Is it really illegal to refuse to have a smart meter?

[ALongHardWinter]

This is what a friend of a friend told me yesterday. Is it true? My electric company have been sending me letters every few months for the last couple of years urging me to have one installed. So far I've dug my heels in,mainly due to all the horror stories I've heard about them - not working initially,or working initially then suddenly not working. I know at least 6 people who've had them installed that have had problems. Now I get told this!

I’m sure at some point they will get there act together and you will have to have one

the old on will be reaching the end of there lifespan

also they have a responsibility not to let customers spiral into uncontrollable debt
old meters will let you do that

I have smart meters in this house that are not smart, must be registered to a previous supplier. We had a huge issue in the summer where a new contract was based on day and night usage so we could charge the car at night on a 7p rate. It took 4 months of no electricity bills ( 2 months of me requesting a bill) for them to notice that they couldn't access the meters for readings. They cancelled the contract and gave us £30 apology.

I've had a number of issues with smart meters at work, including a supplier wanting to fit one 5 months after they already fitted one because they couldn't read it and were overcharging us. It is a huge office that causes problems when the power is out.

I send monthly readings at home and for all our properties at work so I am up to date and a smart meter can be useful if it all works as it should and the billing account is kept up to date. Unfortunately the reality is that they can't always be read remotely (so not smart) so what is the point?

We are on a tariff that requires us to have one. We don't have one. We won't be having one. They came years and years ago to fit one with our agreement. The man got out of his van ,said the signal was too poor and they would reschedule with a different meter. He never returned. We don't want anything that has signal issues. I send a meter reading each month. It takes seconds. You absolutely do not have to have one.

The ones that seem to think companies can just push a button and turn off your energy. Obviously energy can be cut off but it's an extremely lengthy process and it makes zero difference whether you have a smart meter or not.

Also people might be surprised at how little some people know about energy. I had to have consumption discussion with someone only the other day who had their heating set at 24 degrees and wondered why their bill was so high.

We're with EDF and I get regular texts claiming - IT IS A LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO HAVE A SMART METER FITTED. CALL NOW TO BOOK YOUR APPOINTMENT

Now I just ignore as I've no interest in having one until it actually is a legal requirement but some people would find that quite worrying/intimidating and be frightened into having one. Not cool, EDF

Like many here all our plugs (bar the fridge and oven) are off when not in use and I don't need a box to tell me how much electricity we're using. It takes me less than 5 minutes to obtain a reading from outside and upload on an app.

I resisted a smart meter for years. Partly because I had heard bad things about them operating alongside solar panels.

This year our company said they'd give us £100 if we swapped. I figured it was inevitable eventually so I might as well be paid for it!

We have had no problems. Like others, we opt in to the energy saving hours and avoid using the oven etc from 5-6pm. We saved about £25 last month doing that.

@Previousreligion could I ask which company you are with?
Reducing use 5-6pm I could do.

Installing a Smart meter takes a bit of effort, it isn’t ‘Plug and Play’. A fair bit of work is involved.
My daughter recently had both gas and electric Smart meters installed at the same time. This entailed two fitters being at the house for at least two hours. They needed access to the main fuse board to turn the power off, the gas supply was turned off too.

It's not illegal to refuse a smart gas or electricity meter BUT you don't own your meters, your energy company does.

So they have an obligation to maintain the meters and keep them in safe working order.

At some point your meter will have to replaced and they will be replaced with smart meters as government has imposed targets on energy companies to install smart meters (also why would you replacd an old meter with obsolete tech?).

Energy companies do have legal powers under health and safety legislation to forcibly enter your home and check/replace meters. However these powers are rarely used as the majority of people are happy to ensure they have a safe, functioning meter.

We've got municipal heating so no choice about a smart meter for gas alas.
Electric I just kept telling them to stop contacting me about a smart meter and they haven't for a couple of years. On my account page there's some blurb about a discount for getting one but I ignore that

Obviously there are rules around it. Before smart meters they would have to get warrants to get into your property. With smart meters they don't have to get into your house to turn you into a prepayment meter now do they?

No it's not true, stick to your guns and don't get one installed. I wish we hadn't been persuaded to change, they want £250 to remove it.

@MinceEyes yes I was referring to your situation. When it was all owned and billed geographically then the company could send someone out and change the meter moving it etc, now the company that bills you has to arrange for a meter changer to do it and they can bill what they like because they have control.

@Daffodilsandtuplips mine were changed, both of them, were smart meters and they installed new smart meters and it took under an hour and the power was off for a very short time. My meters are outside though so depending on meter placement and access it can take a bit. As part of my training we had to accompany a meter changing person because if we were booking those jobs we had to know what was involved. It was really interesting.

