appointment is for the 7th which is pretty quick, and the first failed smart meter appointment was also set up in a couple of days of asking so I’m a bit concerned the same thing might happen. I’m expecting a call to cancel the appointment, but live in hope :). 

Hey @AngieMc,

I can see our Community Members have offered some helpful advice here already, just wanted to add that the following topics may be helpful:

• Distribution Network Operators (DNOs): What do they do? When and how can I contact them? Tutorial

• Engineer jobs with OVO - A technical guide to the type of work we can arrange and issues which might delay the job being completed Tutorial

• Complex Multi-Rate Meter & Heating types F.A.Q.

Update, another cancelled appointment. They have messaged to apologise for booking the appointment yesterday, mention that the appointment I need is quite specific and that I need to call the customer care team (yet again) to request this specific appointment. Why can’t they do that for me? Surely, if they know I need a specific appointment, asking me to phone the generic customer care team again to ask them to do something they don’t understand is a waste of everyone’s time. There’s no logic to this. 

Can’t believe my stupidity. I was finally speaking with a man from the UK who knew about the exchange I needed. He put me on hold to investigate as he couldn’t phone me back as they are unable to make outbound calls. and then…….. my phone ran out of power! My fault, the lead wasn’t plugged in 🤣. 

Following this with interest. This is almost the same situation we were in nearly a year ago.  We failed completely. There are thousands of customers trapped, paying extortionate rates, and there seems to be no way out of our predicament. I wish you every success, AngieMc,  and please keep us updated on this forum. 

Oh Cassie, I despair for us all. I’m sorry you got nowhere, perhaps I may too. I certainly hope not and hope we all get sorted out. Even if I wanted to keep these awful storage heaters, they don’t all work and the two that work are extremely hot even on the lowest setting. I just want some electric, programmable radiators. 

I will keep on trying and keep you updated. I will also keep the phone on full charge 😉. 

Your storage heaters certainly seem to be past their best and need to be scrapped. We have the most up-to-date Dimplex Quantum storage heaters and Dimplex panel heaters in the bedrooms.  They are fabulous...so easy to program and the house is always comfortable. The downside is the ridiculous cost of electricity but we plan to move to Octopus as soon as we can and probably halve our costs. 

Have you managed to get this sorted yet @AngieMc?

A new update has been posted regarding Complex Meters and what happens next.

• RTS (Radio Teleswitch Service) Shutdown Update F.A.Q.

If you’ve got questions, feel free to stop by that thread.

Cheers!