OK..Here goes..should I have let him in ??

[bizzey]

Sorry ..thread title is not as exciting as what it really is !...but my Mum has really upset (and worried me) on her opinion on this ....

Last week I said goodbye to my son at the door as he went to school at 7.30am..

I am still in pj's and early morning mess and go into kitchen to put kettle on for another dose of caffine ...door knocks....I opened the door (without checking) expecting ds to be there ....I even had my silly face on ready to say "what have you forgotten ".....

No ..it was a meter reading man showing his badge ...but without my glasses on it was a blur..

I said I would get them ...closed the door and then came back and gave him the numbers(quickly grabbing a cardigan)....I gave them (through the security chain)!

My mum said I was very "rude" not to have let the poor man in and to close the door on him was awful

What would you have done at that time in the morning ...?

I told one guy that it wasn't convenient and he was really pissed off and said "FFS do you think I'm going to attack you or something?"

That's outrageous, and I hope you reported him.
any half decent man would not say that, however frustrating their job was.

RP - because they would have to pay twice as much (which gets passed on to us)- once to get the cards delivered, once to go back and do the readings (and again as half the people are out/too busy)

RP- also, if you think about it, whats to stop ANYONE shoving fake cards through doors then going round saying THEY are the meter reader and must be let in? "didn't you get the card love?"

Or whats to stop someone thinking Oooh great, the meter readers are out this week then, so I'll try pretending to be one and get some poor old lady to let me in and see if I can find her life savings while she gets me a glass of water.

warned or not, expected or not, ID or not, the occupier STILL should have the right to refuse entry and send the reading online or write it down.

phantom - well, email or text then. I think utility cos make pretty tidy profits out of us and loads of places use text message alerts now - hospitals, banks, hairdresser's - I'm sure they could manage!

Oh, but I agree you should be able to refuse - I never have, but you should be able to.

But you get fake emails and texts too - I had one just yesterday supposedely from paypal about suspicious use on our account - load of crap but dangerous to the naive! Looked kosher, but when I checked the paypay site there was FAQs and it was not a genuine email cos of the wording - i forwarded it to them

what about the 1000s of people who dont have computer or mobiles? the vulnerable old people being prime examples?

Op you need to talk to your mother about keeping herself safe.

You were right and she was wrong.

In the late 80s I remember a prolific rapist being jailed. He always struck around 8 till 9am as women were more likely to he off guard at these times rather than the evening.

Tell her she should not be lecturing you but look to her own safety.

OP you definitely need to talk to your Mum about who she opens the door to. My grandparents house was robbed by someone who claimed to be from the water company: he had my Grandad go upstairs to flush the loo & run the bathroom taps under some pretence (I think something to do with water pressure) & used the time it took (it was in the last year of his life when his heart was slowly giving up so he had gone from being incredibly spry & active to incredibly frail & slow-moving) to swipe what he could. Your local police might be able to provide you with some information leaflets/guidelines: it sounds as though she'd be willing to listen to what the police have to say.

I don't let meter readers in at all so as far as I am concerned YANBU.

I think you can refuse, but they have to check your meter every so often to ensure that the readings you submit are accurate, than it hasn't been tampered with and that there are no safety issues. It isn't actually the energy companies themselves that check them though - it's a separate entity who check all meters rather than just those of particular customers.