As this link shows,
Hive appear to be turning off their smart home service in about 3 years time. Should folk stilll be installing this sort of stuff, and will other makers follow suit?
Mike
Absolutely! Except they sometimes foiled us by filling them full of blue gloop...
You will find more and more organisations looking at how freemium/pay-to-win concepts are doing so well and then apply the same commercial concept to their own industry. I dare say I was surprised that BMW didn't launch the car with all features enabled for the first week then you find out you have to pay extra to keep using the brakes...They've obvious realised that building the fully functional car en masse is cheaper than building a chassis then adding bits that a customer wants piecemeal. They'll have loot boxes installed next where you get a surprise feature enabled for a one day special price. Ryanair do this in reverse to some degree but their planes still carry a full load of consumables to sell passengers. Wait until someone has found a way to crack the BMW package keys and sells them online, sound familiar to all the software cracks already out their?
As to your point on OC71s. don't forget what was happening with the CPU industry when we had SX and DX varieties. You bought either a chip that was came out of the manufacturing process fully functional or one that didn't get made properly but still sort of functioned as a CPU.
SX and DX varieties. You bought either a chip that was came out of the manufacturing process fully functional or one that didn't get made properly but still sort of functioned as a CPU
Do I vaguely remember correctly that Alan Sugar or Clive Sinclair once built a whole product family based on cheap "partly working" chips? And in a way a win-win - less chips get scrapped, and people who (definitely in the '80s) couldn't afford a Commodore PET etc still got a (nearly) functional computer. I don't emotionally find a problem with that at all, in fact seems a jolly good idea.
Oh gawd...I can genuinely see your other idea coming: "Coming soon, this September 15th for one day only, it's free heated steering wheel day for all BMW drivers!" And instead of storming the Bastille we'll thank BMW for being so generous...and having tried it for a day sign up for it for the winter.
As you say, a gift to the hacker market...once your warranty's expired. Which won't worry the manufacturers since they've no great interest in cars over three years old anyway.
Similar debacle to that which is smart metering. It seems you have to pay £60 to have the battery replaced in your smart meter kit - a battery which should last a minimum of 10 years, that is if you can even still get hold of the same type of battery these days.
The energy smart meter in Rachel Hughes’s home in Stockport does not work properly. It does not send correct readings to the digital display, making it is impossible for her to know how much money she is spending.
Alan Salisbury from Bournemouth has been waiting five years for a new smart meter to be installed because the one that was put in does not work.
Ronald Shaw’s gas supply stopped when his five-year-old smart meter ran out of battery last year. His old meter at his home in Edinburgh had worked properly for 30 years.
Money has heard from dozens of people who have been let down by smart meters just when they needed them most. The energy price cap, which limits what suppliers can charge the 22 million households on a variable tariff, has already risen to an eye-watering £1,971 a year for the average dual-fuel usage and is set to go up again to £3,285 in October then £3,363 in January. In January this year the cap was £1,277.
Families are being advised to use less energy where possible, and one of the ways to do this is by using a smart meter.
These devices are supposed to send regular updates on your usage to your supplier, as well as sending information to a digital display in your house. This shows you exactly how much you are consuming so you can adjust your habits.
This principle is entirely the point of smart meters, and is used as justification for the £13.5 billion cost of installation, which has been passed on to household bills. The savings you make from cutting your usage are supposed to at least offset that increase in bills.
And yet those who complain that their meters are not working are being dismissed by energy suppliers and told that they cannot have new displays. Many have run up bills far higher than they expected because the display has been giving them duff readings.
Others have been stuck with meters that have long-term faults and have to foot the bill for any repairs. There is very little clarity over who is responsible when faults do emerge.
Smart meters were first touted by the trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling 16 years ago, and then given the green light by Ed Miliband when he was secretary of state for energy. The scheme has been championed by successive governments since.
Households would be offered the chance to replace their old analogue meter with a digital one. Instead of having to send your supplier a meter reading, or having the gas man come round to read the meter, your usage would be sent automatically by mobile phone signals.
About 53 million meters were supposed to be installed by the end of 2020, but the programme is only just over halfway there.
One of the first tasks the government had to decide was who would be responsible for installing the devices — the energy networks or the suppliers. Networks, such as Nothern Powergrid, ES3 and SP Energy Networks, run the infrastructure in the way that Network Rail oversees Britain’s railways. The suppliers are household names such as British Gas, EDF, Eon, SSE and Scottish Power.
