what is this attached to my house

[Grannysroost]

Ours doesn't look like that, but the guy pulls up to the gate and just about as fast backs up, so they still do a drive by here anyway..

[cmist]

Originally Posted by zonababe

That APS meter reader gets every dog in the neighborhood barking.

Strange thing here is that until we got the notice, I never thought about meter readers. I realized I hadnt seen a meter reader in the whole time I lived here. Asked the neighbors and they havent either. Maybe they come at really strange hours?

We always complained too that when we would go on vacation for 2 weeks and shut the entire house down that it was weird how the bill barely dropped. Got us to thinking if they didnt just have a random number generator to create the bills...

[joninaz]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

More jobs lost.

This is one job I don't feel bad is lost to technology. Our neighborhood was built with all the meters in the back yards, so the reader would drive through the back alleys, crawling on top of a truck to look over the walls into back yards. And he used binoculars in order to read the tiny meters.

So imagine frolicking al fresco with a friend in the pool and then seeing a guy peering in the yard with an optical device. It was a bit intrusive.

The other annoyance was the human reader needed an unobstructed view. A single leaf from a bush, vine or tree could easily mask the meter and this would force a personal visit and official requests from the company to keep the areas free of vegetation. My meters are on the 2nd hottest wall in the summer and the green thing to do was shade the area as much as possible with landscaping.

I was very happy when they installed digital readers. I no longer have a monthly peeping tom, or someone knocking on the door needing backyard access, which was a mild annoyance to me but probably was very disturbing to others.

[JH6]

Originally Posted by cmist

Strange thing here is that until we got the notice, I never thought about meter readers. I realized I hadnt seen a meter reader in the whole time I lived here. Asked the neighbors and they havent either. Maybe they come at really strange hours?

We always complained too that when we would go on vacation for 2 weeks and shut the entire house down that it was weird how the bill barely dropped. Got us to thinking if they didnt just have a random number generator to create the bills...

You still pay a monthly fee to have an account with the electric company. Electricity itself is fairly cheap, its the delivery and all the extra fees that cost the money.

[ElizaTeal]

Looks like the meter reader is going the way of the bowling pin setter.