Return, Re Use, Reinstate, The Option and Availability of Analog Electric Service Meters Nation Wide to customers regardless of utility service providers politics.
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What’s this mean?
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@Marcosrodriguez I’m not certain but I think FT is referring to the smart meters that have been installed at peoples homes. I believe analog would refer to the old meters where the meter reader would come see how much electricity you’ve used.
I don’t know a lot about it but since those meters have been installed there have been many concerns about them. I can’t remember exactly at the moment, but though they are more convenient, they’ve seemed a bad thing from the start.
It would be good to have the option to not use them.
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Ok. I miss the 20th century, but that ain’t coming back, either. 
There’s been a LOT of complaints about the digital meters, not the least of which is lithium batteries onboard the units The purpose of having a battery onboard is for power outages, to store the usage data and pick back up where it left off during the outage. Analogs don’t need a battery. They don’t lose the consumption data. Lithium is highly volatile and cannot be extinguished when there’s a fire. Newer laptops and PC motherboards have them as well, as it keeps the settings in CMOS of the BIOS’ chip.
Issue #2 is the amount of EMF and microwave radiation in all the wireless devices, both in and outside of the home. The federal government studied these things in 1971, and the absolutely know the risks and dangers involved, and the impacts on health. BEST thing people can do to mitigate the indoor issues, are to go back to umbilical connectivity, which is frankly faster and doesn’t have the signal dropout issues that wireless has. Get an EMF detector and walk your home, and you may be shocked at what your cell phones and other devices are emitting. Lastly, just like the toll workers they fired and replaced with E-Z Pass, tolls have skyrocketed, and electricity KW/h rates have skyrocketed doing away with meter reader jobs. Everything is backwards and upside down in this country.
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I live in Michigan , we do have the option to op out of the smart meter , you have to call your power company and request the old style meter . They will charge you a 1 time fee & few dollars each month for reader to come to your home reach month. My bill has dropped in half since doing this.
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Smart meters are a fire hazard, health hazard and privacy issue. We fought Ameren and Spire as long as we could until Ameren threatened to turn our power off. In order to opt out you must pay $100 one time non refundable fee and additional $40 a month for electric and $100 one time non refundable fee and additional $30 a month for gas. It is cost prohibitive. We opted to put on faraday cages which lessened radiation exposure per our EMF detector. The only problem is if your neighbor has a smart meter pointing at your house, you’re still exposed to radiation coming through your home and it is harmful for animals, insects and the environment. Energy costs keep getting larger. The analog meters could last for 20 years. Our gas meters didn’t last six months and had to be replaced already. I agree we should not be held hostage by electric and gas companies. Smart meters need to go.
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I’m in upstate New York, the man came around last week to try and install my meter. I had a discussion with him and he agreed that he wouldn’t do it today but that I needed to call and get an appointment in the future. There will be a $30 minimum charge each month for me to maintain the old style, this is not an acceptable option!
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Also, if a homeowner chooses to have an analog service meter, they should be able to do so WITHOUT having to pay a monthly charge.
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Agree. People who opt out should not be charged a monthly fee. I never paid to have someone come out to read my meter before so why should I start paying now? I’m currently paying a $15/month opt out fee which is 50% of my electric bill. And our legislators want to up that to $100/month! They want to smartify every utility so if I opt out of electric, gas and water, I could be paying $300/month just to avoid EMF exposure and DE in my own home! Stop the madness already!
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It’s my understanding that if you don’t let them exchange your analog meter for a smart meter when they first come to your house/neighborhood, you have to pay for them to come back to install the smart meter if you change your mind (anywhere from $250-$300 is what I’ve heard). THAT charge should also be waived for a first time installation.
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You need to call your local utilities board and get your information on exactly how to opt out straight from them! It’s not a difficult process, but I will tell you what deception we had to sift through in our community.
The power company and the CONTRACTORS that switch out the analog meters with smart meters that are PAID BY the power companies are in collusion. There’s no other word FOR it. The contractors only get paid for doing a switch. The contractors don’t respect or represent you or your wishes.
You all have property rights, and how this issue is handled my be different from community to community. You must be a little bit tenacious to get to your solution, and you may be lied to and misled in the process, and have a 6th sense to know when you aren’t being told the truth. I do not have a macro universal perspective for each community. All I can do is tell you what occurred in my community. Which may be of great use to you in opting out, keeping your analog meter, or getting it switched back to analog.
