Getting rid of E7 meter - do we have to have a smart meter? (Eon)

pinkteapot

We moved to this house a couple of years ago now. It has an Economy 7 meter with two electricity readings (day/night) - God knows why as it's a large detached house with gas central heating!! I had E7 at a flat with night storage heaters and that made sense. I don't understand it here.

Anyway, we're currently with Eon who the last owners used and on the fixed v19 tariff which is fine. Eon let us have a normal tariff (not an E7 tariff), even though we have an E7 meter. ie we have a single electricity price that they charge us for all the units on both the day and night readings.

Now, our fixed rates are up in Jan and v20 is so much more expensive that we'll obviously shop around, and probably want to switch.

But, when I looked into switching a while back, I found that if you have an E7 meter, most of the companies will ONLY let you have an E7 tariff, which we don't want. 80% of our electricity usage is daytime.

So, obvious thing to do (in my head) is get Eon to change our E7 meter to a normal one.

Here are my questions:

1. I've not had a meter changed before. Are Eon likely to charge us? How much does a meter change cost typically?
2. Can they insist the replacement electricity meter is a smart meter? Do we have any right to refuse (if we wanted to) and get a standard/old one?
3. Is my logic sound that we're best off getting the meter changed while still with Eon, and then switching when we've got a normal (not E7) meter? Any other ideas?

Just want to get my facts straight before I ring and they try to flog me a smart meter.

pinkteapot

On a related note - I had no idea about the v20 price increase! I've now googled and seen threads here about it. I just hopped on to Eon's "find your best deal" thing and it's telling me v19 is costing us £1,088 per year and v20 would be £1,404!! That's a 29% increase! :eek::eek::eek:

spiro

Given that Eon can bill you on a 24hr with the existing meter they are unlikely to change it or change it FOC because it would be deemed unecessary.
I would suggest using your total consumption go on a switching site and find the best deal. Once you have done that phone the supplier if they can either bill 24hr on an E7 meter or change the meter FOC.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Good morning pinkteapot,

You're correct we are happy to bill you on a one rate tariff even though you have an economy 7 meter.

The meter may have been the best at the time, the GCH may have been installed at a later date maybe.

We would carry out a meter exchange for you, but as the meter isn't faulty and we can bill you, we would charge for the work.

If you were changing to pre-payment, or if the meter didn't work etc it would be free.

You wouldn't have to have a smart meter if you decided to have the meter changed.

We're always looking at the tariffs that we offer, but I don't have any information about anything new at the moment I'm afraid.

Let me know if I can help anymore for the meter change.

Thank you

Helena