Smart Meter fail

giraffe69

When I was asked by co-op energy if I'd like to have smart meters I said yes. Not everyone's choice I know.
An appointment was made, two sets of people asked exactly the same questions a couple of days apart but the installer did turn up at the appointed day and time. He turned the electricity off and installed that meter and then announced that there was no signal so it wouldn't work except as a dumb one. Not sure this could not have been established beforehand. He didn't install the new gas meter and then left. No communication since so, for all I know, it could be a decade or more before the signal is improved. I wonder how that sits with this mornings scare story that those who don't have smart meters by 2020 will possibly have to pay increased tariffs.

Uxb1

Scottish Power and their lackey's Lowri Beck metering have been hammering away hard at my communication channels in the last few days telling me how wonderful it was now that Smets2 meters have arrived and they want to install one for me.

Strange to report they said nowt earlier in their previous correspondence extolling the virtues of smart meters anything about how crap Smets1 meters were and how they would recommend I wait until Smets2 arrived - odd that don't you all think!

Anyway, so that was emails, phone calls to my home phone/answer machine plus texts and voice mail messages left to my mobile.
All will be ignored - so they are just wasting their staff's time.

PennyForThem_2

Not sure if it is the same but I too am with Co-op Energy and SMS fitted my SM for gas and electricity (Co-op get their g/e from ShellEnergy).

So the gas meter was fine but the electric SM2 didn't 'register'. The fitter was brilliant and kept trying. in the end he phoned SMS / Shell Energy and it turned out that a crucial 3 letter component had been 'missed off' the database.

Once added it worked and the signal came through! Raise a complaint with Co-op.

The IHD though is another story......

Bark01

Its undoubtedly true that non smart customers will end up not having access to the cheapest tariffs, I fully expect the price to be regulated in some way, like the current tariff cap or the restricted meters remedy (In effect a non smart customer could end up being viewed as a restricted customer)

However there are plenty of things in the works to get comms into difficult places. Smart prepay is the main focus at the moment , but once that is up and running we'll start to see some of the fixes to communication issues come out of pilot and be offered to a wider customer base.

giraffe69

An update. I got a reply from Octopus to say they can't consider my complaint as I haven't been migrated to their systems. I asked if that meant deadlock is, if so I could go to the ombudsman without further delay! They replied that the 8 weeks only started after migration. Good way to give themselves extra time IMO.