When is the best time to give my meter readings to avoid estimated bills?

I don’t want to hand over control of my electricity supply to whoever is the supplier - until I’m forced to. My electricity usage is pretty constant over the year and there’s no advantage to me in having a smart meter. I have gas central heating and the cost of gas is relatively cheap.

You wouldn’t be handing over control though - the supplier already has control regardless of meter type. If you don’t pay, they can simply get a warrant to force entry and disconnect you anyway. Smart Meters would just make it so you wouldn’t also have to pay for the warrant, engineer visit and replacement locks.

Probably also worth mentioning that your existing meter won’t last forever. Eventually it’ll reach End of Service Life and must be replaced by law once it does (Electricity Act 1989 and Gas Act 1986 if you’re interested). At that point, the replacement will be a Smart Meter because there’s nothing else out there anymore.

If you show me what you’ve got now, I can calculate roughly how long you’ve got left with them.

I doubt I’ll ever be in a position of having my supply cut off! But suppliers can control the electricity price remotely and even selectively and temporarily suspend the supply, else hike the tariff at peak times, if it suits them. If smart meters were designed to only to provide readings and nothing else, then I’d be on board. But let’s just wait and see what happens when the grid can’t supply the demand at any one time. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s possible to update smart meter firmware to add functionality in the future. It’s not beyond the Machiavellian, crazed Ed Miliband! 

Eh? The price is controlled remotely anyway - that’s what the billing system does and ya don’t need Smart Meters for that!

Also, you’re thinking of Time of Use Tariffs. Those will ONLY apply to you if you’re explicitly opted into one - trust me, you’d know if you were on one.

As for randomly cutting you off? That’s been pretty much ruled out. Oh, and besides, the DNO can do it anyway even without Smart Meters - they can just flip the sub-station switches. FWIW even the National Grid can do it too...

Seems you’ve read a few too many scare stories...

You aren’t going to convince me.

Sorry, I was only going by what you wrote. Perhaps you forgot you’d written this:
  

😉

Convincing you isn't our goal. Correcting misinformation is though.

I think my electrician and Loiuse have been hearing the same rumours 🤦‍♀️

Why is it that despite giving an actual meter reading that OVO computer system posts an incorrect estimated reading onto my account to work out my bill. To make matters worse your customers are told to ignore the red dial which gives figures after the decimal point your computer guesses uses decimal figures when inserting incorrect usage figures on my bill. Your billing system is a farce and opens yourself up for more complaints.

This phenomenon has been discussed on the forum elsewhere, but in short this answer from ​@BPLightlog explains all:

We have found looking at various people feeding back that they should be asking for a reading on the day after your billing period finishes, not on the day itself.

That mimics a smart meter which sends its readings early after midnight on that date.

They will estimate from your reading to add further usage for that last day unfortunately if you’re providing a manual reading