Hi all
I'm not sure what to do to help my dad get smart meters fitted. He's nearly 85 and really struggling to get under the stairs to read his meters nowadays. Unfortunately I don't live locally to help him. We booked for smart meters to be installed for him a few years ago now. Installer visited and said he couldn't do it because the electric main fuse cut out was too old. That's fair, I suspect it's never been changed in the life of the house (mid 1930s). He said that he'd arrange for the DNO (in this case it's UK Power Networks) to come and replace this so the smart meters could be fitted. We waited a few months then chased this up both with eon and UKPN. Neither of them had any record of this happening. UKPN were quite helpful though and explained that the supplier just needed to fill in a specific form and they'd come and do the work. I fed this back to eon (several times as my emails tended to get no response for months). After about a year dad started getting some hassle again from eon about getting smart meters. He explained the situation to the person on the phone and they just sent out an installer again. To cut a long story short, this has happened 3 times now. Eventually he was told on the phone that eon wouldn't do it (I believe the only option would be for dad to pay for the fuse to be changed himself, which is fair enough, it's his house, but why didn't they just say that in the first place?). I even put in a complaint but never got any response to it (I thought they were obliged to respond?!)
I've just been looking at fixed tariffs for him which has prompted me to write this post - all of them say you have to get smart meters installed. He wants to!
Any comments, thoughts, advice, even if it's just to say we should have just paid the DNO ourselves. So I can work out the way forward. Many thanks
I'm not sure what to do to help my dad get smart meters fitted. He's nearly 85 and really struggling to get under the stairs to read his meters nowadays. Unfortunately I don't live locally to help him. We booked for smart meters to be installed for him a few years ago now. Installer visited and said he couldn't do it because the electric main fuse cut out was too old. That's fair, I suspect it's never been changed in the life of the house (mid 1930s). He said that he'd arrange for the DNO (in this case it's UK Power Networks) to come and replace this so the smart meters could be fitted. We waited a few months then chased this up both with eon and UKPN. Neither of them had any record of this happening. UKPN were quite helpful though and explained that the supplier just needed to fill in a specific form and they'd come and do the work. I fed this back to eon (several times as my emails tended to get no response for months). After about a year dad started getting some hassle again from eon about getting smart meters. He explained the situation to the person on the phone and they just sent out an installer again. To cut a long story short, this has happened 3 times now. Eventually he was told on the phone that eon wouldn't do it (I believe the only option would be for dad to pay for the fuse to be changed himself, which is fair enough, it's his house, but why didn't they just say that in the first place?). I even put in a complaint but never got any response to it (I thought they were obliged to respond?!)
I've just been looking at fixed tariffs for him which has prompted me to write this post - all of them say you have to get smart meters installed. He wants to!
Any comments, thoughts, advice, even if it's just to say we should have just paid the DNO ourselves. So I can work out the way forward. Many thanks
