Not so long ago, I made the idiotic decision to have smart meters installed as I assumed I needed to keep up with technology and that the transition would be 'seamless'. All seemed well back in May when a Utility Warehouse engineer came out and hey presto I had clever meters. I was issued with a quaint but rather clunky 'in house' display that would be the answer to all my prayers apparently.

Though in reality, it merely told me what I already knew. That appliances that generate heat i.e tumble dryers, kettles etc use more electric. Anyway fast forward to me allowing the gas meter to run down to zero credit. The resultant engineer duly called and advised me not to let this happen, as a device inside the gas meter shuts off the gas supply. This requires an engineer to attend as I can confirm.

Anyway, this replacement gas smart meter seemed to do the trick and the credit I'd had on the original one was transferred. This credit lasted a couple of weeks and when I saw it getting low, I went on to the very handy app to top up straight from my bank account. However, while the top ups were exiting my bank account, they were not appearing on my gas meter.

So I got onto British Gas (who I'd gone over to from UW) to ask why my gas meter wasn't topping up. The agent in chat said my meter wasn't being recognised by their system because it hadn't been commissioned, and that once it had, I would be able to top up. 'But what if it gets down to zero?' I asked, 'the meter will cut off my supply'. 'Oh no it won't' said the advisor, 'your gas supply will be uninterrupted'.

Cue the next day and we had no gas. So out came another engineer who fitted a dumb meter because it was the only one he had. I said 'Can I keep it dumb?' and told him about all the trouble. He said it was fine.

So today I went to the shop and asked for credit to be put on my dumb card. Back home, in the slot and all done. End of story? Not quite, as the electric meter is now not registering the credit I put on there via the app. So will try to speak to a human tomorrow at British Gas, a challenge in itself as I'm constantly pointed towards either 'chat' or FAQs.

I'm wondering if the problem is being on prepayment meters rather than quarterly, though being financially challenged we find them more convenient. When they work of course.