Broken Electric Meter for 4 Years..HELP

Zandoni

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena wrote: »

These faulty meters are looked after by a team, they'll estimate the usage based on information from the new meter and then they'll go through the calculations with you.

Billing code, reduced balance or payment arrangements are all something that will need to be discussed when they have all of the information and an investigation has been done, so keep talking to us.

Thank you

Helena

Hopefully you will not try to get back 4.5 years of unpaid electricity.

DavidThomas2006

My electricity meter was faulty and replaced by NPOWER as the digital display was blank....thus unable to get a reading.

Despite an ongoing complaint to them, they have informed the Ombudsmen that when their engineer visits they are still able to obtain a reading despite the meter not displaying it?

Is This Correct?

NPower replaced the meter and also claim that they recieved a meter reading from myself at a time I was overseas !!!

This is just the tip of the iceberg

[Deleted User]

DavidThomas2006 wrote: »

My electricity meter was faulty and replaced by NPOWER as the digital display was blank....thus unable to get a reading.

Despite an ongoing complaint to them, they have informed the Ombudsmen that when their engineer visits they are still able to obtain a reading despite the meter not displaying it?

Is This Correct?

NPower replaced the meter and also claim that they recieved a meter reading from myself at a time I was overseas !!!

This is just the tip of the iceberg

Some digital meters, when they appear to be blank, you can shine a torch close to it and from above, and see a faint reading. These are rare. Mostly its the cheap little £20 meter made by Ampy which go s blank. When this thing loses the reading , the reading is gone forever and all they can do is estimate on past or future usage usually in the customers favour.

Rubidium

sacsquacco wrote: »

Some digital meters, when they appear to be blank, you can shine a torch close to it and from above, and see a faint reading. These are rare. Mostly its the cheap little £20 meter made by Ampy which go s blank. When this thing loses the reading , the reading is gone forever and all they can do is estimate on past or future usage usually in the customers favour.

You don't seriously believe that do you. A blank display does not mean that recorded data is lost. This is what Ampy state in their technical specification:

All the meters data is recorded in a Ferroelectric Random Access Memory (FRAM) under the control of the microprocessor. All the kWh registers are stored in the FRAM and will be updated periodically and on power-fail. The FRAM is able to be re-written throughout the life of the meter and will hold the information, if required for over twenty years.

Watch a short Fujitsu video that explains why FRAM is used in digital meters here:

https://youtu.be/eK9jnsBPWpY

Meter readers are not supplied with the equipment required to interrogate the non volatile memory in the meter when the display fails, as it could be abused resulting in loss of revenue but that does not mean that the data has actually "gone forever" and it can be retrieved if required.

Despite the impression that the energy companies like to portray, they have never got fully onboard with 'smart technology' as illustrated by them still fitting first generation smart meters that do not support interoperability between suppliers if their gullible and less knowledgeable customers allow them to. They will continue to fit old spec ones for at least another year and most likely for longer and they are quite content to use a pen and paper to estimate consumption for customers bills, even when real life data is actually accessible, because it seems to be the industry practice and it is easier for them to do this.

undaunted

Mrsmeah You have two ways of looking at this


That the back billing code ought to apply - Your meter has been read every six months by their employees / contractors, they have issued and you have paid that bill. Any reasonable effort or even a cursory glance at the bills by the supplier would have revealed to them that the readings were not moving. It should not therefore have been necessary for you to tell them that there was a problem. Ultimately they and not you are responsible for the accurate billing of your account!


On the other hand they may argue that you too must have known that the bills being issued were ridiculously low and you have seemingly made no effort to query this with them. They may therefore seek to argue that the back billing code should not apply at all.


Your best option may therefore be to make an offer to pay them for 12 months usage (calculated by estimating usage over say the next quarter and multiplying out. - Obviously Spring is coming & it is upto you how frugal you can / wish to be over that quarter) less whatever you have already paid. If they are not happy with that offer then I suggest you take the matter to the Energy Ombudsman.


This will cost the supplier - and they will be obliged to accept the Ombudsmans decision, but it will cost you nothing and you are free to reject that decision if you feel it unfair / wrong


David Thomas you may have been better starting a new thread (or now asking an administrator if they can split it into one) but a similar resolution may suit you. I don't think anyone could argue that it is unreasonable for you to expect to be able to view and verify meter readings (indeed we are often told that customers have a duty to do so - though whether there is any legal basis for this assertion is debatable)

undaunted

sacsquacco wrote: »

There are reasons why the electric meter is static, vacant, in prison, in Benidorm for the winter, living at someone elses house (like me ) long term hospital or in a care home. Suppliers are not detectives.But when gas central heating is used it needs a small amount of electricity, so an average gas bill and zero electric should get looked at..but it never does.

