Friend had smart meter installed without consent

TheElectricCow

LeesArt said:

A smart meter can be installed or converted into a debt meter so there is an argument they have breached rules 

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/energy-regulator-outlines-next-steps-forced-prepayment-meter-ppm-installations

See note below

She should look at her suppliers promises and terms to see if they are in breach of those

She can pick up some terminology on the cadent website

https://cadentgas.com/services/household-customer/moving-your-gas-meter

I suspect that with a well written complaint the supplier will offer a settlement.


Note:

“The rules and regulations are clear that installing forced PPMs should only be done as a last resort and only where it is safe and practicable to do so. We expect suppliers to treat customers with compassion and professionalism and those executing a warrant should take into account what they find when they visit a home and pause the installation if they see a safety risk. Where this hasn’t happened, we will hold suppliers to account.  

However, I’m telling suppliers not to wait for the outcome of our reviews and to act now to check that PPMs have been installed appropriately, and if rules have been broken, offer customers a reversal of installations and compensation payments where appropriate. There will also be fines issued from Ofgem if the issue is found to be systemic. 

“We are taking this issue extremely seriously and customers should feel reassured that where the rules have been broken, Ofgem will act.”   

The OP doesn’t make any mention of this being a prepayment meter force fitted via a warrant, so that whole bit of spiel about those doesn’t really seem relevant here. If they were to raise a complaint about an inappropriate forced installation of a prepayment meter it would only confuse matters and absolutely would not help achieve whatever the desired outcome is, as that would be a completely unrelated scenario which hasn’t actually happed.

EssexHebridean

Thanks @TheElectricCow- I was about to point out that quoting information and guidelines relating to PPM’s seemed a bit misleading and a red herring as it doesn’t seem that this WAS a forced PPM install - just a straightforward relocation of a meter requiring a replacement meter at the same time.

OP - disregarding the point of the new meter being smart, what is the issue with the location of the new meter? That it is smart is neither here nor there - it’s a meter. It records energy use. It does precisely the same as the previous meter did - just in a different location.  

dunstonh

On the contrary, It opens up the path to errors. For one reason in the recent news 4 million have gone wrong. 

It would help if you read past the headline and focus on the facts.  The faulty ones are not communicating.  They are still working but as conventional meters would.  Most of these are SMETS1.   

When you are talking about true faults, the ratio of failures on smart meters is about the same as on conventional meters.

LeesArt

TheElectricCow said:

LeesArt said:

A smart meter can be installed or converted into a debt meter so there is an argument they have breached rules 

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/energy-regulator-outlines-next-steps-forced-prepayment-meter-ppm-installations

See note below

She should look at her suppliers promises and terms to see if they are in breach of those

She can pick up some terminology on the cadent website

https://cadentgas.com/services/household-customer/moving-your-gas-meter

I suspect that with a well written complaint the supplier will offer a settlement.


Note:

“The rules and regulations are clear that installing forced PPMs should only be done as a last resort and only where it is safe and practicable to do so. We expect suppliers to treat customers with compassion and professionalism and those executing a warrant should take into account what they find when they visit a home and pause the installation if they see a safety risk. Where this hasn’t happened, we will hold suppliers to account.  

However, I’m telling suppliers not to wait for the outcome of our reviews and to act now to check that PPMs have been installed appropriately, and if rules have been broken, offer customers a reversal of installations and compensation payments where appropriate. There will also be fines issued from Ofgem if the issue is found to be systemic. 

“We are taking this issue extremely seriously and customers should feel reassured that where the rules have been broken, Ofgem will act.”   

The OP doesn’t make any mention of this being a prepayment meter force fitted via a warrant, so that whole bit of spiel about those doesn’t really seem relevant here. If they were to raise a complaint about an inappropriate forced installation of a prepayment meter it would only confuse matters and absolutely would not help achieve whatever the desired outcome is, as that would be a completely unrelated scenario which hasn’t actually happed.

I was not suggesting it was a pre-payment meter force fitted via a warrant, the "whole bit of spiel" had sections in bold not to say it was the same but that the core issue is the same.

There is a vulnerable lady, no respect given, no communications given, no choice given on location which may cause risk to the customer.

If you don't know what the desired outcome is you can't said it won't help it be achieved.

