Energy Salesman Smart Meter Flim Flam - Truth or lies?

bucksboomer

vacheron said:

Ayr_Rage said:

Very few smart meters are faulty.

.....It's a bit like saying my Nokia 3310 still works fine on 2G and even though you want to give me a new 5G phone for free I think I'll just stay in the past, thanks.

Because "the man" will be watching you through all the 5G's and 2G requires less tin foil.   

Insulting people and labelling them as "tin hat" is totally inappropriate, unfriendly and taken with the other comments a form of social bullying.

Please cease and desist from such behaviour.

debitcardmayhem

The number 8 , without knowing the context of it , is possibly referring to the number of meters found to be not recording factually the energy used. Of course your meter is certified until 2032, that doesn’t mean it is measuring your consumption correctly does it.

Edit: I think that answered your question

flaneurs_lobster

bucksboomer said:

flaneurs_lobster said:

Given your thread title and contents it seems you have already made up your mind about this energy company and their smart meters.

Wrong forum if your are simply looking for posts that support your views. 

I think your message is judgemental and shows a lack of tolerance for people you think have different views to yourself.

I am not looking for posts that support these alleged views you "assume" I have.

I asked a question, you have not answered it, instead it appears you are trying to bully me off this forum.

Please cease and desist from such behaviour.

OK I'll answer your question.

No.

mmmmikey

bucksboomer said:

Sadly nobody seems to have actually answered my question yet, but let me address the issues you raised.

Ayr_Rage said:

Very few smart meters are faulty.

Many smart meters are operating in dumb mode because they cannot connect to the data networks to "phone home", those are the numbers which the nay-sayers like to quote.

If we were to compare this to an phone or TV that was not fit for purpose we would be entitled to a refund.

Nobody cares WHY it does not work, just that it does not work.

I don't think it helps for you to create derogatory phrases to call people names.

They are not naysayers and nor am I, when I heard of the promised benefits I was in principle not against the project, I figured that even if the only benefit was that thousands of meter readers would be fired or redeployed, in the long term it would bring down costs and lead to better pricing.

I used to have a standing charge of zero on both Gas and Electricity with energy rates lower than the top 6 energy providers.

Later I went to a supplier with 5p and 10p standing charges and even lower rates.

So no cost benefits have been passed on to me, I have to pay ever £300 a year before a single kWh is used.

The BBC and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero reports are respected organisations, so calling them naysayers is also unwarranted.  They are simply quoting the facts.  LBC Consumer show Barrister Dean Dunham cautions his audience to stay clear of them, he is not against them per se, just too many people with problems.

I am from a large family, we cover most segments of society, the number who have had problems with Smart Meters is almost all who have switched.  One was on a first floor flat and the gas meter did not send the signal so they got overcharged, you can quickly retort "they need a booster widget" but that is not the point,  British Gas told them it was not a priority.  Two years later they left that flat with the problem unresolved, they bumped into the new owner when they were passing a few months ago and it was still not working.  They left that property over 3 years ago.

The four million meters are clearly faulty, they do not work as intended, they do not provide the promised functions, they are not fit for purpose and the FAULT requires a fix, hence they are faulty.

When I first heard about the Smart Meter project I was intrigued to hear that they planned to spend billions creating their own data network, called the DCC.  This seemed to me at the time to either be a potential money earner or a white elephant suffering from spending other people's money.  Sadly the latter seems to be the case, if you are blaming the Data Network then surely you are blaming the very tech that we all paid for.  Personally I would have done a deal with existing broadband providers to use their hotspot networks which have both visible and hidden networks, it is quite feasible to create a secure VPN tunnel via these networks, I use one myself to connect family members together and I used one in my workplace for 10 years when working remotely was considered rare.

Whether it be lack of access to data network or the fact that an energy company stuffed in a naff SMET1 meter just to get the install fee, only to leave the customer completely in the dark now, all the customer know and cares about is that it does not work and there are no firm plans or dates to fix it.  The new soft rules by OFGEM will not change much, I would have put the penalties much higher and made them monthly fees or perhaps given all consumers affected a rebate on their full Standing Charge for every month the Smart Meters were not fully functional.

it is totally unacceptable to blame the victims and gas lighting them with derogatory terms.

Ayr_Rage said:

I still cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would be keeping an outdated meter when new models are offered for free and if they work in smart mode enable access to TOU and EV tariffs.

