Local Electrical Meter Reader meets Monty Python - She is a witch...

A couple of entertaining stories, we have a farm with electricity connected, it is 120KM from my place of work ( although only abut 60Km from home) I have had a three year standoff with the power company over their desire to fit a digital meter to save them having to send a meter reader. We have an "electricity" padlock on the chain for the front gate for which the meter reader and power line maintenance people have the key enabling them access to the property. For the last three years the conversation has gone as follows with the electricity company:
"We are coming to your property to fit a new meter"
Sure, when are you going to do that?
"tomorrow, please ensure that there is clear access to the meter"
"I will be 2 hours away but you have an E key so all should be good"
"No our contractors don't have an E key, we aren't allowed to give them one. You will need to leave the property unlocked or attend to let us in"
" I'm sorry that's logistically not possible, can you reschedule"
No

And hence I don't have a digital meter at the farm........

I have also had a notice that the meter reader could not read the meter due to access being too dangerous. More investigation on this front confirmed that the huntsman spider guarding the meter box was overzealous in its duties and I needed to relocate it to somewhere more fitting for a spider to live in.

Regards,
Tote

Is the meter being read by someone who works for the power provider or someone who works for a contractor that has bid for the work to read meters? A contractor is paid to visit the location not to actually read the meter so the outcomes in regard to the actual reading of meters can can be very different

In one of those quirks of law here there was no requirement for the utility company to actually read the meter. Suppose no one thought they would not do it. So you could go years between meter readings with guesstimate bills the norm. They would read it when the property was sold which often resulted in very large bills due to incorrect guesstimates over years

They did change the law a couple of years ago so that if the meter had not been read they could only back charge for 12 months. Might be a co incidence but we now seem to have yearly readings of the meters with guesstimate readings in between

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 3toes

Is the meter being read by someone who works for the power provider or someone who works for a contractor that has bid for the work to read meters? A contractor is paid to visit the location not to actually read the meter so the outcomes in regard to the actual reading of meters can can be very different

In one of those quirks of law here there was no requirement for the utility company to actually read the meter. Suppose no one thought they would not do it. So you could go years between meter readings with guesstimate bills the norm. They would read it when the property was sold which often resulted in very large bills due to incorrect guesstimates over years

They did change the law a couple of years ago so that if the meter had not been read they could only back charge for 12 months. Might be a co incidence but we now seem to have yearly readings of the meters with guesstimate readings in between

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Two different bunches of contractors I suspect, the meter readers are allowed access to the magic key but the meter installers aren't. We use less than 10 KW/H per year so most of the electricity bill is supply charges anyway.

Regards,
Tote