Husband wants to get a smart meter leccy: yay or nay?

[Surgeryscardeycat]

I thought I heard they are a bad idea?

I'm not getting one until the force me like.

Depends on what kind of dude he is. Is he the type to obsess, switch everything off at a certain time so it's either sit in the dark or go to bed, or is he more normal?

He may do that to be begin with but he's more normal.

It was more them the company... I thought it's like big brother

And even if he did do that I I'd turn them straight back on again

Why are they a bad idea???

I am not getting one. I have heard several stories of incorrect meter readings, meters not able to send readings; then difficulties getting the energy companies to accept there is a problem.
I know how to switch of a light, I turn off my microwave at the plug and don't leave the TV on if no one is watching.

@Hadalifeonce yes that's what I'm worried about

Perhaps if you find some evidence, I think there is a Facebook page called I hate Scottish Power or something similar which has several instances. There will be others.

We've had one for a year with no problems.

I've had several, in different properties, and all fine. Saved me the hassle of sending in meter readings.

We've had ours for 2 or 3 years and never had a problem. We don't use the display unit as we can't plug it in near enough to the actual meter to get a good reading. It doesnt take long to find out which appliances are using a lot of power anyway. We can log into our account to find out what we have been using at any time.

We had one fitted, a few months ago, when we got an EV, so we could take advantage of the intelligent tariffs. The IHD hasn't been correct for both electric and gas for more about a week. It got fixed, then the April price changes happened and it was all wrong again, only displaying the overnight electric costs, even during the day. Waste of space.

We’ve got one and it’s fine, good not to have to take meter readings, easy to see what we are using (but we don’t really bother).

I like to call it the 'anxiety meter' 🤣..
but seriously I think they are great.. they make you more mindful of unnecessary or excessive leccy useage which is good for my pocket and hopefully the planet .

I had one purely because I'm too bloomin lazy to take meter readings

Smart meters give you access to tariffs like Octopus Agile (time of use tariff for electricity that can save a fair bit if you can avoid the 4-7pm peak and will occasionally even pay you to use electricity) or Octopus Tracker (for both gas and electric with daily prices based on the market). With Agile and Tracker the price can go very high (for instance if weather and world events conspire to push the prices up) but in practice I’m saving a fair bit (about a third, I think) compared with the standard tariff. Obviously other providers are available but I only know about the Octopus tariffs.

I think a lot of the smart meter scepticism is based on problems with the first generation of meters.

I was against having one but we had an electrical fault in our house and had to have one installed if we wanted the problem sorted out quickly.
its been ok so far.
its out of my sight but my husband enjoys looking at it and doing various calculations

we always gave monthly meter readings so it’s quite nice not to have to bother doing that as it involved using torch and standing on a chair

So you don't want to take advantage of cheaper tarrifs that you can get by having a smart meter. The reason you give is because you've heard they might be a bad idea and it's like big brother. You say this while posting on the Internet presumably from a mobile phone, tablet, laptop and you are worried about big brother via your smart meter 😂 okay then.

We've had one for ages & never had any issues. Much prefer it than having to send manual readings

I've had one for around four years. Never had any issues and I've switched elec providers a few times all with no bother. You get cheaper tariffs and don't have the bother of putting readings in.

I think that there were issues with the 1st generation smart meters years ago but not so much anymore.

I wouldn't go back to a non smart meter.

I've had one for years with no issue.

A friend has one that's supposed to record meters every half hour and recognise different tariff overnight when her EV is charged and it's not worked in months and is overcharging her. She's not got anywhere with customer support. They recognise there's an issue but no idea how to resolve it

We had one installed a few weeks ago. So far so good. We're with Octopus and have now switched to their agile tariff so hopefully bill will come down. We both WFH so can choose when to use the washing machine based on price.

The other day it was a perfect drying day so hung all the washing on the line. If we'd put it in the dryer we'd have earned about 16p because electricity was mi us 4p per unit that morning. I still can't get my head round that!

We’ve had one for a couple of years.
We have an EV tariff which gives us cheaper overnight electricity and a gas tracker tariff which has been much cheaper for us. You can’t have these tariffs without a smart meter.
As others have said most of the problems are with the first generation meters.

Don't do it OP. We've had ours for about 6 weeks now and it's a pain in the arse!

I should actually be clear, it's turned DH into a pain the arse! Every time he walks past it 'we've use this much' or 'how many times have you boiled kettle today?'

I boiled it twice yesterday for the fun of it, just to see him getting upset with readings. Winding him up is all I have now!

Never in a million years would we have one.

Go to Martin Lewis website..
He advices against them