Re your article (British Gas boss says all UK households should be forced to fit smart meters, 8 May), after being harassed by email, text, phone, letters and finally walking through, and being told we need to get smart meters for safety reasons, we gave in and spent a fun day at home with the fitter. The smart meters don’t work; they never worked. Apparently they don’t work in our type of house.
The European Space Agency might wake up the satellite Rosetta 673m kilometers away, but our power supplier cannot wake up our smart meters. Sorry, I have to rush, they want another meter reading. You see, they experience a high level of calls so that no one can answer the phone.
Jim Fleming
Edinburgh
Smart meters are only useful to customers if the visual display unit placed in each home actually works to enable householders to monitor fuel consumption. If this does not happen, energy companies may refuse to repair the display unit if it was installed by an earlier energy supplier, or if it was put in more than a year ago. Appeals to the energy ombudsman are fruitless. With more than 4m smart meters to be known malfunctionit is very much a one-way exercise in the street, mainly for the benefit of giant energy suppliers.
Andrew Warren
Cambridge
One problem is that installation crews and power companies don’t seem to communicate with each other, hence the sad litany of misunderstandings and repeated emails, all asking for the same information, and requests to take pictures of the meter and its details – something I imagine the installer should have done. I blame Margaret Thatcher, but then I blame her for most things.
David Redshaw
Saltdean, East Sussex
