[ColinG]

Neither. Am considering switching to E.ON Next but need confirmation they will reinstate the smart meter.

[ColinG]

@Han_EONNext Now heard from E.ON Next and the position is exactly as suggested by @meldrewreborn -Basically so long as the meter is capable of being read manually, E.on Next will not bother to address the matter. Many have tried, but successes are conspicuous by their absence.

In fact they are saying no hope until 2025.

[retrotecchie]

@ColinG

In which case, you are no worse off than the 50% of the population who don't have, or refuse to have, a smart meter.

I've yet to see any advantages to having one, and more than enough reasons not to. They just seem to me to be more trouble than they are worth, don't save anyone anything that they cannot save with a conventional meter.

The requirement by OFGEM to have all SMETS1 meters migrated to DCC by end of 2021 slipped a year, and the requirement for suppliers to replace non communicating meters with SMETS2 by the end of this year will no doubt be kicked into the long grass.

The sooner someone with some clout realises that the whole smart meter rollout has been a complete and utter disaster, and exceedingly expensive for the consumer (each of us bill payers has shelled out hundreds to finance this white elephant already) and we just need to ditch the whole mess, the better.

Blame the EU...entirely their fault. The UK had a much better technical system ready to roll (which even won the Queens Award For Industry), but no...we had to do what the Germans and French told us. Ah, of course...almost our entire energy infrastructure is German and French owned...🤐

[ColinG]

@retrotecchie but there are disadvantages. Some suppliers like Octopus offer some interesting tariffs geared towards solar and ashp but they are only available if one has a smart meter. That may not be the case with EoN but the scenario exists.

[retrotecchie]

@ColinG

In which case it might be worth a chat to our 'tentacled friends' to see if they would be willing to set you up with a shiny new smart meter as part of such a package? I doubt you would have any success with E.On Next as their backlog for sorting out non-working meters is mahoosive. Although, if you don't have a smart meter at all and ask to have one installed, they'll like as not fit you in next week. Quotas are all that matters, and replacing failed or non-communicating older ones don't count towards their quota.

[ColinG]

No chance with the tentacles, they are not doing site visits or any work on meters yet for ex Bulb customers. They do not have enough engineers and others "stuff"not been sorted out either. There is no timeframe either.......you could not make it up could you!

Sounds a like taking on 1m plus customers is too much for them

[meldrewreborn]

@ColinG

But Bulb would have had engineers as well, they haven't evaporated! The unspoken truth is that the engineers are very much prioritised on fitting new smart meters (there's brownie points in it for them ) while fixing a dumb supposedly smart meter (plus IHD) gets them diddly squat in terms of brownie points. Its up to the Gubbermint and OFGEM to rectify this but they don't have any desire to do so.

Fines for suppliers with dumb smart meters (say non functioning for 2+ months) is the way to go. Perhaps £5 per month to the customer.

[ColinG]

Agreed. Interestingly Octopus say the 2023 target to achieve smets 2 installations is a best efforts target and no more. EoN seem to be saying similar. What's annoying is we are having solar installed and we want to sell surplus back to grid. For that I need to be able to get the export data from the meter but I can find no way of doing it with our current dumb smart meter. The instructions just say it's configurable. And there is no one to ask!

[retrotecchie]

@ColinG

Yes, they should call it an over-optimistic hope rather than a target. And OFGEM have no teeth whatsoever.

They haven't even bothered following up on the Provisional Order they slapped E.On Next with over their dire customer support.