What surprised me was that for the similar issue of getting a 3rd party company to do their dirty work, OFGEM will offer customers a reversal of installation and compensation where appropriate.. 

So it based on this similar bad behaviour it would not be unreasonable to ask for a similar remedy, it won't go back where it was but she might ask if it may still be inside on an external wall. She can ask if It may be reverted to an analogue meter because they are far easier to read, the Toshiba one is very hard to read and if you press a button to make the light come on it goes to a different screen and will not return for at least 5 minutes.

As I said "I suspect that with a well written complaint the supplier will offer a settlement."

The mere fact a complain to the ombudsman cost £400+ and that a complaint of a practice affecting many customers to OFGEM will be a risk that the supplier will want to avoid a similar page being created by OFGEM for this situation along with appropriate penalties.

There was a case in Bedford I think where BT installed a huge box on the side of a cottage and relied on a false assertion of what was said on the Land Registry deed,  it was not just an eyesore but it was affected parking and BT conceded they did not have the permission they routinely think they have.  The box was moved and wires moved underground.

I don't give much hope of a reversal but perhaps significant compensation.

LeesArt

dunstonh said:

On the contrary, It opens up the path to errors. For one reason in the recent news 4 million have gone wrong. 

It would help if you read past the headline and focus on the facts.  The faulty ones are not communicating.  They are still working but as conventional meters would.  Most of these are SMETS1.   

When you are talking about true faults, the ratio of failures on smart meters is about the same as on conventional meters.

As said in other threads where this argument was used quoting a percentage or a ratio to minimise the impact, the issue is 4 MILLION, on Smart Meters that were supposed to have ability for remote upgrade. 

The 3 MILLION were in June last year and the 4 MILLION by end of December so now 3 months later who knows how many more there are.

I remember it was likened to getting a windows or IOS update or being triggered by the Energy company automatically like the way a Roku box is.  If that were true then there would not be 4 MILLION nor even 100,000.  

The issue is all the promised benefits of the Smart Meter are lost when it becomes a dumb meter and that is what we paid for with the £10BILLION to £15BILLION cost we all paid for the project.

For Greg to say that there is "No recognition for same engineering effort" is not accurate if all they need is a firmware upgrade and he seems to be implying that firms want the "recognition" i.e. to receive an incentive to apply the resource. My approach would be to prevent service charge and charge the offending company £5 a day.  There is no point in Octopus being able to redirect the obligation to the original installer because OFGEM allowed half of them to go bust and made us pay for that too.  Then when that was to be removed they bleated about bad debt and got another 5% yet they have 3.7BILLION of customers money  according to the BBC. Moreover they have some of the most powerful remedies for recovering bad debt.  If you fall behind on your credit card the bank can't take some of your payment for food and apply it to your account.

Phones4Chris

@LeesArt I'm not going to attempt to quote a variety of your posts as people will have read the comments time and time again, but just make a couple of simple points.
First, from one of your other posts elsewhere, Octopus are not only installing "Liberty" smart meters but they've also installed "EDMI".  There may be other makes, but as I don't go round monitoring every install they do, I can't add to that.
Second, you've quoted articles from "This is Money" (part of the D.Mail group) and the BBC etc. There've also been similar from the Telegraph and others.
I'm afraid a lot of these articles misrepresent the real situation because of the way they are written, and that's simply because they are written by people who generally do not have the technical qualifications or a full understanding of the way the smart metering system works, and they are also based on information from many consumers who do not understand it either. So many don't know the difference between an IHD and the Smart Meter.
And often they don't understand that the meter is working correctly but readings are not being obtained by the supplier for a number of possible reasons - such as, the comms are not working reliably due to signal issues, the data not getting passed through to the supplier due some issue at the DCC, or an issue on the suppliers systems etc. None of those makes the meter faulty, but they can result in estimated bills. If there's an error in the registration of a meter (smart or not) by the installer etc, people can end up paying for the wrong meter!
You made the comment that people have busy lives and leave it to the supplier and the bank, so if they get billed incorrectly they are saying the smart meter is faulty - well it isn't. If people are too daft to actually check their bills and ensure they aren't based on estimated readings and so end up either huge amounts in credit or debit when real readings are eventually used, then that's their own daft fault, not a faulty meter! 
Yes suppliers should make it much much clearer that it's an estimated bill when it is.
One other issue is that sometimes people are misled about the cost of their energy because the correct tariff has not been uploaded onto their smart meter. The IHD will only reflect what is on the meter.
Until these things are explained in a lot clearer manner to the GBP who don't have the technical understanding, then these misleading reports of 4 million faulty smart meters will continue.
Personally, I blame OFGEM and DESNZ as they must be well aware that these ill-informed articles and publications are out there but seem to do nothing to ensure the correct information is frequently and widely put out to the public.

