Another rant. This time energy provider nonsense.

Pondy

Pondy

Muppet
 At the summit of the picturesque fens
I'm gonna have another rant...

I got a phone call from EDF, who I pay my gas and leccy bills to, a few weeks ago saying they want to fit a 'smart' gas meter to my house.
OK, if you like, I thought. No skin off my nose. I am at home all the time so not an inconvenience and doesn't (directly) cost me anything.
So the appointment was booked for 30th October between 2 and 4pm.

30th October comes and a young lad knocks on the door to do the job. After 5 minutes of checking the gas and electricity meters he says if he changes the gas meter it won't 'connect' as our 'smart' electricity meter is too old. So asks if I want to cancel the appointment. I said I don't care either way.
So after another ten minutes of him phoning whoever, he decides he is going to change it but it will be of no advantage to anyone as it can't communicate with the leccy meter. So he changed it. We now have a digital gas meter instead of an old analogue one which still can't send readings.

BUT....
He insisted on checking all the gas appliances in the house to make sure there was no issues with the meter supply. OK fine. So we turned the gas hob on.....groovy. We turned the gas boiler on.....groovy. We have a gas-fired 'stove' in the main living room so he wanted to check that. But he didn't just check it worked, he wanted to make sure it meets current 'Gas Safe' requirements for ventilation.

He spent a good five minutes looking for the rating plate on the fire and checking all the details. I questioned why he was so interested, when all he was there for was to change a gas meter; like for like.
He said that because he had 'altered' the gas supply, everything fed from that gas supply needed to suddenly comply with 2024 Gas Safe criteria and Building Regs.

I got a little annoyed at this point, as I know the gas fire is perfectly safe, we have a ventilation air brick and a CO alarm in the room.

So, basically he spent more time trying ways to legally condemn my gas appliances than changing the useless gas meter. Stank of a 'job creation' policy to me.
 
I think the main issue from their end is from a legal point, increase you ended up gassing yourself and they hadn’t checked your appliances after fitting the new meters, and like me you’d have been better off sticking with your old ones.
I’ve had smart meters for a number of years now, but earlier this year I had an email saying I needed to change the smart meters to a new kind, I said no problem and arranged a date for the engineer to change them over. When the engineer changed them he tried to connect them to the network but couldn’t get them to work and left saying he would try later to remotely connect them. I didn’t hear anything from him, so email the company to find out what was happening, a complaint was logged and I was told I would have to provide monthly online meter readings, another appointment was made for a 2nd engineer to commission the meters, again he couldn’t get them to connect so now I’m stuck with smart meters where I have to get down on my hands and knees under the stairs to give them monthly meter readings. Seems like a total waste of time having the old smart meters replaced.
 
That's the problem when new regs come in, it can suddenly condemn your installations even if working perfectly safely. Living in a bungalow we had our gas fire condemned, it was perfectly fine but new regs regarding flue tests meant we needed a ridiculously tall flue chimney to pass the flue test. Flue itself was fine. We'd survived 30 years upto then :roll:

Tim.
 
If he didn't explain he would need to do all those checks before he actually replaced the meter then it would have been interesting to see what happened if you had denied him access.
 
Eon keep pestering to put smart meters in here, I tell them I don’t want them and won’t have them until it’s the law to have them. This post just adds to all the negative things I have heard regarding them.
 
I manage a few properties for work and when the gas smart meters have been changed they have never come in doors to do anything.

I have had a bad experience with an electric smart meter being changed so now if it isn't broke then it's not getting changed.
 
Regarding electricity meters. Mine at home is very old. It's still mechanical cogs.

I have been hassled for years to change it for smart but refused. Turns out after all this time you could actually have a new non-smart meter fitted however they now don't have any left. They don't contact me anymore about it.
 
A while ago we had a gas meter changed, non smart, due to a leak. The fitter didn't pass on the old reading to Eon, what made matters worse was that the new readings were based on a different volume, meters instead of feet I think? Anyway they where charging too much. My wife went through hell to get this sorted out, with weeks on the phone to Eon. As above with Usel, "if it isn't broken don't fix it." I recently saw a program somewhere that the smart meters should have been fitted by the network provider but was left up to the gas and electric suppliers. They, the suppliers wanted something on the meter so they can turn of the supply from their end when they felt like it, or is this just a conspiracy theory? :wink:
 
Usel said:
I manage a few properties for work and when the gas smart meters have been changed they have never come in doors to do anything.

I have had a bad experience with an electric smart meter being changed so now if it isn't broke then it's not getting changed.
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Same here - when he changed the meter he merely checked that the boiler and hob lit as the air would need to be purged from the pipe.

FWIW when we moved we had smart meters, but the serial number for the gas one didn't match the one in the house. As it was during Covid nobody would come and check.

Then we went to octopus - 2 new meters. Gas meter readings are taken half hourly but it doesn't show anything on the In Home Display. Leccy is fine except for a 3 week gap in the readings from May, which means no leccy bill for 6 months. As we have solar and battery and are on a flexible tariff this would be nice to get sorted as they'll owe us money for the Summer.
 
I have a digital meter which was installed exactly 20 years ago, and now I am getting letters that by law I have to change it as the certification has ended. How can a digital meter be past its certification and has to be replaced by a smart meter when there are still analogue meters about?

I don’t want a smart meter as I submit readings after a low use” week to avoid getting the green levies (part use business hence green levies on the bill)
 
I kept getting the letters and emails from Octopus to change my dual rate analogue meter. House was built in 1988 and it's the original meter.

They really piled the pressure on in January this year stating it has to be changed because from March it won't be able to change over from Rate 1 to Rate 2 correctly. I just said that doesn't bother me because I'm only single rate and will carry on just giving both readings which make the total used figure for single rate.

So on the phone I flat out refused a smart meter and this is when they said I could have a new non-smart meter but they don't have any and they stopped producing them.

I said that's not my problem and that they could have installed one years ago when they had them. They don't contact me anymore about it.
 
DevonPaul said:
FWIW when we moved we had smart meters, but the serial number for the gas one didn't match the one in the house. As it was during Covid nobody would come and check.
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Oh yes I forgot that the old meter serial number didn't match up with what he had on his ipad (everyone carries an ipad around these days of course).
I am now waiting for the inevitable f**k up when it comes to old and new meter readings. I took a photo of the reading before he changed the meter but it probably won't help.

I should have just said I don't want a new meter. :roll:
 
Having 'smart meters' helps the providers, not the consumer. It means they never have to physically read a meter again and have up to date usage figures every few minutes, which helps them in more than one way.

There is also a rumour that they can cut the supply off remotely if they want to. With an old fashioned meter, they have to get a court order to enter the property to physically disable the supply.
 
Pondrew said:
Having 'smart meters' helps the providers, not the consumer. It means they never have to physically read a meter again and have up to date usage figures every few minutes, which helps them in more than one way.

There is also a rumour that they can cut the supply off remotely if they want to. With an old fashioned meter, they have to get a court order to enter the property to physically disable the supply.
Click to expand...
And they can introduce dynamic charging depending on demand. With an old style meter they can't. Mine aint broke so its not getting fixed
 
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