Why oh why does the electricity/gas company (mine is EON) insist on sending round a meter reader just days after I have submitted readings online? Don't they believe me? I remember way back they liked to get at least 1 reading a year to verify your info but this is ridiculous. Or has it always been like this, and I'm just seeing it because I'm working from home more?
The sooner we get drive-by meters the better.
Oh, and the bloke thought my solar production meter was the electric meter - it does look like the modern meters - but his English wasn't so great so I had to crawl into the cupboard to point at it, he then realised what I was saying...
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"Why oh why does the electricity/gas company (mine is EON) insist on sending round a meter reader just days after I have submitted readings online?"
1) They don't - purely coincidental
2) The meter readers are not employed directly by the energy companies - They use contractors to do this
3) Meter reading is very poorly paid and you meet all types of people many of them anti social and aggressive since they perceive you as the precursor to the bill. Take pity on the poor chap!
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I have an outside electricity meter and I let our supplier do all the work. They read the meter and then they send me a bill. After I've received the bill, sometimes just out of curiosity I check the meter reading that they've quoted on the bill.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 15 Aug 13 at 10:00
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>> I have an outside electricity meter and I let our supplier do all the work.
>> They read the meter and then they send me a bill. After I've received the
>> bill, sometimes just out of curiosity I check the meter reading that they've quoted on
>> the bill.
If only it was that simple.
I've got OVO under control at home now. Monthly statements, monthly readings provided by me, level monthly DD. Last year they wanted to increase my DD from £148 to about £250.
The village hall just had an "estimated" bill for £600. Given the annual usage is about £400, this was a bit of a puzzle. They have agreed to use our reading and reissue the bill now.
The trouble is they only seem to send their own meter reader about once a year.
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I submit my meter readings online every month via a great little smartphone app provided by my supplier. Takes no more than a minute including going to the garage and back. Haven't seen a meter reading bod for about a year and not had an estimated bill for at least 2.
Last edited by: DP on Thu 15 Aug 13 at 10:07
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Pay by direct debit. Readings every few months.
Latest 2 weeks
DD reduced by 7 GBP and a cheque for142 GBP intheboot post lastweek.
Happy days
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My meter was last read by the G4S guy last August - missed him this year hence my post - what I can't understand in this day and age why they need access to your house to do it. My house is fiveyears old and has the meters locked in the garage. Surely there mustr be a better way. Did you know that network companies can get a warrant to gain access and it happens quite often.
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Even if you have your meters on an outside wall in the back garden as I do they cannot open the garden gate to access the meters without your permission.
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Anyone has a deemed right of access to your property for lawful purposes - postman, delivery man, carol singer, lost motorist, etc. You can ask them to leave if you like, but they are committing no offence.
The meters are not your property, the supply company has a specific right of access to read them, and I would suggest this right is enshrined in the Terms & Conditions of supply which you have agreed to.
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I do on-line readings as well but that doesn't stop a man coming every 3 months to read the meter.
The last bill was estimated in spite of them putting a new meter in and me giving them both old and new readings. Man came yesterday so I'm now waiting for an on-line bill of about 50 grand when they get the readings mixed up !
Ted
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The meters are not your property, the supply company has a specific right of access to read them
They haven't, trust me, they will need to swear a warrant at Magistrates Court to gain entry if the occupier refuses. As I say a regular occurance these days.
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My meters are on a sidewall at the front of the house and I have no idea if they are ever read by SSE or not. I submit readings on line every couple of months. I am on a fixed DD for both fuels and I got about 200 refund last September. As an aside, an amiable chap came round yesterday and changed my water meter, gave me a card with the old and new readings on it He is back today changing more.
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My supplier is Scottish Power and as an e-account customer I'm supposed to read my own meter every quarter. Reminder emails serve as a prompt. A meter reading contractor calls from time to time as a cross check.
The meters are in boxes on the outside wall of the house and ahead of the side gate so can be read without any need to ring bell etc.
I'm either out at the office all day or working in upstairs study so I won't see or hear the guy. The only way I know he's been is from on line bills which identify Customer readings from those provided by the reader.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 15 Aug 13 at 12:08
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With EON we had smart meters installed. A few months later we switched to EDF (Blue tariff, two years fixed price) who don't support them!
Water meters - no way, unless forced by law!
Last edited by: Roger on Thu 15 Aug 13 at 13:24
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>>I have an outside electricity meter and I let our supplier do all the work.
Where will your smart meter go, L'Escargot? From EON's video it looks very much like an indoor device. I have I hope taken preemptive action against installing mine where the present one is, in a high level cupboard in the door-less rear porch, involving a ladder, a torch and a cricked neck. I am now physically incapable of getting up there and a smart meter in that location would be absolutely useless. I had already asked to have the existing one moved: "Certainly, Sir, that will be about £500".
I have asked for the smart meter to be installed below the porch fusebox. No reply so far.
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>I am now physically incapable of getting up there and a smart meter in that location would be absolutely useless.
>I have asked for the smart meter to be installed below the porch fusebox. No reply so far.
I had smart meters installed last year, they simply replaced the original mechanical meters in the same location in the garage. They come with a remote display that you can place anywhere convenient inside the house. The display unit is quite nifty. It can show total units consumed or you can set it to show instantaneous consumption in either pence per hour or units per hour along with a recent history.
The devices communicate via ZigBee and you can buy ZigBee USB dongles if you wanted to capture the data on a PC.
Meters usually upload their readings to your supplier through the mobile phone network but ZigBee can also pass data through other ZigBee devices if they can't get a mobile signal themselves.
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Had my electric meter replaced two months back, just a regular digital meter - nothing smart about it.
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>Had my electric meter replaced two months back, just a regular digital meter - nothing smart about it.