While some suppliers argued that the energy networks should take responsibility for smart meters to standardise the technology, as was happening in Norway and Portugal, British Gas disagreed.
Ministers were put under pressure, largely by British Gas, which at the time was the biggest supplier with 44 per cent of the market, and the Labour government decided in 2009 that suppliers should be given the responsibility for installations.
In a document sent to the government British Gas said: “Suppliers have commercial incentives to maximise the benefits they can gain from smart meters by improving their customer service and reducing their costs. This gives them a competitive advantage which they will use to acquire and retain more customers. Any network owner-led deployment would take much more time to implement . . .'
The government’s decision meant that we ended up with a “disastrous” smart meter programme, according to academics. Benjamin Sovacool, the professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex Business School, compared smart energy meter installations across Europe. “In our international comparison, the UK had one of the worst designed. The supplier-led rollout has been disastrous when suppliers go bankrupt or people switch suppliers, as millions of homes do each year,” he said.
Smart meters were eventually launched in 2011 and by 2014 suppliers were supposed to start their installation programmes. At first homes were fitted with Smets 1 meters, the first-generation technology. Only five million of these were supposed to be installed, but delays to the development of second-generation Smets 2 led to 12.5 million being installed.
Many Smets 1 meters operated from mobile phone networks that signed up with individual suppliers. Customers found that if they switched to a new energy supplier their meter would stop operating in smart mode. This happened in 70 per cent of households.
Customers were often sceptical about the need for a new meter and some made complaints about how the technology worked. This added to the delays.
A further glitch was the development of a new digital communications network, which was supposed to solve the problem of meters using mobile networks. About 30 million of the proposed 53 million meters had been installed by 2020. Suppliers are now supposed to install smart meters for 85 per cent of their customers by 2024.
A National Audit Office report found that hundreds of thousands of Smets 1 meters could fail because they were using old technology. Three out of ten smart meters could not be connected to in-home digital displays, which are crucial in helping customers save money.
Many who complained about faulty meters and displays were dismissed as technophobes and were unable to get faults fixed.
There is also growing evidence that suppliers are flouting the rules on who is liable for replacing meters.
John Linton, 79, a retired IT consultant from Burnham in Buckinghamshire, lodged a complaint against British Gas because his display does not give him accurate readings.
“I was told that monitors are deemed to be an add-on, and British Gas will not replace them free of charge after 12 months. This is contrary to Ofgem’s website, which states that meters, including displays, are paid for through the energy bill, and will not be charged for separately.
“The actual meter is utterly useless without the monitor, especially because in my case it is high up in a dark cupboard, and at 79 I am not keen on using a stepladder and torch every time I want to check on things. Using the British Gas website is equally impossible.”
British Gas said Linton’s meter readings were being received correctly and that the company was working remotely to fix his display.
Allan Barnes, 75, who worked in IT for a chemicals company, had smart meters installed in 2019 by Shell. He has never been able to see his usage because of a weak mobile phone signal that means the monitor and the meter cannot communicate with each other.
Barnes, from Hartlepool, said: “Towards the end of 2021 I contacted Shell again, only to be told that part of the problem is that we live in an area with no or very low signal. It also said that it was a problem that affected all suppliers.
“I find it difficult to believe that this part of Hartlepool is in an area with problem signal levels. I also find it hard to believe that an IT communications problem can take more than 18 months to resolve — so I suspect that it is either insoluble or that no effort is going into its resolution.”
Shell apologised and said: “Following further investigation we have successfully restored communication with the electricity meter. The gas meter remains uncommunicative, so we have arranged with Mr Barnes for an engineer to visit the property to explore this further.
Ofgem, the regulator, said energy suppliers are responsible for ensuring the digital displays provide accurate information about consumers’ energy consumption and their current tariff. It is not clear what responsibility suppliers have, however, if customers run up bigger energy bills than they planned for because the display is wrong.
The government said: “Smart meters are modernising energy for millions of consumers and providing households with near-real-time information, which they are using to manage their energy use and save money on their bills. Energy suppliers are responsible for ensuring the tariff information displayed on a customer’s in-home display aligns with the tariff they are billed on.”
That is no use to the homeowners who cannot get help from suppliers.