@Beezknees I remember back in the 90s when Coronation Street ran a storyline where some character had their electricity cut off, we never do that, as you well know and the number of people who called in to pay their bill was incredibly funny. There was a little celebration in the office.

The hysteria on this thread over the "power" the suppliers have, if they want to cut your power off they can do that now, it doesn't need a bloody smart meter to do it.

@DancingLedgend it is Octopus Energy, you get a notification of a Saving Session and you opt in by clicking a link. You then get told how much energy collectively you all saved together and it is enough to power a city for X amount of time. They pay you in points and you can apply that to your bill, I think mine is around £12 at the moment. Not huge but nice for doing very little. https://octopus.energy/octoplus/

These threads always turn into noshing octopus. I'm surprised nobody has posted their referral codes yet

Yes, similar to other small jobs electricians etc do. DH stayed at home for the afternoon, worked off a fully charged laptop and 4g via his phone while they fitted them, no bother at all really and £100 in the bank from the supplier.

Water meters (rather than paying water rates) are becoming compulsory in some areas; perhaps that is what they are thinking of?

I wasn't sure about getting a smart meter but have no regrets now it's installed and working; it really helps me keep the bills down and turn the heating off when I don't need it. It's satisfying to know that you're spending under £X in a day and building up some credit for the next cold snap when it definitely does need to be on all day.

Correct but lots of meters are also on the outside of the property so they don't need a warrant anyway. There is a lot of misinformation almost like they sneak in to your house in the dead of night. There has been communication from the electricity company, I am not a cruel or awful person, we did try to help everybody we could but it relies on customers contacting their supplier if they are in difficulty. We used to send out a person who could walk round the property and talk to the customer about reducing their consumption, explain what appliances use the most, explain electric heating to them if they had it and how to get the best from it.

What we tended to find is if your monthly payment (when people used to pay at a counter or at the post office) was say £80 and you didn't have the £80 they would pay nothing instead of going well I've got £67 so I will pay that instead, all we saw was no payment and no contact from the customer. There was a rota for us to ring people to remind them of their outstanding bill, you don't get paid being shitty to people. Most simply forgot, those who were struggling we tried to help.

I have been with many suppliers over the years and I do like Octopus, I like their customer service and as a person who was part of customer service for an electricity company I know what good customer service is. There are millions of households sometimes companies get it wrong but on the whole Octopus get it right and it isn't me saying it, Which voted them their recommended provider every year since 2018. Plus they are cheaper, they make that their mission to be cheaper. What's not to like?

The more a company or the government keep trying to persuade me to do something, the more likely I am to suspect some kind of foul play, or that it is not in my best interest. There is a myriad of reasons why the powers that be want us all to have smart meters, and I expect it is not in our best interests. See also the government and banks trying to persuade us to go cashless. When they start bribing people with monetary incentives, you know they are up to something; and after the bribery, the next step will be making not having a smart meter prohibitively expensive. It's straight out of the government's "behaviour management" handbook. There is plenty more of this to come, i.e. electric cars, interlinked with smart meters, watch for the bribery. As for the ways we were persuaded and nudged and bribed to do things in 2020 and 2021, I don't know where to begin.

This "smart" tech is all very well, until it goes wrong, and then you might not even have the basics, i.e. electricity. This time last year, I visited a small zoo which had prominent signs saying "we are cashless". And when we got there, they sheepishly told us "sorry, our wifi is down, we can only accept cash today". Being cashless is all very well, but when the supporting tech is down, you're screwed.

The irony. This is one reason of many why I am deeply sceptical of "smart" technology, such as motorways, and extremely suspicious of anything that comes with a hard sell. Many things I see advertised simply bounce off me.

@sliceofapple Indeed. Exactly the same rules around disconnection apply to smart meters as they do to dumb meters. The only difference is they do not need a court warrant to enter your property to access the meter.

Disconnection is pretty rare for domestic energy customers these days.

They have started a new tactic - telling you your meters have expired and need replacing.

I hate octopus. Their customer service is appalling.

I live abroad and over here putting a smart meter in is a requirement for any work on the house electrics such as rewiring. The new meter needs to be accessible from the outside.

Meters do indeed have a shelf life and we used to remove them, refurbish them if we could and install them back into other properties. It isn't a scare tatic. Like I said the amount of misinformation on this thread is worrying. In case you missed it I did work for an electricity company. They don't want to pay someone to remove a meter for the fun of it.