TheElectricCow

LeesArt said:

I was not suggesting it was a pre-payment meter force fitted via a warrant, the "whole bit of spiel" had sections in bold not to say it was the same but that the core issue is the same.

There is a vulnerable lady, no respect given, no communications given, no choice given on location which may cause risk to the customer.

If you don't know what the desired outcome is you can't said it won't help it be achieved.

What surprised me was that for the similar issue of getting a 3rd party company to do their dirty work, OFGEM will offer customers a reversal of installation and compensation where appropriate.. 

So it based on this similar bad behaviour it would not be unreasonable to ask for a similar remedy, it won't go back where it was but she might ask if it may still be inside on an external wall. She can ask if It may be reverted to an analogue meter because they are far easier to read, the Toshiba one is very hard to read and if you press a button to make the light come on it goes to a different screen and will not return for at least 5 minutes.

But the core issue isn’t the same, it’s not even remotely connected. You can’t just pick out individual phrases and ignore the full context of the text to support a point of view.

The information you provided is directly related to the forced installation/switching of prepayment meters. This is made clear from the very first sentence and is reiterated many times in the source of your quote. Please read the full sentences of the bits you’ve highlighted in bold, you’ll notice that forced PPMs are the subject of those sentences. Not smart meters and not meter relocations.

A forced prepayment meter installation is a lengthy process involving a large debt, a court warrant, and if necessary forcing entry into the customer’s home in order to exchange the meter. The comments from Ofgem are in relation to the widely publicised accusations of prepayment meters being installed where the proper processes in place to protect vulnerable customers hadn’t been followed either when gaining or executing the warrant.

The comments about safety are referencing issues related to energy being cut off from a lack of credit, such as where medical or mobility equipment is in use, not the physical placement of the meter (which would not be altered in a prepayment install) or how easy it is to read.

Any well written complaint will be based on the facts of the situation, not an entirely hypothetical “what if” scenario, and certainly not by cherry picking quotes from a press release specifically relating to a completely different topic and irrelevant to the events that occurred. From what we know, a PPM was not installed and the customer is under no threat of having their supply cut off, so this would not in any way be a suitable basis for the complaint.

Yes there is the potential of a complaint being made due to the poor service or misleading nature of the install etc. but trying to involve PPMs in this is not going to help unless the goal is simply to waste everyone’s time.

MattMattMattUK

LeesArt said:

dunstonh said:

On the contrary, It opens up the path to errors. For one reason in the recent news 4 million have gone wrong. 

It would help if you read past the headline and focus on the facts.  The faulty ones are not communicating.  They are still working but as conventional meters would.  Most of these are SMETS1.   

When you are talking about true faults, the ratio of failures on smart meters is about the same as on conventional meters.

As said in other threads where this argument was used quoting a percentage or a ratio to minimise the impact, the issue is 4 MILLION, on Smart Meters that were supposed to have ability for remote upgrade. 

Percentages are relevant just as much as absolute figures.

LeesArt said:

The 3 MILLION were in June last year and the 4 MILLION by end of December so now 3 months later who knows how many more there are.

The number of meters not operating in smart mode has likely gone down, however the reporting has improved, so the number recorded as being so has increased. 

LeesArt said:

I remember it was likened to getting a windows or IOS update or being triggered by the Energy company automatically like the way a Roku box is.  If that were true then there would not be 4 MILLION nor even 100,000.  

It was only likened to getting an OS update in the most simplistic, dumbed down information. It is a firmware update rather than an OS update, it is installed on fixed platforms rather than the variable platforms that Windows installs on. It is not triggered by "the Energy company", it is pushed by the DCC, the energy supplier has no control over firmware updates (or any updates) to a smart meter. 

LeesArt said:

The issue is all the promised benefits of the Smart Meter are lost when it becomes a dumb meter and that is what we paid for with the £10BILLION to £15BILLION cost we all paid for the project.

