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Smart Meter Installation Nightmare

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This mantra is a saying I tend to stick by, so that's how I ended up still using a traditional electricity meter in 2026. Installed in 2008, and nearly nine years beyond its certification date, it had seen many thousands of units pass through its wires.

It was a prepayment key meter too - what can I say, except that I just ain't worthy. Forget having to submit meter readings; instead, it became a fortnightly thing to take the key, a gaunt stick with no resemblance to the type you unlock doors with, to the Spar shop down the road. They didn't like topping up my key because it took ages, literal minutes. I didn't like topping up because I'm lazy and I don't like the extra busy work. The meter was fine, but the process was broke. I wanted an upgrade.

Getting Into The Account

The thing about having an old key meter is that while you do have an account with an electricity supplier, you never really have to think about it. You don't have to tell them anything: the key does all the work, sneakernet style. So when it came to requesting the upgrade, I had no way to log into said account.

I was confused. People were telling me to enter the e-mail address "I" entered when I first joined the supplier. Um, this account is ancient, transferred to a private supplier by the old electricity board, and they certainly never asked for an e-mail address. We're talking about many years here.

It was easily resolved by sending the necessary personal information to their helpdesk, but it wasn't clear on the registration page that I had to do this. It sounded like any e-mail address could be entered, followed by verification questions later.

Once in, I was able to book a slot for three weeks' time. A pretty short wait, particularly as I'd heard stories of everywhere being fully booked for months at a time. I received several e-mail reminders, text messages, and even a phone call from a London area code. "Don't forget!"

The Installation

The installation day came, and the engineer arrived perfectly on time. I was impressed. He significantly improved the wiring around the meter board, replaced several surrounding components, and (of course) replaced the meter. He scanned the barcodes of all the equipment, handed me the in-home device, then left for his next appointment. He did great, and was the best part of this whole thing.

I switched on my PC and saw that the supplier had already sent me e-mails about being successfully provisioned onto the smart prepay tariff. I hadn't noticed that there was also a text message on my phone too, saying the same thing. The times approximately corresponded to when those barcodes were scanned. Inside one of those e-mails was a string of numbers that I could use to top-up the meter. No need, I thought, I'll just use their mobile app. No more going to the shop for me.

"Something Went Wrong. We couldn't load your meter details. Please try again." "There was a problem communicating with our systems, so some functions may be unavailable. Please try again later." "Sorry, we couldn't set your auto topups for electricity. Response not successful. Received status code 400.".

Nothing was working.

One of the e-mails said that I had four days until the zero balance turned into a power cut, so I should top-up as soon as possible. "Perhaps I'm just too eager," I thought, and decided to wait a day. No change though. The in-home device wasn't working either, just going around in loops saying it was "not commissioned".

Asking For Help

I phoned the helpdesk. Whilst on hold I was told by the automated voice that I didn't have a smart meter yet, and that I could press 1 to book an appointment right away. Old data, I figured.

I explained to the agent that I was worried about the inability to top-up, and the broken app, to be told that I just had to wait longer for the system to catch up. Then she asked if I wanted to top-up over the phone - of course I said yes. I added a nominal sum just in case it went balls-up, and about a third of it was swallowed up to pay for the previous day, but it did work.

I received the UTRN in my e-mail inbox, but I didn't have to enter it manually. This proved two things to me: that registration with the National Database of meters was complete, and that the DCC, the company who deal with communication between the meters and energy suppliers, was working. And so it should, the telephone mast is pretty close after all.

I waited a couple more days. Still no working app or web top-up access, and I was now using the meter's emergency credit. The automated telephone line for top-ups gleefully took my next chunk of money and added it to some sort of supplier's balance, rather than the meter. I guess I needed an agent to direct it to the right place.

I received an e-mail and text alert stating that the meter balance was now below £1. "It's quick and easy to top-up in MyAccount," it said. But I couldn't; I still had those error messages. I replied to the e-mail saying that I could not top-up due to their systems constantly erroring out, and they replied the next day suggesting that I just had to wait, and that top-ups were enabled for the account. This changed nothing, as I still couldn't top-up.

The Debt Zone

The balance went negative, but the power was still on. So... it turns out that newly installed meters are in so-called friendly credit mode for the entire grace period, which is four working days rather than four calendar days. Therefore I had a little bit longer left before the "self-disconnection" happened, but I was still in a panic.

I decided to take that string of numbers from the provisioning e-mail to the shop, and I asked them if they were able to do anything with them. There was confusion at first since they were expecting a barcode, however I'm thankful that they didn't just wave me away. They typed the number into the PayPoint terminal manually somehow, and I got a receipt with a success message. When I got back home, the credit was already applied, just like with the phone agent.

I had literally bought some time.

Double Trouble

With my clearer head, I decided to probe their website to figure out what-TF was going on. I captured the web traffic between my attempt to top-up, and the error message. It wasn't very fruitful, but I did see that I was being forbidden (HTTP 403) access to the payment API on their backend. Weird.

I clicked on the meters page and saw the old meter, and the new one next to it. Kept for historical reference, I guessed. The energy usage graph showed usage figures that were well above what the meter in the house reported. "Your energy use and trends come directly from your smart meter, so the data is very accurate," it said. Rubbish. Then I noticed that the standing charge was doubled.

It clicked in my head. The old meter was not there for reference. It was adding estimated readings for the old meter to the actual readings from the smart meter. They had not removed the old meter from the account during the exchange, and so the top-up functions were failing because it could not top-up a physical key meter online.

I immediately e-mailed them about the old meter being active and the strange readings, with evidence in the form of screenshots and photos. The next day they replied saying that the old meter was now deleted, and to report any more strange readings.

Guess what? The app worked at last. I suppose I have to give them credit for doing what I said this time, instead of telling me to wait for a power cut.

Relief

Standing under the proverbial sword of Damocles is not fun, knowing that your power will shut off soon, while everyone is telling you to wait. Yes, the DCC can fail to transmit messages from time to time. However, the supplier should have noticed that the provisioning was completed shortly after the meter exchange was finished, and moved on to troubleshooting their own systems.

If I had waited like I was told to, I would have been disconnected.

People with credit meters wouldn't have had to worry about disconnection, although there would've been some stress later on when the doubled readings were found. Nevertheless, I feel let down here. Prepayment shouldn't be an afterthought, especially for something that I'd expect to be a routine event.

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