Whatever meter you get installed, make sure they take the initial reading properly! Obvious for mechanic meters, but it turns out that some Electronic meters ar

Whatever meter you get installed, make sure they take the initial reading properly! Obvious for mechanic meters, but it turns out that some Electronic meters are like that too. In the UK, about 6 or 7 years ago we bought an old house and upgraded the wiring, fuseboard, etc. The Electricity company came and replaced the old meter with a newer Electronic (but not Smart) meter. Unfortunately the guy they sent to install it didn't record the initial readings. That meant that as far as the company was concerned it had been installed at zero, when in fact it was way past that. We weren't able to move in immediately, and in the meantime there was very little electricity used - one electric heater on low, occasional lights on/off when we visited. That kind of thing. So you can imagine our horror when the first bill was for thousands of pounds. Fortunately when we rang up to complain we got somebody at the call center who immediately realised what must have happened and sorted it out. We had to agree an estimated usage, and it's still possible we overpaid for what we actually used, but at least it wasn't thousands.