Economy 7 not working through old meter - will smart meter work in apartment block?

No, I was discussing smart meters with the original electrician who attended to test the water heater - he said smart meters sometimes don’t work correctly in apartment blocks, due to the large amounts of steel in the walls blocking whatever signals they use to communicate with the meter. For example, if it works on mobile signal, well I’m on the same floor as the meter room and my mobile signal, when unassisted by wifi, isn’t particularly good. Others on here didn’t agree about that - I’ve asked the neighbour that on the off chance he finally gets his phone call tomorrow to ask them outright if the problem is that they have been unable to send commands to the new meter. 
 

I don’t think he should switch suppliers at this stage either, I’d give it a bit longer and see if any progress can be made - but he’s spending hours on the phone to them every day for absolutely no progress and you can see why he’s getting frustrated with it all. Next step we think is to try and canvas more neighbours (we have heard another flat might have had a problem with their storage heaters too) and see whether those that have had their meters changed previously still have their economy 7 supply or not

OK, I understand, thanks.

When a smart meter is installed, some of the configuration has to take place ‘over the air’ (OTA). The engineer who installed your neighbour’s meter said that he’d checked everything - that wouldn’t be possible if the meter wasn’t in communication with the network. Communication is two-way - the whole point of the smart meter revolution is that the meter can send energy data to the supplier when asked to. 

Did your neighbour get an In-Home Display along with his new meter? He should have, and it could be helpful in diagnosing the problems he’s having. 

He hasn’t mentioned one but I can ask - if so, what should he look for on it that might help?

Sorry, the sandman called before this response showed up …

It depends a bit on the type of IHD, but for example some of them show a convenient countdown to the next tariff change. The change should coincide with the heating circuit being switched on or off. The IHD may suddenly display a red traffic light when the heating equipment starts up just to show that the power draw has increased significantly. So there are two IHD signals that help the customer find out whether his meter is working properly to control offpeak heating.

IHDs don’t always work well in blocks of flats because of both the construction materials used and the distance between the meter and the IHD. But ’they have ways if making it talk,’ so it’s worth grumbling if the IHD - which has by law to be provided with any new smart meter - doesn’t work properly out of the box.