Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read by
the energy company?
I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if you
are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a talking
remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio programme a
few weeks back.
Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from reports
and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings and it cannot
even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after 2020 before its in
any way reliable and out there.
Also Reports suggest that hard on the heals of the take over of Yahoo, they
will be abandoning pop3 from the end of the month. They quote too many
people using old email clients but those who believe it suspect its more
based on data collection and advertising opportunities on webmail.
Are Amazon and google gearing up tho ruin their home assistants with
advertising?
It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the public
think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly targeted
adverts already.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!

Brian Gaff wrote:

Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read by
the energy company?

I've set mine to be read once a month (I have the option of daily or
half-hourly) so once you see which day they read it on, it's always that
date (maybe they avoid reading on the 29th-31st of the month for the
obvious reasons, or maybe you get the earliest day after)

Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from reports
and people have been getting daft bills

I don't think anyone has had an enormous bill, just an overstated
estimated price for daily usage on the in-home display, blame the media
for inaccurate reporting.

In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:

Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is
read by the energy company?

I've set mine to be read once a month (I have the option of daily or
half-hourly) so once you see which day they read it on, it's always that
date (maybe they avoid reading on the 29th-31st of the month for the
obvious reasons, or maybe you get the earliest day after)

Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports and people have been getting daft bills

I don't think anyone has had an enormous bill, just an overstated
estimated price for daily usage on the in-home display, blame the media
for inaccurate reporting.

Think is that if you pay monthly with equal payments, the company uses
their own way of calculating what that will be.

Different if you pay a quarterly bill in arrears.

--
*If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman wrote:

Think is that if you pay monthly with equal payments, the company uses
their own way of calculating what that will be.

Since having smart meters (and hence no estimated billing) eon have been
pretty close with their DD payments, they aim for a zero balance by
April, sending you any credit back at that time, they have a 6 monthly
review, and let you override what the monthly amount is, presumably they
have some sort of sanity check so you can't put it down to £1/month then
settle-up in April.

On Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:01:57 +0000, Andy Burns
wrote:

Dave Plowman wrote:

Think is that if you pay monthly with equal payments, the company uses
their own way of calculating what that will be.

Since having smart meters (and hence no estimated billing) eon have been
pretty close with their DD payments, they aim for a zero balance by
April, sending you any credit back at that time, they have a 6 monthly
review, and let you override what the monthly amount is, presumably they
have some sort of sanity check so you can't put it down to £1/month then
settle-up in April.

Settling an over-estimated bill can save you money if the price is
going to go up.

Providing an inflated reading yourself is fraud I expect.
--

Graham.
%Profound_observation%

I know there have been recommendations for text-to-speech functionality
on in-home displays. I have not seen anything from OFGEM or others to
require it.

A quick look shows there was a report in December that the RNIB had been
working with Energy UK on such meters and "development is in progress
and RNIB-approved smart meters should be in the home across the country
in the not-too-distant future".

So I think it may be that you heard false news on the radio

On 21/03/2017 12:42, Brian Gaff wrote:
Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read by
the energy company?
I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if you
are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a talking
remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio programme a
few weeks back.
Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from reports
and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings and it cannot
even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after 2020 before its in
any way reliable and out there.
Also Reports suggest that hard on the heals of the take over of Yahoo, they
will be abandoning pop3 from the end of the month. They quote too many
people using old email clients but those who believe it suspect its more
based on data collection and advertising opportunities on webmail.
Are Amazon and google gearing up tho ruin their home assistants with
advertising?
It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the public
think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly targeted
adverts already.
Brian



--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:42:51 +0000, Graham.
wrote:



Settling an over-estimated bill can save you money if the price is
going to go up.

Providing an inflated reading yourself is fraud I expect.
I used do to that 40 odd years ago when in a shared house I was the
bill payer, we had a "house couple" who used more gas and electric
than the rest of us, leaving the storage heaters in their room on
boost all day for example. Fortunately they always paid their share of
the falsely exaggerated bill so when we all went our separate ways I
got a hefty refund which I divvied up amongst the other occupants and
myself. About £40 each ISTR which in the early 70's was a reasonable
sum.

G.Harman

Brian Gaff explained :
Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read by
the energy company?

No, they are read remotely, the user sets it for a monthly or daily
read, with an option of data being recorded every 30 minutes. Daily and
30 minutes data is reported back at around midnight, then appears on
the suppliers website.

I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if you
are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a talking
remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio programme a
few weeks back.

Entitled maybe in the future. It is maybe an 'in development' scheme.

Just a thought, you obviously manage Usenet successfully and to browse
I suppose. Could you not log into your suppliers web site and read the
data there, maybe using a text to speech app?

Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from reports
and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings and it cannot
even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after 2020 before its in
any way reliable and out there.

