[Queenie]

I have been in touch with various customer representatives since having my smart meters installed on Sept 22nd 2021. The latest was on Thurs Dec 30th.

I am really frustrated at the lack of competence deomonstrated by the personnel involved. Having read many negative reviews on Trust Pilot etc I am not surprised.

At installation of my gas and electric meters, the engineer said there was a problem and that the meters were not communicating with E.ON NEXT and it was a problem at their end. I was advised to contact customer service and report it so that the issue could be resolved. Also I was not issued with an IHD nor given any info on how to read the meters.

Absolutely nothing happened despite more contact with customer service. On Dec 23rd I got a mesage from E.ON Next asking for meter readings. I was away from home at the time but after several conversations I realised that the person I was dealing with did not seem to know much about the equipment I had. First, he/she said I had traditional meters! I replied that these were new meters installed as a condition of my tariff. Then he/she wanted pictures so I sent screenshots. Then I was told that my electric meter was a traditional one. I was given instructions to read a meter but not told which one.

At this point I decided to do some research myself. I discovered that both my meters are smart meters - Smets 2 - having identifiied both of them in a list of all the smart meters currently in use. I also discovered that I should have a Comms Hub which allows the meters to communicate over a network to the supplier. No such hub has been supplied so obviously no data is being fed back to E.on Next.

I relay this info back to customer service, whereupon I get a reply from a different rep to say she has emailed the relevant teams to find out why my meters are not connected and to supply me with an IHD.

Isn't it obvious why the meters aren't sending data? Why did this not get fixed back in September?

Is it any wonder this supplier has got such a bad reputation?

The website suggests sending complaints to them and to the CEO. If the reviews are anything to go by those complaints are just ignored, just as my initial requests in September were ignored.

I'm not holding my breath in anticipation of getting a resolution to my issues any time soon!

I decided to write this after having read another post about similar problems also from September.

All comments gratefully received

[theunknowntech]

Howdy!

You've discovered theunknowntech, mysterious evil genius and forum volunteer, at your service. How may I be of assistance? :)

I think I can figure this out, but if you could post some photos of the meter in question as well, that would really help a lot. Just so you know, I have no connections to E.On or E.On Next at all and I'm actually supplied by another supplier so I'm completely independent. That does mean I can't access your account, but that also means I'm able to be more flexible in how I reply. Once I've seen the photos of your meter, I can verify what you've got and confirm if it's supposed to be a Smart Meter if you'd like me to. Clearly you've done your research though, which is great! What resources did you use, if you don't mind me asking? Me and my friends use ones like SmartMe, but we're always looking out for more to add to our toolkits.

I can also provide the instructions on how to take a manual reading as well. I know the process for quite a few meters and I can often locate the details for almost anything, should that be needed.

Based on what you describe, it sounds to me as if the engineer didn't install the meter properly. SMETS2 installs are only supposed to go ahead if advance checks confirm - or at least indicate - that there's sufficient WAN coverage to get things working, and to abort upfront if it's clearly impossible. If you're in an area with WAN coverage but the signal is just a tad weak, booster aerials do exist which can help to fix that - as long as you're in the Southern Territory. If you're in Scotland or Cumbria for example, then booster aerials aren't an option I'm afraid. However, I'd be disappointed if they could have been used but weren't.

At the moment though and without further context, my guess is that you probably do have S2 Smart Meters, but they're running in "Offline Mode" as a Comms Hub is required in order to enable Smart functionality and provide an IHD. No Comms Hub unfortunately means no IHD will work either. The engineer should at least have tried to fit one and get it working to at least some extent!

I'm also going to tag this thread for a moderator to step in. I can only apply two tags at once due to my forum permissions, so I'll have to sacrifice the other tags I'd normally apply to a thread like this for now. If you'd like me to remove the tags at anytime, please let me or a moderator know.

[Beki]

Originally Posted by Queenie

I have been in touch with various customer representatives since having my smart meters installed on Sept 22nd 2021. The latest was on Thurs Dec 30th.

I am really frustrated at the lack of competence deomonstrated by the personnel involved. Having read many negative reviews on Trust Pilot etc I am not surprised.

At installation of my gas and electric meters, the engineer said there was a problem and that the meters were not communicating with E.ON NEXT and it was a problem at their end. I was advised to contact customer service and report it so that the issue could be resolved. Also I was not issued with an IHD nor given any info on how to read the meters.

Absolutely nothing happened despite more contact with customer service. On Dec 23rd I got a mesage from E.ON Next asking for meter readings. I was away from home at the time but after several conversations I realised that the person I was dealing with did not seem to know much about the equipment I had. First, he/she said I had traditional meters! I replied that these were new meters installed as a condition of my tariff. Then he/she wanted pictures so I sent screenshots. Then I was told that my electric meter was a traditional one. I was given instructions to read a meter but not told which one.

