Editor: In a letter to the editor (The Times, April 17) , David Field defended smart meters, claiming that the fault was instead on the human operators who misread what was being reported by the machines. This does not make sense, since the same people who were reading the original meters are still on the job and have been trained to do so.
The meter readers are only able to do so much in terms of ensuring that electricity bills don’t rise exponentially; the smart meters themselves have to produce an accurate reading.
Contrary to the comments made in the letter, smart meters are already actively collecting billing data, as we’ve seen recently with individuals recording several hundred percent increases in their bill through faulty readings from their smart meters, which has led to much confusion from people trying to pay their utility bills.
It’s not a problem specific to British Columbia either. Ontario and California have experimented with smart meter technology, and those same jurisdictions have faced numerous charges of overbilling. Surely the meter readers who are supposedly responsible for the B.C. overbilling mistakes didn’t also cause the same errors thousands of kilometres away.
It’s a shame that there’s very little that can be done, now that the BC Liberals exempted the smart meters from oversight by the B.C. Utilities Commissions. That would have provided some relief to people, and shows how out of touch the Liberals have become.
Trevor Ritchie,
Burnaby
