Smart Meters. Are they supposed to be this difficult?

E.ON have been pestering me for months to get smart meters. I say pestering, it’s closer to stalking. On average 5 emails or texts every week. So I finally gave in. Meters installed at beginning of July. I carefully took readings on old meters prior to their removal and submitted them via the app, as I have done every month forever. Smart meters wouldn’t connect so they sent another engineer to fix them yesterday. New bills came through today. Apparently I have used over £500 of gas in July, despite it being summer, us being away for 2 weeks and monthly bill averaging about £90 every month previously. Called EON today and they are fighting back saying there is no fault and that is my usage.

so now I’m going to have a massive ongoing time consuming fight to sort things out.  irritatingly I had credit in my account so they have already taken the money

Could it be catch up from estimated readings before, or do you take them regularly ?

Did you take a reading the day it got fitted, and can you take a reading now and compare?

As above you need to establish what is current usage charges and what is catch up from before it was fitted.

You should be able to see the actual number on the meter if you don’t know how to see units on the in house display.

I always took and submitted regular readings from old meters, including on the day they were removed

Bill is for usage after installation of smart meters

I didn’t take readings on day they were installed as assumed these would all be zero as new meters

when engineer was out yesterday he replaced the new gas meter with a different one. He didn’t tell me he was doing this so I didn’t have a chance to get a reading before it was removed.

 For context, the second new gas meter that was installed yesterday is telling me I’ve used £1.30 of gas since installation, so about 30 hours ago. This seems more realistic

I wish you well

At some point our smart meter or supplier decided to only bill us for day time electricity  as some where something thought we were on a dual tarif. We weren’t. They asked for the money we hadn’t paid. We did a deal

But sorting the meter took like 3 years of my wife on hold and engineers coming out..

And this is why every email from Eon mentioning smart meters goes straight in the bin.

Are the smart meters and supporting tech different between different suppliers?

Given that Scottish/British Gas seemed incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same, I did not hold out much hope that their ‘Smart’ meters would work in my favour. Fearing a situation like yours OP, I avoided at all costs.

However having recently moved to Octopus on their Intelligent Go EV tariff, it required a smart meter. Knock on wood, fingers crossed etc but since it was fitted in April it just sits there quietly doing it’s thing, and we can marvel at how the needle hammers into the red whenever the oven, hob or EV charger turns on.

So to answer your question: IMHE – No. But then, Octopus generally seem to have their shit together overall.

Had a nightmare getting ours fitted a few years back. We’re with AVRO at the time. 6 planned visits, some they just didn’t turn up. After all that they said they couldn’t read them electronically due to their back office systems.

Went to Octopus when AVRO went bust, seventh visit as apparently the gas meter had never talked to the electricity meter. To be fair Octopus did get it sorted and been on automated billing since. It was a very painful 6 months.

In theory the technology is great, the standard of installation and customer service is dire.

Are the smart meters and supporting tech different between different suppliers?

The backend infrastructure is the same (run by the DCC), rather than each supply company having there own. In theory it should even allow you to switch supply companies multiple times in a day to take advantage of different tariffs but I don’t think that’s been implemented (and given the hassles of just changing suppliers once that some people experience I’m sure it would be carnage if they allowed it).

Are the smart meters and supporting tech different between different suppliers?

Up to a point, yes.

The as is mentioned above, the main backend infrastructure is the same via the DCC. This handles some elements the device management and all communications to the meter (assuming it is a new SMETS2 meter or an enrolled SMETS1).

The meters themselves… while there are a number of different manufacturers they should all be compliant with the standards set out by SMETS2 (and SMETS1 for older meters). In reality there are some bits of operation that some meter variants and firmware versions do less well. But this is a problem across all suppliers.

Then there is the software that suppliers use to talk to the DCC. Some use the software supplied by the DCC, some either write their own or use software from a third party. This is where things get a bit more variation – although that software still needs to be certified by the DCC.

And all of the above has a minimal impact on billing. That is done exclusively by suppliers on whatever software platform they are running – be that in house developed or supplied by a vendor.

Some points on that. When a meter is removed, the engineer is expected to take final readings for that meter. Those reads should be returned to the supplier on a dataflow and be used in billing. It is sensible to take readings on the day, but hold them back and don’t submit them. There is no guarantee those reads would be used (and some suppliers software having those reads might throw up reading validation issues when the meter change reads come in).

Some suppliers are now in a position where they can reuse meters if they have been removed and confirmed as not faulty. It may be one of the meters went in with a non zero opening read.

If the consumption is on your new meter ask E.ON if they have your meters configured for daily reads or half hourly consumption retrieval. It’s too far in the past to get a historic read off the smart meter as they only store them for 29 days but thy can get up to 13 months of half hourly consumption data if the meter is configured to store it. That would prove your consumption.

My gas smart meter ran out of battery apparently , so needs the whole unit replacing….what sort of progress is that for net zero!

