Not so Smart Meter display

mattylad said:
Think again buddy! .... They can and they will unless you contact them and tell them something went wrong.
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It doesn't sound as if such a risk exists. The OP has said that the meter readings appear to be correct, and it's those figures that will be the basis of billing. As has been said, it seems as if all that is wrong is the 'remote display', which merely exists as an alleged 'convenience/value' fir the consumer - but it has no influence on billing.

Having said all that, it makes sense to at least talk to the supplier about it - not the least so that the faulty 'free remote display' can be rectified.

Kind Regards, John
 
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I've heard of various problems with meter readings and the resulting fights with suppliers of over rediculous bills, such as:
confusing day and night rates on E7 [one I have personally had involvement with on more than one occasion], confusing gas and electric readings and simply swapping 2 digits in the reading. All of the them give rise to incorrect bills and always difficulties with getting it corrected.
I've found the most difficult to sort has always been faulty meters and the sooner an actual fault is recorded with the supplier the better.

I know these so called energy monitors are inherantly inaccurate, my daughter has one and they only use is as a clock as it usually displays a daily useage of ~25KWh at this time of year but the meter and monthly bill is more like 150KWh, but a friends has the opposite problem.
 
If the display was inaccurate, who is to say the reporting back is also accurate.
Contact the supplier and discuss it with them to ensure that there will be no overcharging AND to report that the display went wonky.
Simples.

Edited to change from inaccurate to accurate for the reporting back.
 
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mattylad said:
If the display was inaccurate, who is to say the reporting back is also inaccurate.
Contact the supplier and discuss it with them to ensure that there will be no overcharging AND to report that the display went wonky.
Simples.
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Yes agreed. Report it early before anything starts getting out of hand.
 
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Or wait until a ludicrous bill arrives and start arguing with them then. If they ignore everything you tell them, think how much the judge will really love that if they try court action. And early on, if they wont engage with you, send a signed for letter telling them that you will be billing them for your time and expenses if they make you have to keep on getting them to listen.
 
mattylad said:
If the display was inaccurate, who is to say the reporting back is also inaccurate.
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Whilst anything is possible, it would seem extremely unlikely that the meter would 'report back anything other than what IT (the meter) was displaying (which the OP says appears to be correct), even if the 'remote' display' provided to the customer said something different. If there ever were a dispute, they would simply have to go the the OP's house, read the meter and compare the reading with whatever it was 'reporting back'.

In any event, I have agreed that it makes sense for him to speak to the supplier. Let's face it, the entire alleged (albeit extremely questionable) 'value' (to the consumer) of having a 'smart' meter relates to the 'remote display', so if that is behaving crazily, it needs to be rectified to justify the 'smart' meter's existence.

One would, of course, expect/hope that the automated system receiving information from 'smart' meter would monitor what was going on in real time, such that the OP would probably have been contacted by the supplier (rather than the converse) had the figures they were receiving indicted that (albeit impossibly), the OP was totting up usage charges of over £18,000 per day (around £6.8 million per year) for a domestic residence :)

Kind Regards, John
 
Captain Nemesis said:
Or wait until a ludicrous bill arrives and start arguing with them then. If they ignore everything you tell them, think how much the judge will really love that if they try court action.
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Indeed - and, of course, if it clearly was a ludicrous bill, then it would never get to court, since some human being in the path involved in instigation of legal action would inevitably see the lunacy of it.

If one receives bill for, say, double or treble what one believes it should be, then one has to worry a lot more and proceed much more carefully. However, if it is for literally thousands of times more than could conceivably be correct, then one can safely just laugh.

Kind Regards, John
 
JohnW2 said:
Indeed - and, of course, if it clearly was a ludicrous bill, then it would never get to court, since some human being in the path involved in instigation of legal action would inevitably see the lunacy of it.

If one receives bill for, say, double or treble what one believes it should be, then one has to worry a lot more and proceed much more carefully. However, if it is for literally thousands of times more than could conceivably be correct, then one can safely just laugh.

Kind Regards, John
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Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that ....I know about a running dispute with British Gas that has been going on for over 12 years ....every time they go to court ,it’s withdraw by British Gas an hour before ....they know its wrong ...then it goes back into system again and takes about 3 years for it to raise its head again .....because they pull it at the last minute you never get to put your case to the judge ...
 
