This statement by consumer champion Martin Lewis has been widely reported today:
"The rollout of the smart meters has been a disgrace in this country. Twenty percent of them don't work ...”. I saw it at second or third hand from this article, but I haven’t been able to find the source if it wasn’t in an attributable interview the Express had with him.
Does anyone know what the basis for this assertion is and where it was first made? Is it true?
Best answer by Jeffus
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+2
I’m the same where checking every day is concerned, but indeed not everyone is the same.
Years ago, well, OK, decades ago, I was quite happy to leave quarterly bills to be based on the figures provided by meter readers, never checking my meter from one end of the year to the other, extraordinary. Perhaps occasionally if a card had been left asking me to insert my figures. But that happy trust was normal back then.
And goodness how meter reading visits have all but vanished, they used to be so regular. I’ve just finished Barbara Vine’s “No Night is too Long”, set mainly in 90’s Suffolk, where at one point the main protagonist says “…the doorbell rang…no one ever comes to the door except meter readers…”.
And earlier this afternoon
Following on from my previous post (gas meter too far from hub) I log into my account monthly where there is always a message asking me to submit a manual reading. An engineer called at OVO's behest to check the problem. He logged onto the OVO system from his PDA and said that the readings were being sent so the problem was between the reading system and billing depts. However he could not explain why my IHD wasn't showing Gas info either?
Customer services raised an urgent technical query at the beginning of February - no response to date and still being asked to send manual readings?
Previous comments on the benefits of multi functionality of SMETS might be true but as a domestic customer if the basics don't work then as pointed out, they are just a meter and I still have to trudge up and down two flights of stairs to take a reading and have no idea of my usage or costs until I log in and enter the reading.
As customers are paying for this rollout through their bills some redress should be available for issues such as mine? Echoes of the PO Horizon IT scandal me thinks.
+1
The Horizon scandal was a deliberate miscarriage of justice by the Post Office. Trust me, I’ve read the reports and understand them more deeply than most people - especially the technical stuff. It’s literally right up my street.
Your Smart Meter not working is merely due to most likely some very unusual circumstances that are unintentional and an edge case.
Edge cases != miscarriage of justice.
Too serious @blastoise! Comment about PO was tongue in cheek but has certain parallels. It's obvious nobody knows what percentage of meters don't work as intended. Whether it's the meter itself or somewhere else in the system if it doesn't result in my account being updated automatically and accurately then by any reasoning it ain't working! Much the same as my TV won't work if the aerial falls off the roof.
The various suppliers of the statistics all have their own vested interests in mind and spin their numbers accordingly. This includes Government, networks, suppliers and so called consumer champions. Somewhere amongst this smorgasbord of figures is the truth which is all we ask but even if we take the lowest percentages quoted that's an awful lot of meters.
All the best.
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