I know I’ve exceeded my budget you little bastard! AIBU to hate my smart-arse meter?

[ExasperatedbyJanuary]

2023 has got off to a horrifying start here; boiler gave up on Tuesday, and we’ve been heating the house with energy-sucking electric heaters since then, whilst swearing steadily and generally being massively pissed off.

Anyway, the little smart meter twat in the corner has not been able to stop chirping today about the fact that we’ve gone over the weekly electricity budget. Well, quelle surprise, eh? I literally don’t know how to shut it up - it keeps beeping and flashing up this message and refusing to actually display the usage for today, as if it fears we will die of shock if we see it in all its digital horror.

I’d like to explain to it that whatever we’ve spent on electricity this week is but a drop in the fucking ocean compared with the money we’ll be haemorrhaging tomorrow when we have a whole new boiler fitted. So if it could just STFU I’d be really grateful.

But seriously, has anyone else had this, and if so, how did you shut the little attention-seeking bastard up?! I’ve had enough of its bullshit.

Why did you have one fitted?

Just unplug the display. The display unit thing is not the actual smart metre. You don't need it on.

Unplug it

My little display thing doesn't beep but the numbers were so bad during the cold snap in December, I turned its little face to the wall and there it stays. Much better.

Just unplug it and chuck it in a cupboard. You don't need that stress.

My DS has set our budget to 1p a day and then keeps telling us we've gone over, he's 21 fgs, lol

The thing is I do want to know the figures! I always keep an eye on it so that I am never on the back foot with the energy bastards when they send their nasty little emails. I like to know what’s going on - I just don’t want the constant attitude it’s giving me today. I don’t know what it expects me to do, exactly… Go back in time and not exceed my budget?!

I just want it to do its job and I’ll do mine.

Ours kept beeping like a bastard too, but DDs boyfriend did something to it to make it stop. He has a PhD though.

Can't you just turn it off and check your usage via an app instead?

I don't have an in home display, I just use the loop app
loop.homes/

This looks promising. Thanks.

I need that kind of expertise here tbh.

Ours doesn't make a noise, but it does have a circular budget thing on one side and a little notice pops up if you go over the budget. The problem is, the gas budget is set at about £2, so I'll come down in the morning and just with the standing charge and an hour's gas is almost up to the budget line!

Why they thought the daily has budget should be ~£2 is beyond me.

Just turn it off. It's not your meter so it makes no difference if it's on or not.

Unplug it. I did mine years ago and just look on the app, ok it’s yesterdays figures but that’s fine for me

The app is little bit less cuntish and you should be able to get your figures off that while you unplug the bastard

I guess I will have to unplug it otherwise it’s going to keep me awake with its self-important bleating. Doesn’t anyone else feel the injustice of having a device that just turns on you though? I was happy with it just, you know, displaying numbers. I don’t want it to think it’s bullied me into turning it off.

And I really dislike things that don’t make sense. Like - I can’t DO anything about having overspent, so what’s the point of the alarm? It doesn’t seem to have an option to press a sort of ‘yes, ok, noted, now give it a fucking rest’ button. Drives me bonkers.

But I’ve had a bad week. Maybe I’m touchy.

Yes unplug the little bastard!

It would be bleeping on the other side if it's face if it knew how much you were saving in gas while you have no boiler. We had no boiler for a month from November to December and kept getting emails about our electricity usage. Got a bloody big rebate from the gas company in January!

Enjoy your new boiler (hopefully will save you money in the long run).

@ExasperatedbyJanuary you've reminded me how annoying that bloody screen is. It's also doing my head in so I just googled. Watch from 1:48 It's been driving me insane, all change from tomorrow!

Ours is mute. It judges in panicked silence; little red lights flashing.

It'll calm down in the summer and balance out.

Turning on a light bulb seems to be enough for ours to show on the screen that we've exceeded our budget.

Thankfully it doesn't beep If it did it would very quickly, find itself living in a cupboard.

I like our smart meter. Only beeped once when we went 'over budget' before I foubd the sound off setting.