When Ronald Shaw tried to find out from SSE (now owned by Ovo) why his gas supply stopped when the meter battery ran out in November, he was simply told that he should have been alerted. The 72-year-old retired civil engineer said: “My concern is that there is no warning of a low battery condition, and when the battery expires, so does your gas supply. Luckily our gas supply was restored within 12 hours, but I dread to think what would have happened if it had been Christmas Eve.”
His meter was replaced by an engineer but he had to pay a £60 call-out fee. Ovo said: “We are very sorry to Mr Shaw for the inconvenience caused. We are arranging to have his meters replaced and have refunded the call-out fee as a goodwill gesture.”
When we asked Ovo whether gas supply would stop if the meter battery ran out, it refused to answer our question. It also failed to say how a customer would be alerted to a battery running out.
The government said: “We are not aware of any widespread issue with gas smart meter battery life. However, it is unacceptable for battery depletion to lead to any unexpected disruption to gas supply.”
Ofgem, the regulator, said: “Battery lives are generally predicted to be around 10 years and will be replaced by your energy supplier, who should receive a low battery warning in advance from the meter. If the battery fails, gas will continue to flow but the meter will not be able to correctly record the quantity of gas used.”
British Gas told Rachel Hughes, 47, a retired senior manager, that as her smart meter was sending details to the supplier she was not entitled to a replacement display unit because it had been installed by a different supplier.
Diana James, 73, who ran a catering business, and her husband Michael, 69, are also resigned never to being able to read their meter.
She said: “I was hoping to see how my costs would change when the cap rose but the meter just couldn’t cope. What a dog’s dinner it all is.”
"I used to live in a small town in the deep south of Italy called Potenza. It’s the ankle of the boot, an odd place, destroyed by the 1980 Naples earthquake and rebuilt, so some of it looked historic and some of it a concrete carbuncle. Half the houses were up a small mountain, half down the bottom.
One year a politician running for mayor rather excitedly promised to build an airport to boost the town’s reputation and fortunes (it is the poorest region in Italy). He won and delivered on his pledge despite pleas that no one really wanted to fly to Potenza.
They were right — I never saw a flight land or take off.
That mayor lost the next election, but the new one promised an overhaul of the road system and promptly splashed out on high-tech traffic management.
But the vastly expensive contract went to a dubious firm and when the traffic lights were turned on they went haywire, causing huge jams. They were switched off and never worked again.
A third mayor then came in and built an escalator network linking the top of the town to the bottom. Its hundreds of meters of travelators were fun to ride but no one used them — they were all driving, particularly because there were no traffic lights holding them up.
History is full of the follies of politicians who are often so blinded by the virtues of their scheme that they fail to hear practical concerns. Which brings me to smart meters: the outdoor escalator system of UK policy.
In theory smart meters are a simple and sensible idea. In a cost of living crisis they should really be having their moment, helping you to see what energy you use and to budget and cut back.
Right from the start though there were problems. The displays stopped working, meters malfunctioned, those who switched tariffs found that their meters went dumb. Millions were wasted on installing redundant technology.
But the completely justified concerns of consumers were dismissed as technophobia by the regulator, Ofgem, and Smart Energy GB, the propaganda body packed with zealots who cultishly cheerlead for this scheme. If they had actually stopped and heard about the genuine problems, some of the expensive mistakes could have been stopped.
Instead Smart Energy GB spent tens of millions on advertising and bungled communications, and acted aggressively towards journalists who reported households’ legitimate complaints.
You can trace all the problems with smart meters back to Ed Miliband, who capitulated to the lobbying of British Gas when he allowed suppliers to be put in charge of installation, not the networks.
British Gas’s demand was purely one of self-interest. It even said this would allow it to obtain a competitive advantage which it would use to “acquire and retain more customers”
Other suppliers such as Scottish Power pointed out that actually what would happen was that, without one single standard technology installed by the networks, the scheme would run into trouble. How right that has proved to be.
British people are not technophobes. We have embraced digital innovation far more than our European neighbours, yet their smart meter programmes have been faster and less troublesome because they did not put self-interested suppliers in charge.
But we are where we are.
Three things need to happen now. First, Smart Energy GB should be wound down: it’s a pointless and expensive body.
Second, energy companies should immediately replace all displays and/or meters that are not functioning, as they are legally obliged to do. Where customers have run up bigger bills because displays are wrong then energy suppliers should be liable and Ofgem should begin fining them.
Finally, installations should stop until all tech is up to date and standardised.
It’s time to stop chucking good money after bad and fix this broken project before it becomes another folly of vain politicians.
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