E.ON Next smart meter email

StinkerPinker

I had an email today from my electricity supplier E.ON Next telling me it's time to have my smart meters fitted.   They included the sentence  "As part of your current tariff you agreed to have smart meters fitted".  

I am on the Next Flex standard variable tariff and have been since my old fixed tariff expired last Autumn.   That old fixed tariff did NOT have a requirement to have smart meters fitted, and as far as I am aware the standard variable tariff has never has this requirement and still doesn't.  I have not expressed any intention to leave the Next Flex tariff.

So why does the email I received have that sentence?    Have they changed the Terms and Conditions?    I certainly have never knowingly agreed to smart meters.

Any thoughts?    Thanks.
stinkerpinker

davidgmmafan

TBH I don't think they pay much attention to what's in the letters. I've written to them previously saying I don't want a smart meter and they don't even have the nous to stop the letters.

I even copied them in on a link to a story where and EOn spokesperson said if a customer gets in touch and says they don't want a smart meter they can stop the letters. 

I'm pretty sure these sort of shady tactics have been used before. However I'm unsure how Ofgem would get to know since, if you email them, they send an automatic response based on recognising key words like smart meters.

It says they can investigate if they find out that companies aren't following the rules but given they don't engage with consumers I'm not sure how they would get to know...

StinkerPinker

Thanks for that reply.    I'll try and track down a copy of the latest Next Flex contract terms and conditions for reference purposes, but meanwhile I will treat the email as an error or deliberate ploy to prompt me to signup to smart meters, and ignore it.
stinkerpinker.

Mstty

Just a question,

In these interesting times why wouldn't you want to track your own energy usage easily on a nice in home display and make sure you aren't using too much energy and blowing the household budget?

jbuchanangb

I moved into my house in 2018 and it already had Scottish Power smart meters installed. I have switched suppliers several times, and most have been able to read the smart meters, including my current supplier E.ON Next. I have even downloaded the BRIGHT application which reads my smart meters remotely so I can look at all the statistics. What's not to like?

StinkerPinker

Mstty;  jbuchanangb; - --   Yes yes, I understand the attraction of gadgets  etc.  but I do keep a careful eye on my meters, reading them at about the same time most days.    So I know that a normal day's usage of electricity is 6 and a half kWh, almost like clockwork.     On hot summer days with a bunch of fans running all through the house, this will rise to 8 or 9kWh, and on the recent hottest day ever, when I dusted off an elderly portable aircon and ran it for 12 hours, the day's usage was 22kWh.

So I don't feel the need for smart meters just now, and having them installed would involve clearing an area in the garage of lots of stored items on custom shelving etc.    Extreme hassle.    So it's a "nope" from me until they force me.

[Deleted User]

StinkerPinker said:

Mstty;  jbuchanangb; - --   Yes yes, I understand the attraction of gadgets  etc.  but I do keep a careful eye on my meters, reading them at about the same time most days.    So I know that a normal day's usage of electricity is 6 and a half kWh, almost like clockwork.     On hot summer days with a bunch of fans running all through the house, this will rise to 8 or 9kWh, and on the recent hottest day ever, when I dusted off an elderly portable aircon and ran it for 12 hours, the day's usage was 22kWh.

So I don't feel the need for smart meters just now, and having them installed would involve clearing an area in the garage of lots of stored items on custom shelving etc.    Extreme hassle.    So it's a "nope" from me until they force me.

Let me leave you with something to ponder. The Government/Ofgem is currently conducting an energy review which includes such things as the deployment of time-of-use tariffs to better match consumer demand with supply.

If, say, supplier 1 offered you a 4 price tariff day; supplier 2 offered you a 3 price tariff day with a low rate on Saturday and Sunday etc etc etc - and these tariffs were an average of 10% cheaper than the single unit price Ofgem CAP then, without a smart meter, your future tariff choices are limited.  I hear you say ‘I will agree to a smart meter when these tariffs become mainstream’. They are already offered by Octopus Energy.

So we are halfway there. So once your spanking new smart meter arrives, how do you choose the cheapest time-of-use tariff for your usage? DD payments will not work, nor will kWh/year. No one on this forum will be able to help as they don’t know when you do your washing; have a shower, or put the oven on. The one device that does know is your smart meter as it retains 13 months of your import data in 30 minute usage segments.

BEIS has built and trialled a comparison tool for price comparison websites. With your permission, a price comparison website will ‘pull’ the last 12 months of data from your meter and overlay that data over the various time-of-use tariffs on the market to come up with an annual cost for your usage profile.

Does the new tool work? Yes, I was allowed to play with it last year. This is what smart metering is all about.

Alnat1

Already on TOU tariffs with Octopus and very happy with the prices  

Don't push too many onto smart meters, they are probably paying for my savings 

pochase

In 2021 3.8 million new smart meters were installed. Lets say a gas and electricity meter, so 1.9 million new households/small businesses.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1059591/Q4_2021_Smart_Meters_Statistics_Report.pdf

How many million of those have been reported as been having problems? 

Yes there are some who have issues, mainly that the smart meter does not communicate (which leaves you no worse off than on an old dumb meter).

There are some exceptional situations where a smart meter will cause problem, for example E7 and smart meter and BG, but mainly they have only advantages. If you like to do your spreadsheet and read the meter daily, what stops you from still doing that.

spot1034

ioealshk said:

Eon are the worst when it comes to the smart meters! I'm on Flex too, and my T&Cs definitely said that the smart meter isn't required when I was moved to them. I've had dozens of texts, e-mails and letters from them trying to get me to install one, with no way to opt out - if you look in the on-line account you can only suspend the smart meter comms for 3 months.

I ended up changing my phone number to a fake one (I may have used their own contact number) because I could no longer bear it. But I haven't received anything from them (yet) like you have. As far as I know for me it is still optional.

I've been with Eon Next since the demise of Symbio last October, stayed on the Next Flex tariff until I moved to Next Online v15 last month. I haven't heard a word from them about smart meters yet. The tariff I am now on states that I agree to have a smart meter, and in fact I have just moved my gas over to them as well so I guess it's an easier process if you have both fuels with the same supplier. Also my electricity meter is 32 years old (the same length of time I've lived here) so I am somewhat surprised it has not been replaced before now. I don't think I'll raise any objection if they approach me about it now, but they have yet to do so.

[Deleted User]

In my opinion, we have got two key elements of our smart meter system wrong. One, we didn’t adopt an approach similar to France’s Linky smart meter: that is a single meter design built by a selected number of manufacturers. 

https://www.sia-partners.com/en/news-and-publications/from-our-experts/how-gb-could-learn-french-smart-meter-linky-programme

Two, we should have gone for a rollout as described in a post from 5 years ago:

‘I have had a small apartment on the Costa del Sol for many years, the electricity distributor is Endesa. Generally our supply is good, power cuts only last for 10 minutes or so, although we did have a lost neutral a few years ago which caused most of the lights and appliances to fail (spectacular bright lights, crackles and smoke).

However, when I arrived there in late October this year I received a recorded delivery letter. My Spanish is about good enough to get by in shops and restaurants but not for official letters. Thanks to google translate I understand that, according to the law, unless I consent to having a "smart meter" (contadores que permitan la discriminacion horaria y la telegestion) within 60 days my supply will be cut off! No ifs, no buts, a somewhat different approach to here in the UK. ‘