Energy Suppliers, Suppliers of Energy. Gas / Electric

Sadly no. The flow meter still needs to be fitted to the inlet (which is the box in on the side of your house). The smart bit is the fact that it’s connected and you shouldn’t need to give meter readings, rather than they know how much you’re using automatically. They still need some way of measuring the flow into your house (hence the boxes outside)

Ta. So no benefit to me whatsoever then. Bollocks.

looks like you have to have a smart meter to join the tracker

and im sure legally they 'own' them

Why don't you want smart meters?

I'm on their tracker now with a dumb gas meter and a smart electricity meter (we couldn't have a smart gas meter due to plastic gas pipes our side of the meter, but we're going to demolish that bit of the house so that will change).

I can't believe a.) how much credit we got back (because I originally asked a while back but it took me a while to OK it) and b.) how much cheaper our energy is now.

Yeah just looked at their FAQs - Feb 23 update
I'll email them and see what they say

Why don't you want smart meters?

Usually because people have been under reading them for years on purpose, so would now be faced with honest readings and a massive bill to catch them up to reality, or that they're afraid of 'The Man' selling their data and using the 5Gs on them whilst they sleep.

Why don't you want smart meters?

As with most probably benign things in life, it's not that I don't want them to exist, more that (to my mind, and in my experience of stuff like this, which is significant) the reward of having one is small and is outweighed by the effort of getting one installed and consistently working.

(That's if we ignore the vast expense of the design and roll out of the things, their flaky history, and unpleasantness, like remote-force-to-prepayment features)

I do notice they are starting to push the angle of SMs being able to help us move away from gas imports and help us plan for renewables line on the current TV ads, which I guess is, at best, defensible.

The rewards for smart meters are definitely noticeable. I’m on a tariff with octopus that mean I get cheaper (edit - overnight) electric than I can almost ever remember getting. They’re ‘tracker’, ‘agile’, ‘intelligent’ (EV charging), and other smart tariffs really do make a smart meter worth getting, depending on individual circumstances of course. Also installation was very simple an unobtrusive with octopus (electric was off for 15 mins tops), and it has worked without any issues for the entire 6 months we’ve had it. Nothing to be concerned about from my perspective.

I was finally switched to Octopus from Bulb a couple of weeks ago. Emailed them regarding the fact that my smart meters had been offline for over a year and got a reply within the hour.

Sadly, the very predictable response was that they would 'request a reboot', which is what Bulb had already attempted several times with no success. Emailed back asking what else could be done and haven't heard a thing since.

We are still waiting to be migrated to octopus from bulb

Then we need to get a smart meter

Octopus have also not yet worked out how to port feed in tariff from bulb to their service.

Thinking about going back to Octopus after a pretty sour experience with BG. Slightly concerning reading the above as my gas smart meter went offline when I switched before and part of the motivation is hoping they can get it working again.

Anyway, anyone got a referral code? 😉

Here's mine
https://share.octopus.energy/ore-ibex-183
First time I've tried it.

I do 👋

Recently returned to Octopus having been automatically signed up to Shell (spits) after our previous supplier, Goto.energy got wrapped up

https://share.octopus.energy/dusky-ibis-822

Thanks both!

Since my previous post Octopus have been in touch again and have acknowledged that if one last attempt at a reebot doesn't work, they'll arrange a site visit.

Switched to Octopus (who have been loads cheaper, on the variable tariff than govt backed OVO price) on the 2nd of Feb.

Assured that Secure SMETS v1 would work, apparently it didn’t. Although I’m unconvinced anyone tried. They came out changed both meters to SMET2 (smoked my UniFi switch in the process) and now the electric meter does not report back, despite the gas working perfectly.

It’ll work within the week, fortnight etc….

Strange thing is the Gas meter uses the electric meter to send back the consumption data.

Anyway this has been ongoing since March with no resolution, their customer service or incredibly slow replies, which are so vague or noncommittal are laughable.

I have raised this with a smart metering expert in order to help diagnose the issue. I will let you know what the next steps will be once I know a bit more.

Four weeks and waiting…

Mine are SMETS2, worked for about six months after they were installed.

Huh, maybe they won't be the ones to sort it out then. I believe the reason for my gas meter not working is administrative as happened when I switched to BG but I've given up trying to get them to fix it.

I’ll be sacking off Ovo as soon as I get my refund out of them from our old house. It’s only taken them 5 months to issue a final bill and cough up the excess from the account and has been a catalogue of errors, which has included them continuing to take a direct debit each month despite setting up a new account for the new house.

Is Octopus still the forum recommended supplier?

yeeeaah

https://share.octopus.energy/happy-foal-359

https://share.octopus.energy/noble-lion-647

Dang too late. Do you just live on this thread with your code on your clipboard, @dbr ? :)

Yes.

I've done about £600 off this thread so yeah, you can have that one ;)