I am still waiting 15+ months later and been on an estimated gas bill all that time!

Every time i remind them they say an engineer will be in touch to fix a date soon!

My parents are in the same situation, electric works fine, Gas apparently £900 gas bill for Q1 this year despite being £500 in credit with them.

They have had several engineer visits etc and just keeps arguing till she gets the right amount

The gas meters in particular seem to be unreliable.  We’ve had a greater frequency of someone visiting to physically read our smart gas meter in the last few years than we even had on non-smart meters.  (even more curious since there no abnormality in our usage – its’ been consistent for the 9 years we’ve been in the house)

My gas smart meter ran out of battery apparently , so needs the whole unit replacing….what sort of progress is that for net zero!

They don’t have field serviceable batteries because of tampering. But the battery will be replaced and the meter reused.

Happy to carry on submitting meter readings to Octopus once a month. Takes about 3 minutes.

I know which appliances uses lots of power and don’t need an EV tariff.

If feel for you. We moved into our current house and the meter was dead (had been for a few months prior and they knew about it). COVID made things tricky but they eventually replaced it. Then for 10 more months charged us based on estimated readings of the old meter. Lost the will to live ringing them up and explain that meter was in a skip somewhere and THEY had replaced it with a new (smart) meter and here is its serial number. Computer said no, no record of the meter having been changed – very much a ‘new meter eh – so you say’. Could not submit meter readings manually as they did not correspond with the meter readings they were expecting. We just refused to pay the bill as the number of units they wanted to charge us was way more than I could see we were using.  Then they came without notice and replaced it with another new smart meter. Then they wanted to charge us for the leccy used in the 12 months since we moved in and not paid. They wanted something crazy like £3700 with lots of ‘estimates’ and ‘typicals’ in their calculations. Again were not interested in the meter readings we’d taken even though I’d rung up and requested they got put on our account notes if the system itself would not accept them. Got a bit nasty for a while with threats of cutting off supply and court orders. In the end we got the ombudsman interested and won. £3700 bill became £700. Annoyingly after settling up we were stuck with them as the Ukraine war had kicked off and companies were not accepting new customers.

SSE could not have sucked more balls if they had tried.

We live in an O2 “notspot”.  Very patchy coverage.  Our gas and electricity meters are on opposite sides of the house.

Octopus declared that they needed to upgrade our previously reliable smart meters.  The electric went fine, gas not so.

Different engineers came over a few weeks. Each with a new “better meter” and an explanation why the previous guy was an idiot.  I once explained to the engineer that he was the previous guy.

Finally one turned up with a gas meter which he carried like a ming vase and which requires “board level sign off”.  This will do the trick.

Once a month I submit a gas reading.

I’m still confused what the advantage of smart meters is. We submit a reading online for leccy every month and just pay for what we’ve used, nice and simple, am I missing something?

E.ON have been pestering me for months to get smart meters. I say pestering, it’s closer to stalking. On average 5 emails or texts every week.

They’re doing this with me too. I’ve read far too many horror stories similar to yours to ever have smart meters fitted so I keep ignoring them.

They are crap, I have an ongoing issue where the meter stopped talking to the display and stopped recording usage.  Gas is fine but electric is not going up.  I told Shell, they wern’t interested, got changed to octopus, and I now have a 14 email chain including an engineer’s visit and still the meter isn’t working.  The only good news is that currently I’m submitting readings showing zero use with photo evidence.  My fear is what they’ll try to bill me when they realise they don’t have any readings…..

I’m still confused what the advantage of smart meters is. We submit a reading online for leccy every month and just pay for what we’ve used, nice and simple, am I missing something?

I don’t have to dig around manually finding two numbers at opposite ends of my house and entering them into an app once a month. I literally do nothing

Having them means I can fill my car with less than £4 of leccy and drive it for ~180 miles (cost would be ~4 times that without).

If I really cared I could look at instantaneous usage (never really seen the appeal personally).

The gas meters in particular seem to be unreliable.

It’s the elec meter that does all the communication with the outside world. If your gas meter is too far from your elec meter and can’t talk to it then gas meter will appear unreliable/dead. They need to be pretty close to one another to work properly unfortunately.

The problem is not smart meters but Eon. I’m not sure if they are thoroughly (thoroughly) incompetent, or in fact just plain old criminals, but my advice would be to switch provider as soon as possible.

We submit a reading online for leccy every month and just pay for what we’ve used, nice and simple, am I missing something?

I don’t submit a reading online, ever, and just pay for what I have used.

Perfect.

The problem is not smart meters but Eon. I’m not sure if they are thoroughly (thoroughly) incompetent, or in fact just plain old criminals, but my advice would be to switch provider as soon as possible.

Interestingly E.On use the Octopus platform for their billing and smart metering. Now the platform is actually quite good, but it’s not without flaws and limitations.