Try to understand that different people have different opinions than you, opinions that they are perfectly entitled to hold. Some people are early adopters and defenders of new tech even if they end up being unwitting beta testers.  Insulting people with different opinions just because they have a different opinion creates division in our society and it is social bullying.

At the other end of the scale there are people who follow an old saying that "a wise man is he who learns from the mistakes of others and does not make the same mistake".  So when people hear of cases like the smart meter that was recording the reads of a meter that was hundreds of miles away or they hear of 4 million consumers with faulty meters.  Anyone who listens to consumer shows will hear of Smart Meter issues, anyone who reads the one star reviews of any of the top six energy companies will read of real world negative experiences. Ironically a lot of these are from people who were not in the group you negatively label, many get messed around for the appointment, have bad installs and are told that someone will come back and fix it but they never do.

If people who are reticent because of what they read and hear about real world negative Smart Meters it is totally reasonable that they decide to wait. 

I asked AI the same question about the likelihood of the 8 faulty

"It's highly unlikely that only eight smart meters were faulty in one energy company, as recent government figures from March 2024 indicate that almost four million smart meters across the UK were not working correctly at the end of 2023. These issues often stem from meters being left in "dumb mode" due to poor signal connectivity, but suppliers are now required to improve their performance, with a new government consultation launched in August 2025 to address these problems and implement automatic compensation for affected customers, according to Money Saving Expert."

They are not free, they cost us £15bn and when the IHD's fail we are expected to pay for a new one, My meter is not outdated, it is intended to work until at least 2032 and if there was no smart meter project it would probably last until 2050 which is far longer than I expect to last! 

Not everyone has an electric vehicle and the state of EV at the moment is that there are not enough charging points, those in flats will have to pay extortionate rates sometimes 10x what they might have paid at home. The number of people calling consumer shows with problems EV's is growing at an alarming rate considering how new the tech is and when there is a problem many cases are told that there are no spare parts and will not be for a year. Problems with App design for EV's make accessing basic things in a car require an App and thus a device to run that App. 

Whilst it is frowned upon to like Tesla, I have driven one on hire several times and it seems to me that it's USP is making driving less tiring and less stressful, it spots speed changes and adjusts speed very smoothly. One bad thing was that it tends to drive in the gutter rather than the centre of the lane and this splashes mud up onto the cameras. I would not buy an EV at the moment, if I had the money then Hybrid is the way I would go. So basically no benefit from a smart meter on EV Front.

If a Smart Meter does not work because of a data network or old firmware will it be able to access TOU and EV tariffs or would requesting those suddenly give the energy company the incentive to actually fix the problem?

Ayr_Rage said:

It's a bit like saying my Nokia 3310 still works fine on 2G and even though you want to give me a new 5G phone for free I think I'll just stay in the past, thanks.

Well there are benefits to having a non-smart phone, particularly as a way to avoid giving children access to the web but giving them a means of communicating with their parents in case of emergency.

I still have a couple lying around that I use as a security device to receive SMS in the event of a change of password etc.  What is interesting is they never get scammer calls, nobody can use social media to stalk them on a plethora of social media platforms (as happened to a member of my family even though they had blocked the stalker).

Nobody has offered to give me a new 5g phone or equivalent, any kit I do get will be bought and paid for by my standing charge so let's dismiss that myth immediately.

As it happens I was considering moving to an energy company who does far more with a smart meter than most, my energy company has issues with their billing system, anecdotal comments suggest this is deliberate for customers who do not have a smart meter. 

I have a family member who has moved to the energy company I was considering jumping to, they have had their own issues which I have been managing because they have special needs.  Despite all of that I was still considering the new firm, I am just wary of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. 

What I was trying to establish was whether my existing supplier installed some fantastic model of Smart Meter and hence they only had 8 faulty or was this just flim flam sales patter?

If anyone has any information that suggests that the 8 smart meter figure is accurate, then I would be pleased to hear it, but not if it excludes or gas lights people for being victim of a faulty service or product.

A very lengthy post and to be honest I didn't read it all. But to answer your question, I think you need to be clear what you mean by "faulty". 

Think of something like a mobile phone. If it works fine in a good signal area but stops working when you take it to an area with no signal, you wouldn't describe the phone as faulty. Similarly, if a smart meter works in a good signal area then it's reasonably to describe it as working (i.e. not faulty) even if it doesn't work where there's no signal.

