Just like you shouldn’t flirt with the waitress that delivers your food to the table, best to not flirt with someone who has access to your mail … lol … both of these topics were comedy elements in the tv show Curb Your Enthusiasm. And in neither case did the situations end well for poor Larry David.
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Around here, they just drive up and down the street in a truck equipped with a transponder. When it goes by a meter, the meter sends it all the information it needs. Vegetation is not an issue. Same with gas. They don’t even need to drive by for the electric, it is read through the wires from the sub-station.
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They put a cell transponder on my buried propane tank a couple years ago. Self contained unit that ties into the pressure gauge. No need to drive around for that either. Would be nice if they put one on the oil tank but they seem to be on the ball just using weather info and historical usage trends…
In my area, the dominant utility is transitioning to those Smart Meters, so eventually the position of meter reader will disappear, just as with parking lot attendants and elevator operators. The water meters were converted to “smart” status several years ago.
Unless people obtain technical training, there will eventually be almost no jobs for those lacking marketable skills.
We have been transitioning to smart water meters in my area as well, but for some reason the water company still sends around a guy once in a while who actually looks at it. I presume they are double checking the electronic reader method matches the manual reader.
Beware the smart meters. I believe it was vendor incompetence plus city incompetence, but when they were first installed here, everyone’s water bill doubled or tripled and they couldn’t figure out why. Eventually they were all replaced at great expense. Now they have increased the base rate because consumption charges just weren’t high enough to pay for everything. Those meter companies are similar to the current solar companies selling their schemes to ignorant public officials. Like I said it has been proposed fo4 the new jail and the contract and long term benefits are a joke.
lol … Our water meters weren’t read at all for close to 2 years, during the pandemic lock down.
We still had the older, non-smart type then. The monthly bills were estimated based on prior water use. I was monitoring the meter readings to find a leak, which I found & corrected. With no more leak, I noticed I was building up a substantial credit, actual meter reading much less than estimated. Then they switched to the smart meter, but they didn’t record the old meter reading, just started again from zero, so I lost all of that credit. Two years on, I’m still trying to resolve this issue … lol …