Pre migration to Kraken the E.On platform was a lot more flexible and allowed agents much more scope to correct customer issues. I might be biased, but their smart metering system was also the most robust in the industry at the time.

Unless you are keen to take advantage of off peak stuff avoid. My gas smart meter never worked, as in it was dead, called bulb twice who weren’t interested so I just submitted the old same reading each month for a year until they came and fixed it. worked out well i guess.

Update:

Round 1 went okay, Straight through to E.ON on the phone without being on hold. They agreed usage was silly high, they couldn’t understand why engineer replaced gas meter and asked me me to send photos of the tag he left on the meter so they can contact him to get meter read from the old/new gas meter he removed. Importantly though, they agreed there was a problem that they need to sort out.

I’m still confused what the advantage of smart meters is

Only reason I went with smart is because I want to get an EV and need to access the cheap overnight power tariffs.

am I missing something?

Yes, the opportunity to get cheaper energy.  I’ve had two days this month already where I’ve been paid to use electricity and overall my bill is less than when I had a dumb meter.

Can you use an app like Loop to get your historical gas usage (I know they can with Electric, but not sure on Gas as we don’t have it).  This might show your historical usage

Don’t have one yet but Shell always used to badger me to get one which I didn’t because I don’t WFH.

My custom then got moved to Octopus who are telling me that my gas meter is beyond it’s serviceable life which I assumed is just made up to get me to install a smart meter, although doesn’t seem like an unfeasible claim.

We don’t have smart meters. We have different suppliers for gas and electricity. The gas suppliers have phoned us regularly for the last two years to get our meter changed as it is nearing the end of its life, and that we are obliged to have a smart replacement. Each time I tell them we don’t have a smart electricity meter and anyway it is with a different power company. the response so far has been ‘oh well the current meter will be ok for a while’. I guess at some stage we will get them changed but th woes outlined above are not encouraging.

We have smart meters for gas and electricity.  British Gas supply both.  The gas one has never worked with any smarts, it operates as a dumb meter.  The electiricty one just below it does work in smart secure mode much of the time (I assume, as we can retrieve daily data), but sometimes it can’t connect, so there are gaps in the information we can get via the web and we still have to submit meter readings.  I am guessing the signal is not great in the narrow gap between two brick houses.  I am currently trying to establish whether we can get super cheap smart electricity (by changing supplier to Octopus probably) to charge the Renault Zoe we are getting next week.

My custom then got moved to Octopus who are telling me that my gas meter is beyond it’s serviceable life which I assumed is just made up to get me to install a smart meter, although doesn’t seem like an unfeasible claim.

This is actually a thing.

Every meter has a finite life (age from when it was made) and as soon as it hits that it legally has to be changed by whoever is your current energy supplier.

12 months ago I was told that my leccy meter was e.o.l. – it was changed for a smart meter within a couple of days. As I had done a U turn and now wanted a smart meter I was quite happy about this as I went to the top of the list in my area.

Same as greyspoke – wife passed away recently so had the opportunity to “upgrade” as we could turn off the leccy to her machines. Electricity smart took a while but now is connected to the display and usage shows in the app … the gas – hah ! It’s a foot from the leccy one too – not even going to bother trying to get in touch with British Gas

wish I’d ignored all the emails and just carried on submitting my readings once a month.

Ah good to know we are not the only peeps with dumb smart gas meters.  And condolences on your bereavement @therevokid.

Octopus contacted me about a smart meter last week due to my current meter being past it use by date. Went to book a slot and there are none available so will have to wait and see what all the fuss is about

If  the battery does go in the gas meter , I assume the meter can still read the gas use?

But just not display it?

We’ve been hassled for a fair few years to get a new meter (only electricity as rural), I’ve just been ignoring them, mainly because the meter is internal and I didn’t want the hassle of any decoration/repair and/or external meter ‘blight’.

Only reason I went with smart is because I want to get an EV and need to access the cheap overnight power tariffs.

Hadn’t thought of that, but luckily when we built Mum’s place next door we had to have a new supply & meter – that’ll be where we take the EV feed from 🙂

Update: Credit where credit is due (literally) E.ON have been ace. One phone call to them, they agreed to investigate. They asked for a photo of the tag left by the engineer which I submitted, then they asked for a further photo, this time of the sticker on the meter where the engineer wrote the readings from the outgoing meter. There were illegible as totally smudged. So, without any further prompting from me, they have credited the full amount back into my account today. So quickly resolved, free gas for me for the previous 6 weeks and one happy customer.

Top work E.ON.

Update on my post above.  Having emailed Octopus about our intermittently smart electricity meter we got a somewhat equivocal reply.  The tl;dr version is you have to join Octopus before we can say for sure, but we need 48 readings every 24 hours to put you on a smart ev tariff.  Our email to them said that would be true most of the time but not all the time.  We are none the wiser really.