At this point I decided to do some research myself. I discovered that both my meters are smart meters - Smets 2 - having identifiied both of them in a list of all the smart meters currently in use. I also discovered that I should have a Comms Hub which allows the meters to communicate over a network to the supplier. No such hub has been supplied so obviously no data is being fed back to E.on Next.

I relay this info back to customer service, whereupon I get a reply from a different rep to say she has emailed the relevant teams to find out why my meters are not connected and to supply me with an IHD.

Isn't it obvious why the meters aren't sending data? Why did this not get fixed back in September?

Is it any wonder this supplier has got such a bad reputation?

The website suggests sending complaints to them and to the CEO. If the reviews are anything to go by those complaints are just ignored, just as my initial requests in September were ignored.

I'm not holding my breath in anticipation of getting a resolution to my issues any time soon!

I decided to write this after having read another post about similar problems also from September.

All comments gratefully received

@Queenie, I am truly sorry to hear about your experience with the engineers and also with customer service4. I would like to begin by taking the opportunity to apologise for any inconvenience that this issue may have caused, as well as the length of time this has been ongoing without a full explanation. This is by no means indicative of the standard of customer care that we endeavour to demonstrate, and I am sorry that this has been the case in this in this instance.

But the good news is that this is definitely fixable. Can you please pop me a DM and we can arrange for an engineer to come out to you asap and sort this out?

@theunknowntech 👀 I'll sort the forum permissions out for you 😎

[Queenie]

@Beki Hi Beki,
What is a DM? If it means Direct Message do I contact you in the forum or what. Too many acronyms in forums these days!

[Queenie]

@theunknowntech Hi there,
Thanks for joining in. I don't think I need to send you any photos as I know which meters I have got as I have seen them on the smartme website as you mentioned which is great for info. It's where I discovered that I was missing the all-important comms hub.
Just for the record these are the meters' details.
Gas - Landis Gyr G470-672 GSME Ultrasonic Smets2
Electricity - EDMI-10B ESME Smets2

I live in London in a first floor flat where the meters are situated behind a door on the landing close to my front door. I share the area with my neighbour's meters. I have examined her meters and both hers are Landis Gyr models and she has a comms hub which is a Trilliant and connected to a WAN and HAN network. So, as far as I can see, not being an engineer, there seems to be no reason for a comms hub not to be fitted. I've seen them fitted on top of electricity meters like mine in my research.
The engineer who fitted my meters did say that there was a problem at the supply end but didn't elaborate.

As regards readings - I've sent a reading to E.ON Next from both my gas and electric meters. The latter is easy to read as the KW/h reading comes up all the time. Maybe you can confirm that for me please. The gas one was a bit trickier as the customer rep didn't make things very clear which meter he/she was talking about. However the meter tells you which buttons to press so I got a gas volume reading in cubic metres which is what is required apparently. I know how to convert this in to KW/h to check my bills are correct.

So I am now waiting again for E.ON Next to provide me with a comms hub and IHD. What a farce!

[Beki]

@Queenie I do apologise - yes please send me a direct/private message and we can book in the rest of your installation. 😊

[Queenie]

@Beki What do you want me to tell you? My account number? Anything else?

[Beki]

@Queenie, your account number, full name first line of address and postcode would be marvellous. 😊

[theunknowntech]

Ah yes... That dreaded Trilliant Comms Hub... I hate those things. And that tells me it's probably also on the Centrica WAN as well, which only British Gas has access to, as well as it being SMETS1. Trilliant aren't involved with S2 Comms Hubs and since London is Southern Territory, an S2 would have a WNC or Toshiba branded SKU1 Cellular, SKU2 Cellular + Mesh or possibly an SKU3 SIMCH (Special Installation Mesh Communications Hub). The latter is a last resort option that's only used if things get desperate though. You shouldn't have had any trouble getting a signal if you're in the middle of London!

My friend Blastoise186 has done a really detailed writeup about those SMETS1 L+G E470 & Trilliant combos elsewhere, you can easily find it if you Google L+G E470. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of Landis+Gyr myself, due to their annoyingly confusing way of doing things (and nor is Blastoise either). But yes, this can be fixed retroactively. It might take a while to commission the meters and there's almost certainly going to be a ton of firmware updates to crunch through, so it might take up to six weeks to complete commissioning. It's an automated process so you won't have to do anything once the engineer has fitted the missing Comms Hub and pairs everything up.

Your supplies might have to be temporarily disconnected for a few minutes for safety reasons, but I suspect you'd be OK with that. The engineer will alert you if that's the case.

[Queenie]

@theunknowntech Hi,
Thanks for the info. I knew that I would probably be getting a Toshiba hub.That's if E.On Next gets its finger out and actually does something! I hope it can talk to the local WAN. It all sounds very complicated. I won't be too happy to have my supply cut off even for a short time as I've heard several bad reports about boilers not working after changing meters etc.
6 weeks is a long time to wait since it's already been 3 months!