In our community the local power company announced that they were going to be switching out analog to smart meters, WEEKS before they started. They gave no information on an opt out program. We have a 350,000 pop city in our county, and about half of those folks did not want the smart meters. We have historically had exceptional relationships with our local utilities in the past that have been extremely responsive and focused, receptive on customer service. That seemed to change overnight with this agenda to impose smart meters.
So homeowners called their utility and requested to opt out of the program and the power company said, “OK, your home has been taken off the list, there’s nothing else you need to do.” Within a week I think there was a mailing sent out from the power company saying as much. All of these homeowners went about their lives resting assured that it was taken care of and that this one simple step is all that needed to be done. It wasn’t.
The switches were done on quadrants, neighborhood by neighborhood. Within the first few days, homeowners were LIVID to come home from work to find that there analog meters were swapped out for a smart meter without their permission, and in most cases in direct defiance of their expressed wishes. Some had already contacted the power company and gotten on the opt out list. Some had posted signs on their meter to NOT SWAP. Some had put padlocks on their meters cases, only to find the signs ignored, locks cut with bolt cutters, locks laying on the ground, in all cases replaced with a new smart meter.
Understandably thousands of customers were outraged. They called the utility to complain that they had a smart meter on their home. The power company feigned ignorance, saying they didn’t know why because they were in fact on the opt out list. When confronted with what to do next, with remedy for getting an analog meter re installed they had no advice.
Some homeowners became apathetic, and accepted a smart meter. Many others became even more outraged and scrappy. The more scrappy people having sucessfully sifted through all the random ineffective misinformation of posted signs, locks, and the opt out list, figured out that the missing piece of the puzzle was that every homeowner had to locate the contractor that was working in their neighborhood, AND NOTIFY THEM SEPERATELY AND IN ADDITION TO THE POWER COMPANIES OPT OUT LIST. THAT THEY BOTH HAD TO BE ON NOTICE OF YOUR OPT OUT STATUS, AND THAT ONLY NOTIFYING ONE, OR THE OTHER, WAS ULTIMATELY NOT SUFFICIENT.
It was an extremely convoluted process, and underhanded by both the power companies, and the contractors, who maintained plausible deniability throughout the entire process, and apparently did not, would not, and could not be arsed to communicate with each other.
These scrappy folks started a Facebook page group to cut through the beuacracy, and get facts out quickly to the community that was trying to opt out in real time. All in all there was about 80,000 customers that were able to avoid the switch and keep their analog meters.
But there were so many pissed off customers who did what they thought was enough to opt out, but were ignored and ended up with a smart meter, that formed another group that complained to the regional utilities board, that resulted in policies that got them their analog meters back for the fee of $4 a month.
My take on it is, the power company no longer operates on the simple basis of simply providing a service and nothing more. They no longer care about you, your being satisfied s a customer wirh their product, or their reputation, or doung above board customer service, or their relationship with you the customer. This is now a top down heavy handed highly political agenda that you the customer must find out about the hard way, and navigate. You cannot expect to be fully informed, respected. And they may even outright lie, and obscure remedy. They have an agenda that they think supercedes yours.
The contractors only get paid for each unit they swap, so they are disincentivised to cooperate with homeowners, or even respect them. The swap itself could be done very quickly. They could be in and out before you even know they were there, knowing they could now bill for the work, and be gone like bandits regardless of how obvious the homeowners wishes were against the swap being done.
The opt out process may be easier, more difficult, or different in your area. I would encourage you to take your own side, and do the basics. If your community doesn’t have an opt out option, or your grid carrier doesn’t. You can get one, even if they say there’s no other option. You have property rights, and utilities KNOW that, even if they steer you in every other direction. Your utilities board, county and state attorneys office are good places to start. And get an online community of numbers together, even 50 people is significant enough to schedule a hearing at your utilities board. You likely have WAY more people than that who don’t want their smart meter, or want to opt out of an upcoming swap out.
It may seem like more work than it actually is, but these neighborhood, county commities are really things that should be established and used for all these matters of monopoly overreach on an ongoing basis imo for which the individual is often at a disadvantage.