Check the specs for the meter. It might be smart capable but your supplier isn't using it yet. UK Govt. wants every household to be on smart meters by 2020.
Now that we're in the age of Big Data we'll know when you miss making your bedtime Horlicks and be able to alert an undertaker.
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>> >Had my electric meter replaced two months back, just a regular digital meter - nothing
>> smart about it.
>>
>> Check the specs for the meter. It might be smart capable but your supplier isn't
>> using it yet. UK Govt. wants every household to be on smart meters by 2020.
>
You're right, Its a Sagem CX1000-3, pretty damn smart indeed, just downloaded the tech docs for it, I'll investigate means to interrogate its data.
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>> You're right, Its a Sagem CX1000-3, pretty damn smart indeed, just downloaded the tech docs
>> for it, I'll investigate means to interrogate its data.
>>
Howdy Zero,
i know this is an old thread, but did you find a method to read out the data?
Also would you happen to have those technical documents and could i get a copy? My Blink electric car battery charging equipment has this same CX1000-3 device within, and i would like to see about reading the data. Thanks, kenny
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No I lost interest when I discovered you needed a Pulse line communication modem or an optical probe.
I dumped the docs, but I'm sure it was just a regular google search that unearthed them.
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My smart meter is on the kitchen table you can put it anywhere you like in the house.Can't see the problem ambo.
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>> My smart meter is on the kitchen table
I think you're mixing up energy meters like the free ones you get from electric companies (or Owl and similar if you get one independently) with what is referred to as as smart meter. The smart meter can send meter readings to your energy supplier directly.
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Ours is from British gas.The chap who disconnected the outside meters said that this small black box can send meter readings directly to the supplier.The readings are for electric usage and gas.That is why we had it done it saves them popping around for the meter readings.
Not that it saves any money you can see on the meter what you are using in energy and so can they.
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What is says on the tin it is a smart meter..:) Just had a look.
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>Ours is from British gas.
Your meters are probably Landis & Gyr units Dutchie.
Is this the display you have?
www.landisgyr.co.uk/webfoo/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Libra_310_overview.pdf
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>> >>I have an outside electricity meter and I let our supplier do all the work.
>>
>>
>> Where will your smart meter go, L'escargot?
The outside meter is on the wall of the integral garage and the consumer unit is in the garage in a corresponding position, but slightly higher. I assume that if I had a "smart" meter fitted it would be just below the consumer unit.
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Sorry this is confusing me which isn't difficult.>) I have just checked our outside meters electric and gas they are both disconnected .All numbers zero.
Our smart meter is inside our house a small unit with a plug connected to the electric,we can read what we use and so can the energy company British Gas.Our outside meters are on the outside kitchen wall.
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Small house, live by myself, away a lot= water meter is the way to go. I don't know what the break even point is between meter or rated value. a couple at home full time I would guess. I over paid quite a lot and am now on a total charge of £5 a month for supply and sewage! Yes I do shower and wash!
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That goes into the sewage, if you mean poo!
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EON have now replied. They will not be fitting smart meters in our area (Dorset) anyway.
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Because of all the shenanigans with the electric companies - unexpected bills, DD's etc, here (Sweden) they made the network company change all the meters to auto reading ones, that update every 24 hours. You can go online to the leccy co. and see what the meter reads (or go outside and look), an also the bill to date. When moving house it just takes a call to the company and they read the meter that night.
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I went online to check the electric/gas account because I knew a bill is generated in August. It said the next actual meter reading was in January so I submitted my readings... a few days later someone came to read the meters anyway.
Seems what the account says and the (contracted) meter readers do is not in sync. And npower are rubbish (still). Wish we swapped away from them.
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Years ago, my gas meter was changed and apparently it is of a type whereby a radio bit could be fitted to enable reading from the road outside. Not that it has happened.
So far my water meter has been read correctly once, and twice incorrectly. The first time I got them to accept my reading as theirs was 10 cubic meters too high. The last time I left it, but they got it one cubic meter too low. Never known the gas or electric get it wrong, but the water lot are giving a good impression of being hopeless.
As for the water bill - less than half now it is metered rather than derived from the rateable value.
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>> Water meters - no way, unless forced by law!
Roger, check with your water company what your bill would be likely to be if you had a meter fitted. This is what Anglian Water says. tinyurl.com/o7uyra5 If you don't like being on a meter within two years you can revert to unmetered.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Fri 16 Aug 13 at 13:01
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I've just moved to Scottish Power with an e-account a few months back.
I had the e-mail asking for my reading, the same day a G4S guy turns up so i mentioned to him that I thought it was all online to which he replied that he'd saved me the trouble of filling in the website because they'd use his readings. Checked a couple of days later and the readings were there on my account. Week later got a snotty e-mail from Scottish Power querying why I hadn't submitted the readings, replied, explaining that they'd got them only to be told that I have to submit the readings as the terms and conditions of my account and that they won't use the meter readers reading to raise the bill. According to them they send a guy round twice a year to check the safety of the meters, more like to make sure they haven't been bypassed, but they don't use the readings. I submitted exactly the same readings as the reader and they were then happy, they couldn't see the irony though of the fact that they trust my reading but not the guy they employ to do it!
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There are many advantages to the "intelligent meters" that should be coming our way.
Shows you how much you are using at that point, average consumption etc etc
The Supplier can vary the costs - cheaper at night/weekends etc
Apparently the big issue is "hacking" - this leaves the supplier open to people hacking their meter to undercount/under report and rob the supplier blind.
We all know of Computer OS & Applications that are secure until someone finds the cracks in a matter of days/weeks...........I am sure low lifes could sell "upgrades to the meter software" for a few hundred pounds to millions.
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EON now tell me they are installing smart meters on a very limited scale, to be expanded in 2014 and nationwide by 2019.
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Reading the meters - CGNorwich