One of my rental properties had the wrong serial number on file for the Electric meter for years and that used to generate paperwork every few years which got as far as threat of legal action and wild estimated bills.
In the end I did some electrical work and asked for the fuse to be pulled, they said to pull it myself and advise when finished, eventually they attended and finding the meter was very old, C30years, they changed it and the problem went away.
 
sparkymarka said:
Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that ....I know about a running dispute with British Gas that has been going on for over 12 years ....every time they go to court ,it’s withdraw by British Gas an hour before ....they know its wrong ...then it goes back into system again and takes about 3 years for it to raise its head again .....because they pull it at the last minute you never get to put your case to the judge ...
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Is all that costing the customer money?
 
Yes ....can’t move suppliers as they put a block on it ....wasted days going to court ...
 
Send them a bill.

Followed by a Letter Before Court Claim.

Followed by court action.
 
sparkymarka said:
Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that ....I know about a running dispute with British Gas that has been going on for over 12 years ....every time they go to court ,it’s withdraw by British Gas an hour before ....they know its wrong ...then it goes back into system again and takes about 3 years for it to raise its head again .....because they pull it at the last minute you never get to put your case to the judge ...
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Protracted disputes such as you describe do happen, and I've been involved in some myself over the years/decades, but it can really only happen if there is at least some 'conceivable credibility' in the claim being made against one.

In the situation we are discussing, there would be no 'conceivable credibility'. It would be the equivalent (pro-rata) of attempting to prosecute someone for driving at 350,000 mph on motorway or for driving with 5,000 times the legal limit of alcohol in their body. In all these cases, the claim would not only be ridiculous but would also be literally impossible. Few, if any, sane human beings would seriously consider pursuing a claim for "many £millions per year" for the electricity usage of a dwelling - so if the lawyers involved in pursuing such a claim did not point that out to their client, then I would suggest that the supplier would probably be advised to find some better lawyers.

As I said before, it is the much more modest excessive demands for payment for electricity/gas/whatever (say, up to 5 -10 times what one believes the charges should be) that are much more worrying - since they do have some 'conceivable credibility'.

It has also not been mentioned that if satisfactory resolution cannot be achieved within 8 weeks of the customer complaining, they can refer the matter to the Energy Ombudsman, who not only will (presumably) immediately see the idiocy of the claim but also has the power to "make a financial reward" against the supplier.

Kind Regards, John
 
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A few years ago BG sent out 1000's of incorrect bills (10x normal) which generated 1000's of complaints, you would expect a someone with half a brain to have realised "this is not 1000's of people trying to con us, we (BG) have obviously created this problem, we should immediately tell all these people we've made a mistake and are working on a solution" - OH NO not BG, it broke in the media and BG chief moron warned anyone not paying they would be cut off.
THe moron was made to explain himself in parliament, he still wouldn't admit to a problem, but the parliamentary committee told him to sort the problem and not cut anybody off.

What what would have happened if all those customers had switch offable meters.
 
sparxxxx said:
A few years ago BG sent out 1000's of incorrect bills (10x normal) which generated 1000's of complaints, you would expect a someone with half a brain to have realised "this is not 1000's of people trying to con us, we (BG) have obviously created this problem, we should immediately tell all these people we've made a mistake and are working on a solution" - OH NO not BG, it broke in the media and BG chief moron warned anyone not paying they would be cut off. ... THe moron was made to explain himself in parliament, he still wouldn't admit to a problem, but the parliamentary committee told him to sort the problem and not cut anybody off. .... What what would have happened if all those customers had switch offable meters.
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All agreed - quite crazy. However, as I said, it wouldn't have been like that if, as in the OP's case, it was not about bills which were "around 10 times normal" but, rather, around "5,000 time normal". Had it been the latter that "broke in the media", I can but presume that the media's treatment of it would have brought the nonsense to a rapid end.

However, it can work both ways. When i was at uni back in the late 60s, in the earliest days of 'computerisation', the LA's computer 'accidently' added three zeros to the end of the amount (£) of my grant cheque. I rapidly paid it into a high-interest bank account and, by the time they persuaded me to give it back, I had made an awful lot (for me) of money in interest (and they didn't dare to try to recover the interest!)
 
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