No meter old or SM will give precisely the same consumption figures,
but averaged out they do pretty well.


It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the public
think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly targeted
adverts already.
Brian

Do as I do, block them/ use an alternative search engine which ensures
privacy.

Andy Burns brought next idea :
Since having smart meters (and hence no estimated billing) eon have been
pretty close with their DD payments, they aim for a zero balance by April,
sending you any credit back at that time, they have a 6 monthly review, and
let you override what the monthly amount is, presumably they have some sort
of sanity check so you can't put it down to £1/month then settle-up in April.

OVO's system was that they set a calculated on consumption figure. You
could then pay more via the slider, but not less.

In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:

Think is that if you pay monthly with equal payments, the company uses
their own way of calculating what that will be.

Since having smart meters (and hence no estimated billing) eon have been
pretty close with their DD payments, they aim for a zero balance by
April, sending you any credit back at that time, they have a 6 monthly
review, and let you override what the monthly amount is, presumably they
have some sort of sanity check so you can't put it down to £1/month then
settle-up in April.

That's interesting. Did wonder where the 'zero' month was.

--
*A day without sunshine is like... night.*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read
by the energy company?
I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if you
are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a
talking remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio
programme a few weeks back.
Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from reports
and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings and it
cannot even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after 2020
before its in any way reliable and out there.
Also Reports suggest that hard on the heals of the take over of Yahoo,
they will be abandoning pop3 from the end of the month. They quote too
many people using old email clients but those who believe it suspect its
more based on data collection and advertising opportunities on webmail.
Are Amazon and google gearing up tho ruin their home assistants with
advertising?
It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the public
think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly
targeted adverts already.

Don’t get any adverts at all with the Apple system.

Don’t get any adverts at all with maps.google either.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Andy Burns wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:

Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is
read by the energy company?

I've set mine to be read once a month (I have the option of daily or
half-hourly) so once you see which day they read it on, it's always that
date (maybe they avoid reading on the 29th-31st of the month for the
obvious reasons, or maybe you get the earliest day after)

Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports and people have been getting daft bills

I don't think anyone has had an enormous bill, just an overstated
estimated price for daily usage on the in-home display, blame the media
for inaccurate reporting.

Think is that if you pay monthly with equal payments, the company uses
their own way of calculating what that will be.

Mine allowed me to specify what that monthly automatic
payment was and I can get a manual refund of any over
payment using their web site and change the monthly
payment anytime I like too.

Different if you pay a quarterly bill in arrears.

Andy Burns explained on 21/03/2017 :
I don't think anyone has had an enormous bill, just an overstated estimated
price for daily usage on the in-home display, blame the media for inaccurate
reporting.

The IHD's are generally useless. The only useful thing they do is show
instantaneous usage, as a number and a speedo dial. They don't properly
indicate what you still owe, only what the total cost is, they have no
idea what you might have paid each month against the bill. They don't
provide a current meter reading, something I would have thought was a
primary thing to include.

Its interesting to watch the instantaneous consumption for a day or
two, then you soon get bored and unplug it.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

Since having smart meters (and hence no estimated billing) eon have been
pretty close with their DD payments, they aim for a zero balance by
April, sending you any credit back at that time

That's interesting. Did wonder where the 'zero' month was.

Makes sense that it's the first quarter after Winter's out of the way I
suppose, unless they split customers into twelve groups and I just
happen to be April? Anyway I'll be with Scottish Power in a few days,
and not likely they'll be able to read the smartmeters remotely.

Harry Bloomfield wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

The IHD's are generally useless. The only useful thing they do is show
instantaneous usage, as a number and a speedo dial. They don't properly
indicate what you still owe

I've never expected mine to show that, just a per
minute/hour/day/week/month/year figure, unrelated to actual payments,
and I'm fine with that.

Its interesting to watch the instantaneous consumption for a day or
two, then you soon get bored and unplug it.

I keep it in the corner of the study, makes a useful red/amber/green
check before going to bed, though I wish I could nudge the amber-green
boundary up by 50 or 75W.

Andy Burns wrote :
I keep it in the corner of the study, makes a useful red/amber/green check
before going to bed, though I wish I could nudge the amber-green boundary up
by 50 or 75W.

Unfortunately, the boundaries of the colour change are none adjustable,
as is the speedo range - making it useless for the gas with a boiler.
It just goes to pining the needle on full scale, lighting the red LED
when ever the boiler fires up.

The electric equivalents are much more usefully ranged.

Well that may be part of it, but as they say, no smoke without fire. I feel
that considering how long the smart meter has been in gestation it should
have been perfect and un cock upable by the user.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
Brian Gaff wrote:

Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read
by
the energy company?