Remember, it’s YOUR property. You have rights, and you don’t have to allow anyone on your property, meaning contractors. That said, you have a tacit agreement with your power company which you may need to scrutinize. For instance, you wouldn’t have a problem with the meter reader entering your property to read the meter, or, the utility company sending out their own workers to do routine maintenance on your existing analog equipment and lines. However this is why they send out 3rd party contractors to do the meter swaps is because it adds layers of beaurocracy, plausible deniability, mis communication, or no communication between all 3 parties, and lack of accountability and responsibility on the part of the utility, and the contractor. As a home owner, you just have to be on top of it, because it’s no longer a reasonable expectation that we’re all on the same team anymore, or, that the customer comes first anymore. This issue, and covid are two very clear examples that it’s not about the customer anymore. We must demand that the customer comes first remains top most priority.
These extra “fees” we were told at our hearing were to offset the cost of having to hire meter readers to continue to monitor the old meters. Which was ironic, because there was no extra fee for them to monitor it before! And from those I’ve talked to that have smart meters, they claim they saw an increase to their monthly bill.
Our fee was $4 extra a month, which many felt wasn’t worth fighting to get removed. I felt it was, but people turn into weenies when they are getting most of what they want. However $4 x 100,000 meters is quite a lot of EXTRA to simply maintain the status quo! Think about it, they did no new work, made no changes. Maintained the same workforce, equipment, and contracts, and MADE an additional $400,000. For doing NOTHING. AND THEN CHARGING YOU AN ONGOING FEE FOR SIMPLY KEEPING THINGS AS THEY ARE. It’s all theft.
I feel sorry for those getting charged $20 $30 extra. It’s beyond criminal.
Electric companies will be saving a lot of money when they terminate meter readers who become redundant because of the smart meters. Keeping some of them (meter readers) on for the analog customers won’t be an additional expense.
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Contractors and/or sub-contractors are typically classified as self-employed and would, therefore, not be employees of the power company. Since that is the case, it seems to me (and I could be wrong) they’d be trespassing when stepping on your property to change out the meter if you haven’t given permission.
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Technically yes, but you get into things like, do you have a no trespassing sign posted? If not, it’s not illegal for them to come on the property, just like the mailman, Amazon delivery, etc. but ANYONE can have YOUR tacit agreement with them to be there rescinded at any time, and they have to leave if you tell them to.
I’ve looked into the law on this a little bit. In general you have a lot more rights, if you have no trespassing signs posted, but I’m not clear in this case how it applies to utilities. I think landowner, homeowner property rights trump everything. However utilities have secondary rights to access THEIR equipment which happens to be on your property, until YOU inform them in writing of Ammendments you CAN MAKE to your existing contract with them. Which is literally as simple as putting into writing, that no utility employees, personnel, representatives, workers, or 3rd party contractors are heretofore welcome on your property without written permission (example: 2 weeks in advance of scheduled work)
And I think this will have to be done on a widespread basis moving forward, because ALL of these oversteps occurred because the utility companies are taking full advantage of the previous existing public trust and long standing up til now mutually beneficial, mutual convenience tacit agreement between you the customer to maintain seamless service, and for them to be there and have access to work.
The agreement and contract terms has to change, because there’s now more at stake, and more factors to address than merely electrical service alone. And the utilities are no longer conducting themselves reciprocally, transparently, and neither are the contractors.
You can correct it. But you may need the help of your neighbors and rest of your communities numbers to take your own side.
But certainly you can tell a contractor to leave, and they must. Unless it’s specifically listed in your terms of service contract with your utility company, you have no contract with the 3rd party contractor.
And that’s what we found out here, was people that were gone to work during the day, could not be present to intercept the contractors, even if they were on the opt out list with the utility company. But if they were present, or had a stay at home spouse, they could shoo them off the property, or deny access, and there was nothing anybody could do about it, including the power company, except leave the analogs in place and keep the existing contract as it was already functioning.
Not a lot of people had the means or fortitude to do so, or to be present, but some did. And I was surprised at the attempts to lie and bully that these contractors engaged in. They weren’t honest or professional. And they bank on people not knowing or asserting their rights or the law. Most people don’t want the conflict, and failed to recognize that in the moment it was necessary.
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