Crossed meter or not?

Chris_b2z

baglessupright said:

Finally got an appt - December 4th!!!!!!! Had to ask her to repeat it twice - couldn't believe what I was hearing!

I really wouldn't worry about that. They can only bill you for the electricity that can be measured accurately and there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that your current meter is unreliable. As the worst case they will most likely estimate your consumption based on previous year's usage. It'll make no difference whether your heaters are turned up to MAX or switched off during this time.

baglessupright

Chris_b2z 

I really wouldn't worry about that. They can only bill you for the electricity that can be measured accurately and there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that your current meter is unreliable. As the worst case they will most likely estimate your consumption based on previous year's usage. It'll make no difference whether your heaters are turned up to MAX or switched off during this time.

Just had to submit my meter reading for October. Even their system said "That looks a little high! Are you sure?" 

Reed_Richards

Well there are still two possible explanations:

1. Your electricity meter is faulty
2. Your electricity meter also meters somebody else's supply; somebody who has started using electricity much more than they used to.

You won't know which it is until December and if it's explanation number 2 then you will only know that when your meter is found to be measuring accurately.  Let's hope it's not that.

baglessupright

Excellent news to report! The engineer rang at 11.30 today and said he could fit me in this afternoon. He said more or less immediately that it was highly likely that the meter was faulty and that this make/model is well known for it and, once he started to test, it soon became clear that the meter had failed. Phew! He also removed all the redundant equipment so I now have a nice, clutter-free meter cupboard and he told me to ring him if I have any problems getting the £100 refunded.

Many thanks to everyone here for all your help and advice! Your efforts are truly appreciated!

ArbitraryRandom

So, to confirm, you now have a smart meter installed - or is there a second meter in place to monitor the difference?

I ask because the next step is establishing what your bill 'should' have been and getting them to refund you the difference.   

baglessupright

ArbitraryRandom said:

So, to confirm, you now have a smart meter installed - or is there a second meter in place to monitor the difference?

I ask because the next step is establishing what your bill 'should' have been and getting them to refund you the difference.   

Neither. The faulty meter is still in place. Once the engineer submits his report, a smart meter will be fitted at some stage in the near future. The engineer said they will look at my previous usage to determine what my bill should be and refund the difference.

lohr500

Sounds like a result 

baglessupright

Just a couple more things I remembered from yesterday...

(Some of this is probably not news to many of you but I knew nothing about electricity before this and it might help someone who has a similar problem in the future.)

The engineer walked through the door, took one look at the make/model/year of the meter and said that this batch number (2008) was notorious for failing. He also said that, generally, the failure rate for meters is extremely low.

I told him about the sandwich maker incident (when the circuit breaker tripped and the digital display on the meter disappeared) and he said that was exactly the kind of thing that causes one of these potentially faulty meters to begin to fail.

He said that failure often comes to light when, for example, an older person has died and their home has been empty with the power turned off for an extended period of time. When the power is turned back on, the meter has often advanced by hundreds of units, despite no electricity being used.

He said that, instead of turning the power off overnight, another way to test if one of these meters is faulty is just to switch the power off at the mains and see if the red strobe light keeps blinking on and off. (Don't know why I didn't think of that!)

Hope some of that is helpful and thanks once again for your help.

Reed_Richards

Interesting to know that there is a bad batch of meters (and what that batch number is; 2008).

I'm very pleased you got this sorted and grateful that you posted to tell us.  Thanks.

Chris_b2z

You are probably one of the fortunate ones because in your case the consumption suddenly shot up six-fold at the same time as various weird behaviour being seen so there could be little doubt that the meter was faulty. The engineer suggested that this is a widespread problem affecting a specific batch of meters and yet EON support didn't seem to be aware of it. That's a concern.

I would have expected the defective batch to be recalled or pro-actively replaced. Perhaps there would have been greater urgency if the fault caused the meter to under-charge.