Forced to have smart meter

[Coatanger]

morning,

i’m Constantly being bombarded by Scottish power about having a smart meter fitted. I’ve consistently said no thank you and now the letters have changed, telling me that my meters are out of date and need changing.

is anyone else experiencing this?I feel like it’s just a ploy to fit a smart meter!

my gas meter was actually checked fairly recently with no concerns raised!

can I just keep saying no or will they escalate it?

They are rubbish, all of them the same. 3 I’ve had don’t work for either gas or electricity. OVO have doubled my bills in estimates since I got them fitted. V hard to get money back. I’m keen to get switched

We do get half price electric on a Sunday and the peak time discount in the winter so that is good, strangely that worked and we got our discount so the Smart meter worked for that just not the bill

Yes I'm getting daily phone calls from So Energy about fitting one. I just ignore them. They are sneaky though and use different numbers to call me on.
Harrassment! I emailed them last year and it stopped for a while but ramping up again.

Had the same with So Energy. Booked an appt, booked time off work etc. They cancelled it the night before but sent an email suggesting I had cancelled it. Sent a formal complaint in and told them to stop harassing me. They stopped.

Is the government target date for a certain percentage of meters coming up soon, it's the government that forces this rather than the energy company which just has to comply.

i did resist until there was a new rate that required a smart meter, otoh they took ages to be able to provide one

I had a bill for thousands when a meter reader misread my old meter. It was a nightmare convincing NPower that my readings were correct, and theirs were an error. I had several ombudsman complaints upheld that related to meter reading errors.

No such issues with my smart meter.

How bizarre so many people are against a smart meter. All it is, is something that sits in our kitchen and rather than having to go out to get a reading for the gas and electricity, it does it for us. We can see how much we’re using. It’s really not as sinister as you’re making it out…

Every time I give a meter reading, I get calls from unknown numbers, when I Google them, it's EDF

I block and they call again from new numbers, after I submit my latest meter readings

Worst of all is the sales pressure

You want to fix your bills?

You can only do it with a smart meter

Bastards

Everyone u know that has one has higher bills. So I will resist until I have to.

Or a third one: people had smart meters fail on them.

Never again. Stopped working out of the blue one day. I was in the rental property, still wasn't sorted when I had to move out, the company had no clue how much energy I used. Lots of phone calls asking them to sort it, it was nightmare.

I’m happy to have one fitted but…

… when they call me, they then want to confirm my identity by asking loads of security questions.

Which feels a bit dodgy to me - they called me, presumably that’s their evidence it’s me, they made the call. Why am I giving my full address and date of birth out to someone who has phoned me?

If they could just suggest a date, I’d book it in.

Our water company are selling it as an opportunity to identify leaks and just fitting them without permission. We don't have to use them....yet...but they are saying they will monitor our use for a year and tell us how much money we would save by switching....

In my experience when traditional meters go wrong they just stop. Due to the incompetence of meter fitters (meter cupboard too small for smart meter but no one wrote that down) we had almost free electricity for two years.

Until it doesn't work properly, ours was sending readings to BG, it must have been because I could see half hourly readings on the website, I was getting peak save discounts but they said it wasn't sending readings. I told them manual reading but they just ignored them, probably because I have smart meter, this went on for a year.

I'm still not sure it's fixed, I guess I will find out next bill time or the whole farce may carry on. For someone on limited budget and not having savings in the bank to cover any shortfall this would have been extremely worrying.

Ive been emailed weekly for 4 years, i just ignore them. I dont want one so wont have one. They cant force it.

I don't understand this resistance to smart meters at all! I love my meters so much that, when the ones i had installed by EDF broke, i moved to Octopus as it was the only way of getting new ones!!

I really don't know how anyone budgets without them. They show your cost in real time. The meters showed us that our 'luxury' powerful hot showers cost twice as much as less powered but absolutely fine showers.

And, in winter, it prompts us to put the heating off a couple of hours before going to bed. Prev we put it off when we went to bed. But the house stays warm easily for 2 hours post switch off.

You can set a daily budget and know what your spend is. No surprise bills. Brilliant!

Yes. Me too. I can check usage and bills online at any time. I don't see the problem.

We have the water one, I'm quite happy with that and you can check your water usage is zero as it should be at some times overnight or when away from home. I don't believe we have saved any money though.

I wanted to have one and after two missed appointments to fit it, someone finally turned up. He said that there wasn't space for it (it would need to go in the cupboard over the built in fridge/freezer). I have not been pestered since. So perhaps get them to note that your kitchen layout won't permit it?

Try budgeting when they insist your DD is £74 when you know it should be about £130 - £140 but when I change it they just changed it back and at the end of the year you have a shortfall of £700

British Gas made an appointment without our consent to install a smart meter.

My husband was away and when I got the notification of the appointment I told them that if any engineer set foot on our property or entered our grounds I would shoot them!

No I don't have a gun, it was a figure of speech. They had to apologise and agree to remove us from all marketing emails for smart meters otherwise I would take action for their harassment.

They backed down very quickly and I made sure I got it all in writing.

They also had to apologise for addressing me by my first name only, writing 'Hey' as a greeting and agree to only refer to me as 'Mrs XXXXXXXX XXXXXX.

Tell them to stop harassing you if you don't want a smart meter. You do not have to have one.

I eventually gave in and had smart meters fitted to see if I could reduce my usage but the signalling network is rubbish round here so they don't work and I still send in monthly readings. I prefer it tbh.

Some time before that I found a black box clipped to the electricity meter which I think was some kind of monitor. I unclipped it and binned it and no-one has ever mentioned it.

Ive got a smart meter tbh its the same as the old one.

The exact same thing happened to me!!