As far as we can tell from the thread the customer wasn't in Benidorm - their meter was being read by employees / contractors at least every 6 months. The supplier was then issuing a bill based upon those readings. Do you not accept that they should have been able to clearly see that the bills were ridiculously low and the readings had not moved without any intervention from the customer had anyone (or their software) bothered to look at this apparently continuous nil usage?

[Deleted User]

undaunted wrote: »

As far as we can tell from the thread the customer wasn't in Benidorm - their meter was being read by employees / contractors at least every 6 months. The supplier was then issuing a bill based upon those readings. Do you not accept that they should have been able to clearly see that the bills were ridiculously low and the readings had not moved without any intervention from the customer had anyone (or their software) bothered to look at this apparently continuous nil usage?

I do accept that suppliers should get strict control over their auto billing systems which can t spot low/nil reads and get out to see the meters properly and not just rely on some computer to do their work. I ve seen it happen for years with dud meters and fiddled meters when there is normal use of a gas meter whilst the electric is static for years. You cannot have gas central heating or just normal gas fires in use without the electricity in use.Its the software which has been programmed by a moron in the first place which allows it. BG,EDF, and Scot Power who I read for all miss it, and so do Npower as the woman in Goole whos had free electric for 7 years with a stopped meter can verify. Suppliers are just lazy and inept, like a lot of meter readers who blunder by all the stopped/fiddled meters.

[Deleted User]

Rubidium, I congratulate you if what you have stated is correct, that all metering data from a blank Ampy can be somehow reinstated then what you have found out will be a tremendous shock and and a financial disaster to many people . I really, really hope this is true. If it is true then you should be receiving a royaltly payment from the suppliers who are gifting money handover fist to "blank Ampy meter " customers. I personally know of many occupiers with several years use on estimates on blank Ampys who think their electric is now on a use as much as you can basis. The data we need to access is not the last reading before it went blank, that is nt too helpful, but up to date use afterwards.If it does carry on recording usage after it go s blank I d be astounded, and very happy.

DavidThomas2006

I asked the supplier of the meter to give a definitive answer and this is their response

Again this is a question for your supplier

thanks

Kindest Regards

Enquiries

Enquiries Team
Macquarie Energy Leasing
Wellington House, Starley Way, Solihull, B37 7HB

Rubidium

sacsquacco wrote: »

Rubidium, I congratulate you if what you have stated is correct, that all metering data from a blank Ampy can be somehow reinstated then what you have found out will be a tremendous shock and and a financial disaster to many people . I really, really hope this is true. If it is true then you should be receiving a royaltly payment from the suppliers who are gifting money handover fist to "blank Ampy meter " customers. I personally know of many occupiers with several years use on estimates on blank Ampys who think their electric is now on a use as much as you can basis. The data we need to access is not the last reading before it went blank, that is nt too helpful, but up to date use afterwards.If it does carry on recording usage after it go s blank I d be astounded, and very happy.

You cannot assume that a blank display means that the whole meter is non functional and that it is no longer registering usage. Liquid Crystal Display failures are quite common in various other electronic devices but the rest of the device normally continues to work exactly as it did before until the display is replaced. I had a multi rate Ampy for about ten years until it was changed for a single rate meter and had no problems.

If the display is blank and the LED still flashes with load or stays on with no load, then it is likely that it is only the display that has failed and the meter is continuing to record and store the usage in it's memory. Hand held readers have been available to interrogate the IEC standard optical port e.g. http://www.opticalprobe.net/en/
since these meters were introduced but they are simply not used by the suppliers and the companies that they contract to do their work.

Nothing will change now, our energy suppliers never bought into the optical reading feature that was designed into these meters like they did in other countries. They are cheap, sealed for life and when found to be faulty, they are simply replaced and binned. The energy suppliers then produce an estimate for billing their customer, as that is the way that they choose to operate.

If as you state, suppliers are allowing customers to get free electricity for years due to a blank display meter, that just shows that they couldn't really give a toss and there is nothing that we can do about their attitude! Similarly their continued rollout of dumb smart meters is farcical and this sad pantomime is likely to drag on for years yet. I am not against smart meters like some refuseniks are but I predict that I won't agree to have them installed for several years yet, at the rate at which they are currently progressing towards SMETS2.