So, the saga continues. We decided to call the ‘Customer Service’ number to explain the issue. Surprisingly, Mrs Me gets through within 2 minutes. She explained the problem in detail and the first response was “Try turning the IHD off then on again” (IHD apparently refers to the monitor as In Home Display). We explain that we have done this on a number of occasions with no effect. We were the told that our call was being passed on to an engineer who could advise us further.

10 minutes pass, listening to a varied choice of music …

Another 10 minutes …

Then the call was dropped. This was expected. I’m a little annoyed now so I have a look on the company website for an email address to write to. It was then I noticed that they had a ‘Live Chat’ messaging service. Okay, here goes nothing. Within a few seconds I’m ‘chatting’ to someone with a name I cannot remember. The problem was explained and the same response as before was given. I was then asked of I could sent a picture of the IHD. So I attached the one I posted on here and was told that the details would be passed on to an engineer. I was also told that I needed to send another picture in 30 minutes time as validation, which left me quite bemused.

Exactly 30 minutes later, I took another photograph and dropped into the message service. Of course, this was picked up by someone completely different (I think!) and the whole issue was explained again. The operator paused the conversation while they spoke to someone else. Meanwhile I was checking emails and the like but kept flicking back to the company website to see what was happening … nothing. Conversation still paused. Then, without any warning, I was logged out of the account, due to inactivity. You can probably guess how I was feeling! Mrs Me told me to leave it and she would get back in touch later, which was probably the best idea.

We then got an email telling us that there was a ‘new message’. The message basically explained that the new IHD units were having problems and that the engineers know about it as a number of people had raised the issue and it was being looked into. Why they couldn’t have explained this in the first place, I will never understand. So now we wait. All my doubts about so called ‘smart meters’ were beginning to become realistic.