Smart Meter Replacement - Bulb being unhelpful!

Shoxt3r

Hi there,

Ever since we switched from British Gas to Bulb, we have been waiting to get our smart meters connected up. They were working perfectly fine with British Gas and we had a readout that worked well.

In 2017 or thereabouts, we switched to Bulb to get better customer service and a cheap deal and on joining them I asked if they would be reconnecting our smart meters to which they said "they were prioritising customers without smart meters and would look into our situation as soon as possible".

My parents also joined Bulb about a year later and were recently contacted to get smart meters installed (they have never had them). This prompted me to contact Bulb again as although our smart meters appear to work, we cannot have a readout connected it seems.

Below are my emails and Bulb's unhelpful replies!

My initial email

For some time now (5-6 years) we have had smart meters installed via our previous provider. I previously contacted you regarding getting matters setup so that we could use these with our Bulb services at which point I was told that you were prioritising customers who did not have smart meters installed.
I therefore left the matter. I have just checked our eligibility again for smart meter installation and again the lookup tool states that you are looking into ways to get meter readings read automatically and you will be in touch soon.

However, following your recent acquisition by Octopus Energy, this matter puts us at a major disadvantage when it comes to the recently announced measures to allow customers to claim back money when using energy off-peak as we have the necessary technology installed but no way to utilise it.

Please may you advise when you will be looking to help customers get fully set-up with their smart meters as it feels to us that we are being put at the back of the queue even though we are effectively in the same position as those without smart meters?

Please let me know if any further information would be useful to look into this matter as soon as possible.

Bulb's reply

This meter was installed by another supplier who didn’t manage to commission it before the member switched to us.

As it was never fully connected to the Smart network, we’re unable to cosgain it to start communicating with it.

We are also unable to commission meters installed by other suppliers, as only the one who installed it holds the Install codes (which is what we need to commission a meter).

Unfortunately it is an industry wide issue here, no suppliers can commission a meter that was installed but not commissioned by a different supplier.

we are working on a fix for this but it may take some time.

I apologize for the bad news here.

My follow-up email

Regarding the installation by another supplier (in our case British Gas), surely this should have been handled when we made the switch? Incidentally, we were the members who switched the account from British Gas to Bulb.

Also, I can confirm that the meters were working and have been monitoring our usage ever since they were installed by British Gas, but we have simply not been able to connect a readout device to monitor the usage more closely. We contacted Bulb shortly after switching to notify your team of the situation about 4 years ago and we were told that this would be investigated but it never has.

Please could you consider treating us as new customers and remove the existing meters, and install new ones, thereby solving the issue entirely?

Bulb's final reply

Thank you for responding.

British gas was the one to install those first generation smart meters in 2017.

We can't change the first generational meters that's why it was not change.

That's the reason why nothing has been done about it because this is something that's been going on for years within the energy industry.

As you can see - really quite unhelpful to say the least! What I would like to know is where this leaves us? Do I bother pursuing this further with Bulb or get a third-party such as Ofgem involved? My main reason for wanting to use the readout is to monitor usage a bit more closely and see what peaks we have and if there is anything we can do about it. Perhaps there is an alternative?

I should point out that my reference to Bulb customers joining Octopus Energy was before the acquisition was delayed.

Many thanks in advance!

Andrew

[Deleted User]

Bulb is absolutely correct. Early smart meters had a direct connection to the supplier. If you switched away, this connection could be lost unless your new supplier had installed the same meter model. Modern smart meters connect to a dedicated common network.

There is an ongoing programme to update older meters to enable them to connect to the smart meter network operated by The Data Communications Company. This update is carried out via an over-the-air meter firmware update in tranches.  This programme is ongoing. 

https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/our-smart-network/current-programmes/smets1-enrolment-and-adoption/ 

You will have to be patient and wait. Ofgem will not be interested as it doesn’t deal with consumer complaints. If you want to escalate a complaint to The Energy Ombudsman, you must follow the supplier’s complaints’ process first. The EO cannot impose an action on a supplier that it cannot carry out.

You can check whether your meters have been enrolled onto the DCC network via this link:

https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Suppliers are not permitted to replace existing smart meters which are capable of being updated.