Do you still have an old fashioned RTS electricity meter

[MyCheekyEagle]

Do you still have an old fashioned meter and it still works? I do & it seems to be working fine. Bills and meter reads are still consistent. I have left it on the cheaper night rate as I'm an insomniac & so will do the washing & drying in the winter. I dont use it for heating and hot water.
In the run up to the switch off at 30th June last year I was being hounded by my electricituly supplier to change but I did nothing about it. They're no longer hounding me.
I watched a tv program on channel 5 about smart meters the other night and I've not changed my mind about changing.

@ValidPistachio the meter is displaying 0.00. we have electricity, but no-one knows how much we've used/are using and presumably when they sort it out we'll have to reach agreement based on last year's usage or something. It's been a shambles. They've changed the actual meter three times. Never a problem in 15 years before they switched off the RTS signal.

Did you or the previous occupants, ‘need’ your current meters? Probably not, they simply replaced the previous ones when their certification expired. Now the current ones are due for replacement.

I don't think mine is an RTS one we send readings each month
It's a white box bit different from pictures I've seen of old black RTS boxes

Wouldn't you just have a new meter that operates in "dumb" mode? So you'd have to submit meter readings and wouldn't be able to get variable time of use tariffs etc.

ours is not that old but still dumb. They stopped hassling us a little while ago. More than happy to send my own readings

Your RTS meter is still working fine because the signal is still on. I would have thought that is obvious…. But once it switches off it won’t be switching your meter into day/night rates.

RTS replacement is not the same as a regular smart installation in terms of “my meter still works” type arguments, it’s the signal that’s the issue.

just please don’t complain to your supplier when they thing the have warned you about and given you a solution to happens.

I have an old meter. The bloke came round and looked at it over the summer and said he'd contact us about a replacement. Not heard a peep since.

I don't really want a smart meter as I suspect electricity when you actually want it (4-7pm ) will become exorbitant. Im on a tariff that is not cheap rate overnight (but IS cheaper during the day) and very happy with it so its irrelevant whether the night/day rate is switching at the right time.

If we ever sort ourselves out with solar we'll change it then.

I've actually heard of more people having issues like these with smart meters than old style ones. One person had no electricity because his smart meter went wrong and couldn't get any help online to sort it out until the Monday.

We swapped ours but only because EDF offered us a few hundred pounds to change!

I’ve worked for an energy supplier and the old ones, particularly on prepayment, are far worse for these sorts of issues than smart meters.

I'm just repeating my experience which was told to me by an electtrician.

What sort of tariff is that? Are you sure you’re not on Economy 7 or similar, and the time clock has drifted to the wrong time? Night time is off-peak, so it’s never more expensive than during the day (except Octopus Agile, a smart meter tariff).

In my experience, electricians know very little about meters. They don’t need to, since they’re not allowed to touch them.

I don't think it's really been mentioned in this thread but one of the reasons people don't seem to want to swap RTS meters to smart meters is that they don't want someone to control their electric supply. An RTS meter was the very first smart meter putting the electric companies in charge, the modern smart meters are only really a development of this technology.

@ValidPistachio whatever

Some RTS tariffs allow the supplier to turn the storage heaters on and off according to the weather forecast, and/or to manage electricity demand in particular areas. Smart meters can’t do this. So, in this respect, ironically, smart meters have less control than the RTS meters.

Except that an RTS switch can’t be used to turn off a supply. It can only switch between the low and normal meter.

But I don't know my meters to be inaccurate? They say I'm using more or less the same amount of gas/leccy as we always have, which sounds about right because we're living in the same way we always have. Thus I am unconcerned.

@MyCheekyEagle thank you, I am just watching that now, it’s very interesting

@GreyfriarsJobbies that's exactly how I look at it. If I compare my last few years' bills, there doesn't seem to be anything wildly different.
Tbb I don't know what kind of meter I have other than it isn't a smart one.

You don’t know they’re not either. Meters have a design life, beyond which they're expected to start to lose accuracy. This is why suppliers are required, by law, to replace them. This is a good thing, for everyone.

Why the rudeness?

This is a forum where people give their opinions and comments.
Every time I've commented, you've poo pood it by your expertise so I don't want to engage any further.

Heaven forbid I should correct misinformation.

As I said, whatever