And if the 'phone won't connect to the network because of a bad connection on the SIM card it won't work but it would be wrong to call the 'phone faulty.

Along the same lines, if you mess up the configuration but the issue can be resolved by correcting the configuration error then you wouldn't call the 'phone faulty.

So lots of the things that stop a mobile 'phone from working are due to external factors, not faults with the 'phone.

In exactly the same way, the vast majority of things that we see reported here as smart meter "faults" are due to external factors. Most of these are either communications issue or setup errors. So assuming the agent was referring to faults with the meter itself and excluding anything that stopped the energy supplier from generating an accurate bill then the figure of 8 is may not be unreallistic.

But whether that figure is on the nail or not, the underlying point is that very, very few smart meter installations go wrong to the extent where the meter itself does not properly record usage and allow accurate bills to be generated.

As you say you are perfectly entitled to your views but so are the rest of us. My view, which based on other comments in this thread I believe is shared by many others here, is that you've been sucked in by a lot of negative publicity around smart meters and you you are making much more of an issue out of this than is really warranted. But each to their own and I hope you find a way forward that works for you.

flaneurs_lobster

mmmmikey said:

A very lengthy post and to be honest I didn't read it all.

Then why quote the whole thing again? Editing is your friend.

mmmmikey

flaneurs_lobster said:

mmmmikey said:

A very lengthy post and to be honest I didn't read it all.

Then why quote the whole thing again? Editing is your friend.

Fair comment, noted. Just force of habit, for me "Quote" is synomous with "Reply" and if I'm responding to a particular comment I tend to click it to make it clear what I'm responding to. But as you point out in this case some editing would have been appropriate

Ildhund

mmmmikey said:
... the vast majority of things that we see reported here as smart meter "faults" are due to external factors. Most of these are either communications issue or setup errors. 

I can't see that anyone has pointed out a fact often overlooked in this frequently-rehashed debate: what is commonly referred to as the smart meter in fact consists nowadays of two connected devices - the meter itself and the communications hub which usually sits on top of it. 
 


While the meter is the responsibility of the supplier, the communications hub is owned and supplied by the DCC to provide communication in-house over the HAN and also over the smart network (the WAN) to suppliers, distributors and other authorized parties.

I can well believe that very few SMETS2 meters have in fact proved to have faults - they measure with the required precision and store the results. Most of the faults with the oft-quoted 4 million devices result from problems with communication, although some will undoubtedly be caused by configuration errors. It would to my mind be quite wrong to penalize suppliers for faults entirely beyond their control.

vacheron

bucksboomer said:

vacheron said:

Ayr_Rage said:

Very few smart meters are faulty.

.....It's a bit like saying my Nokia 3310 still works fine on 2G and even though you want to give me a new 5G phone for free I think I'll just stay in the past, thanks.

Because "the man" will be watching you through all the 5G's and 2G requires less tin foil.   

Insulting people and labelling them as "tin hat" is totally inappropriate, unfriendly and taken with the other comments a form of social bullying.

Please cease and desist from such behaviour.

I was answering another poster (one who I have cordially interacted with for a long time) with a light hearted reply to a hypothetical scenario of an event that didn't actually happen and which was unrelated to both you and your original question.

Please cease and desist from demanding that "I" cease and desist from socially interacting with other long standing forum members.

Spoonie_Turtle

bucksboomer said:

flaneurs_lobster said:

Given your thread title and contents it seems you have already made up your mind about this energy company and their smart meters.

Wrong forum if your are simply looking for posts that support your views. 

I am not looking for posts that support these alleged views you "assume" I have.

Your very long … explanation … in response to the first reply in the thread shows you do in fact have those views.

silverwhistle

I've just had my mid-afternoon cuppa after a spell hacking my back jungle and I boiled the kettle at the princely rate of 0.28p per unit, which was enabled by the fact that I have a smart meter, although I will be avoiding using too much in an expensive period from 17.30 to 19.00. Not an issue as I'll be off to football training and then back for a bath using cheap hot water too. You, on the other hand were complaining that "So no cost benefits have been passed on to me,", well, no, obviously.

Have I had any issues? Yes, due to human error in not recording correct details when I had a meter change but the meter itself, no.

PS: the tariff is a beta one, but I'm prepared to give it a chance: far better than writing long inchoate screeds conflating new meters, EVs etc.