Many are gaining the benefits of smart meters (ToU tariffs), though due to the issues in global energy markets caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the wider impact on the energy sector that uptake has been somewhat lower than expected, but it is and will continue to rise with time. Again, you keep regurgitating the cost figure, but that ignores the fact that meters need to be replaced on a cycle anyway, the additional cost is only around £2-5 billion, or around £63 per property (dwellings and business premises) in the UK, over a twenty year period, so £3.17 per year, not worth getting one's proverbials in a twist over. 

LeesArt said:

For Greg to say that there is "No recognition for same engineering effort" is not accurate if all they need is a firmware upgrade and he seems to be implying that firms want the "recognition" i.e. to receive an incentive to apply the resource. My approach would be to prevent service charge and charge the offending company £5 a day. 

You want to penalise energy suppliers for something that they have no control over, that would indicate that you really do not understand the situation. The DCC is responsible for updates to smart meters, the DCC is responsible for comms network upgrades, capacity and connecting smart meters, the DCC is responsible for the supply of meters available to be installed. You seem to want them to spend money on training people to go to people's houses and be able to do nothing about an issue and you want them to operate that service at a loss, why would any business agree do that?

LeesArt said:
There is no point in Octopus being able to redirect the obligation to the original installer because OFGEM allowed half of them to go bust and made us pay for that too.

Ofgem did not allow half of them to go bust, if forced half of them to go bust by forcing them to sell their product below cost for a year. Again, we were not made to pay for them to go bust, we did not bail them out, the SoLR process guaranteed positive balances that consumers held, only consumers benefitted from that, not "energy companies". Now whilst I do not agree with the SoLR process and did not benefit from it, it is not of any benefit to energy suppliers.

LeesArt said:
Then when that was to be removed they bleated about bad debt 

Energy suppliers are very restricted in their ability to recover debt.

LeesArt said:
yet they have 3.7BILLION of customers money  according to the BBC. 

Customers have positive balances with various energy suppliers, that is a customers choice and for many it represents a beneficial one. Some customers having a positive balance which they will use over time in no way offsets other customers who never pay.

LeesArt said:
Moreover they have some of the most powerful remedies for recovering bad debt.  If you fall behind on your credit card the bank can't take some of your payment for food and apply it to your account.

A bad debt is a debt which is unrecoverable, otherwise it is just a debt. Energy suppliers have a very limited capacity to recover debts, they are not allowed to take court action for more than a year, they have to "engage" with non-payers, but can do nothing if the customer refuses to engage. Once they take action the backlogs in the courts can mean further months before they can get any form of judgement and further months before they can take enforcement action, by which time the customer has disappeared and the debt is unrecoverable. The energy companies cannot take people's payments for food. 

Chris_b2z

@MattMattMattUK  Are you an official industry spokesperson on the MSE Energy Forum? You seem to quote specific details that would not be easily accessible in the public domain.

poppellerant

hubb said:

Well it isn't and it doesn't. I (and many people who I have spoken to) will not have one either. On the contrary, It opens up the path to errors. For one reason in the recent news 4 million have gone wrong. But then again why are you questioning why she doesn't want one ? My op was about freedom of choice that was overridden. 

The meter she had replaced was a very old type but they still didn't give her the chance to say yes or no. That's the issue. 

My own advice is to take and record daily readings at the same time each day for the first week.  Then take weekly readings for a further four weeks on the same day and at the same time.  Then take monthly readings on a monthly basis, for example the 1st of each month.

I know taking the readings at the same time each day might seem as though it won't make difference, but it can.  If you go to bed at 11pm, then take readings at 11pm before heading off.  There's no point taking the next day's reading at 11am, because you'll have only measured half a day's usage.

Now I know it's a bit of an effort to take readings, but it's for the good in the long run.  So if your energy provider messes up and aren't able to take readings for the first few weeks (or months in my own case) after installing, you're still able to provide them with meter readings for accurate bills.  These meter readings can also help you spot any potential billing or meter issues before they develop into something more sinister, such as being under-billed for some time for estimated readings.

Smart meters really will benefit your friend, especially in finding things that are turned on when they needn't be.  But after about a week most people grow tired of becoming paranoid when their IHD (In Home Display) turns red to alert them of high energy usage, so they just put the IHDs in a drawer somewhere.