Smart meters on the News - Being switched to prepayment without notice.

[Deleted User]

deano2099 said:

Deleted_User said:

Instantly take out all your credit - the next day January's energy bill arrives - then what?

You pay it?
It's like saying "You spend all the money in your bank account on crisps, next day your mobile bill arrives, then what?"

Then you go overdrawn and get stung with fees, or the payment bounces and you can't pay the bill.  Fine, if it's clear that this is the situation that you want to put people in.  I'm not sure that's an improvement.

And this is how energy companies want people to understand it. But they don't. Because they instead treat the credit like their own money. And don't have the reserves to actually refund all their customers if they all asked for a refund at the same time. And so this causes confusion. 

Neither do banks.

badmemory

EssexHebridean said:

where it turns out a SM isn't sending readings and the supplier is over estimating (although that in itself should be picked up by the customer of course!) or something along those lines. 

The problem with this is that all the ads these companies do state that you will no longer need to read your meters & not that of course you should still check your meters to make sure we haven't done a botched job.  Also from what I have read these smart meters are actually much harder to read.  Accidentally?  I doubt it.

[Deleted User]

badmemory said:

EssexHebridean said:

where it turns out a SM isn't sending readings and the supplier is over estimating (although that in itself should be picked up by the customer of course!) or something along those lines. 

The problem with this is that all the ads these companies do state that you will no longer need to read your meters & not that of course you should still check your meters to make sure we haven't done a botched job.  Also from what I have read these smart meters are actually much harder to read.  Accidentally?  I doubt it.

Are you seriously suggesting some sort of malicious campaign to obscure the readings on meters by such nefarious methods as "making you press a button"?

badmemory

[Deleted User] said:

badmemory said:

EssexHebridean said:

where it turns out a SM isn't sending readings and the supplier is over estimating (although that in itself should be picked up by the customer of course!) or something along those lines. 

The problem with this is that all the ads these companies do state that you will no longer need to read your meters & not that of course you should still check your meters to make sure we haven't done a botched job.  Also from what I have read these smart meters are actually much harder to read.  Accidentally?  I doubt it.

Are you seriously suggesting some sort of malicious campaign to obscure the readings on meters by such nefarious methods as "making you press a button"?

No I'm just saying that their specifications could have included a reasonable ability to be read like all the old meters had.

pochase

Do you really believe it is unreasonable that somebody needs to press a button (several times)?

EssexHebridean

badmemory said:

EssexHebridean said:

where it turns out a SM isn't sending readings and the supplier is over estimating (although that in itself should be picked up by the customer of course!) or something along those lines. 

The problem with this is that all the ads these companies do state that you will no longer need to read your meters & not that of course you should still check your meters to make sure we haven't done a botched job.  Also from what I have read these smart meters are actually much harder to read.  Accidentally?  I doubt it.

I thought it was just pressing some buttons from what those on here with SMs have said previously? I have to do that to cycle through the rates to read my non smart meter - it's not rocket science, just a case of learning how to do it (a few seconds work) and then, well, doing it!  I've not read anything that gives the impression that SMs are any harder to read though do you have one? What has to be done to read yours? 

Spoonie_Turtle

^ our old meters needed certain buttons pressing to take a reading (E10).  [Now with our single rate simple meter it just displays the reading, which is really handy because you can just stick a phone in to take a photo rather than having to actually get in there.]

Not that I'm saying pressing buttons would necessarily be a hardship.  My point was our old ones needed it too, I just got a bit carried away by musing on the convenience of not needing to.  I guess in some awkward positionings of meters (like the elderly chap mentioned on another thread who has to lay down on the floor with a torch to read his non-smart meter) pressing buttons is somewhat of an extra awkward step.  But I know for smarts it is necessary, with the 4 different registers ready to be used.

deano2099

[Deleted User] said:

deano2099 said:

Deleted_User said:

Instantly take out all your credit - the next day January's energy bill arrives - then what?

You pay it?
It's like saying "You spend all the money in your bank account on crisps, next day your mobile bill arrives, then what?"

Then you go overdrawn and get stung with fees, or the payment bounces and you can't pay the bill.  Fine, if it's clear that this is the situation that you want to put people in.  I'm not sure that's an improvement.

And this is how energy companies want people to understand it. But they don't. Because they instead treat the credit like their own money. And don't have the reserves to actually refund all their customers if they all asked for a refund at the same time. And so this causes confusion. 

Neither do banks.

People are already in that situation for everything else though. So they understand it. It's not that it's better *per se* it's just there's clearly issues with people comprehending the current system, and it being so different to how everything else works is likely a big part of the reason for that.
You're right about banks, but then that's fundamentally what they are and people understand that. And even then, there'd be outcry if a bank ever told a customer they couldn't get money out of their current account. 
If energy companies want to be banks they should be bound by the restrictions and service requirements as banks. 

deano2099

EssexHebridean said:

If anyone is in doubt about the "It must be wrong" assertion and thinking that perhaps the bill IS wrong - have a bit of a browse back on these boards at all the threads with titles in that vein - almost invariably it transpires that in fact the bill ISN'T wrong, but that the OP of those threads is simply a far higher user than they thought they were, or that they haven't taken account the price rises over the last year because they have been on a fix, or any of a myriad of other reasons why energy now costs far more than a lot of people think it does! Just occasionally we get one where the units being used for billing on gas are wrong, or where it turns out a SM isn't sending readings and the supplier is over estimating (although that in itself should be picked up by the customer of course!) or something along those lines. 

And the flip side of this is that if the bill is actually wrong, and you can prove that, and your complaint is successful or such, they can (and presumably will?) quickly and painlessly flip the switch to move you back onto a credit meter.

Part of the reason being switched onto a prepay meter in the past was so bad is that it would cost you time and money to get moved back, because it required a physical change of meter. That's where a lot of the stigma with pre-pay comes from. Honestly if my energy company screw up my bill and I'm in dispute with them but I know I'm in the right, I don't really care if I get put on a pre-pay smart meter, because once it's resolved correctly, they can put me back on a credit meter by flicking the same switch the other way. I'm no longer stuck with it for the foreseeable.

[Deleted User]

deano2099 said:

[Deleted User] said:

deano2099 said:

Deleted_User said:

Instantly take out all your credit - the next day January's energy bill arrives - then what?

You pay it?
It's like saying "You spend all the money in your bank account on crisps, next day your mobile bill arrives, then what?"

Then you go overdrawn and get stung with fees, or the payment bounces and you can't pay the bill.  Fine, if it's clear that this is the situation that you want to put people in.  I'm not sure that's an improvement.

And this is how energy companies want people to understand it. But they don't. Because they instead treat the credit like their own money. And don't have the reserves to actually refund all their customers if they all asked for a refund at the same time. And so this causes confusion. 

Neither do banks.

People are already in that situation for everything else though. So they understand it. It's not that it's better *per se* it's just there's clearly issues with people comprehending the current system, and it being so different to how everything else works is likely a big part of the reason for that.
You're right about banks, but then that's fundamentally what they are and people understand that. And even then, there'd be outcry if a bank ever told a customer they couldn't get money out of their current account. 
If energy companies want to be banks they should be bound by the restrictions and service requirements as banks. 

Wasn't that the Northern Rock thing?  A "run on the bank" because people thought you might not be able to withdraw deposits?

There are certainly arguments for the energy account as bank account comparison.