I've set mine to be read once a month (I have the option of daily or
half-hourly) so once you see which day they read it on, it's always that
date (maybe they avoid reading on the 29th-31st of the month for the
obvious reasons, or maybe you get the earliest day after)

Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports
and people have been getting daft bills

I don't think anyone has had an enormous bill, just an overstated
estimated price for daily usage on the in-home display, blame the media
for inaccurate reporting.

It was on a program on RNIB Connect radio's tech talk where a spokesperson
was giving a talk some weeks back and did say that these were available you
just had to ask for them. the presenters suggested at that time that it
seemed ludicrous to make special ones, they should have all had it and you
can turn it on or off as required. apparently all sorts of similar devices
are available in other parts of the world and the chips and software for it
have been around for ages.

As I say ineptitude.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Robin" wrote in message
...
I know there have been recommendations for text-to-speech functionality on
in-home displays. I have not seen anything from OFGEM or others to require
it.

A quick look shows there was a report in December that the RNIB had been
working with Energy UK on such meters and "development is in progress and
RNIB-approved smart meters should be in the home across the country in the
not-too-distant future".

So I think it may be that you heard false news on the radio

On 21/03/2017 12:42, Brian Gaff wrote:
Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read
by
the energy company?
I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if
you
are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a
talking
remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio
programme a
few weeks back.
Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports
and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings and it
cannot
even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after 2020 before its
in
any way reliable and out there.
Also Reports suggest that hard on the heals of the take over of Yahoo,
they
will be abandoning pop3 from the end of the month. They quote too many
people using old email clients but those who believe it suspect its more
based on data collection and advertising opportunities on webmail.
Are Amazon and google gearing up tho ruin their home assistants with
advertising?
It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the
public
think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly
targeted
adverts already.
Brian



--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

That is a cock eyed way of working though. This has been suggested, if its
as useless as their online billing system then I fear the worst. The
tendency is to use pretty pictures of virtual remote units based on java
where all displays are in fact pictures not text at all.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
news
Brian Gaff explained :
Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read
by the energy company?

No, they are read remotely, the user sets it for a monthly or daily read,
with an option of data being recorded every 30 minutes. Daily and 30
minutes data is reported back at around midnight, then appears on the
suppliers website.

I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if
you are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a
talking remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio
programme a few weeks back.

Entitled maybe in the future. It is maybe an 'in development' scheme.

Just a thought, you obviously manage Usenet successfully and to browse I
suppose. Could you not log into your suppliers web site and read the data
there, maybe using a text to speech app?

Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings
and it cannot even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after
2020 before its in any way reliable and out there.

No meter old or SM will give precisely the same consumption figures, but
averaged out they do pretty well.


It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the
public think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly
targeted adverts already.
Brian

Do as I do, block them/ use an alternative search engine which ensures
privacy.

But we are talking voice only controlled systems here, not the personal
assistants in mobiles etc.

STrange world.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read
by the energy company?
I have heard conflicting reports on this one. also offgen say that if you
are registered as blind with an energy company you are entitled to a
talking remote unit. EDF have never heard of this, yet it was on a radio
programme a few weeks back.
Left hand right hand again.
Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports and people have been getting daft bills or outlandish readings
and it cannot even cope with economy 7, I predict it will be long after
2020 before its in any way reliable and out there.
Also Reports suggest that hard on the heals of the take over of Yahoo,
they will be abandoning pop3 from the end of the month. They quote too
many people using old email clients but those who believe it suspect its
more based on data collection and advertising opportunities on webmail.
Are Amazon and google gearing up tho ruin their home assistants with
advertising?
It has been claimed Google have been running tests to see what the public
think in the usa version of the Google home assistant..
Amazon also have plans of a similar sort to exploit the captive market
since its being adopted by many white goods makers for control purposes.

This will ruin it in my view. People have had enough of daft poorly
targeted adverts already.

Don’t get any adverts at all with the Apple system.

Don’t get any adverts at all with maps.google either.

Brian Gaff wrote

Well that may be part of it, but as they say, no smoke without fire.

They actually say that a rolling stone gathers no moss.

I feel that considering how long the smart meter has been in gestation it
should have been perfect and un cock upable by the user.

Have fun listing even a single example of anything
that actually is perfect and un cock upable by the
user, even stuff we have had for centurys now.


"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
Brian Gaff wrote:

Will smart meters alert the user of the date and time the meter is read
by
the energy company?

I've set mine to be read once a month (I have the option of daily or
half-hourly) so once you see which day they read it on, it's always that
date (maybe they avoid reading on the 29th-31st of the month for the
obvious reasons, or maybe you get the earliest day after)

Since they seem unable to get their software running properly from
reports
and people have been getting daft bills

I don't think anyone has had an enormous bill, just an overstated
estimated price for daily usage on the in-home display, blame the media
for inaccurate reporting.