Share your Meter Reader stories here! (or, can you bribe a meter reader?)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I heard the dog going ballistic in the back yard earlier this afternoon, looked out the kitchen window, didn’t see anything except the usual three little girls in swimsuits playing on the swingset. But the dog sounded really upset, so I went to the back door and looked out, and there was the Illinois Power meter reader, his body English saying he was extremely uncomfortable with the fact that there was an 18 lb. beagle yelling at him, with three little girls giggling in the background.

So I wondered, fleetingly, whether it would be feasible to run out there and offer him a bribe to knock a few kilowatts per hour off our reading. Running the A/C really runs up the bills, you know?

Has anybody else been crazy enough to consider offering the meter reader a bribe? Do you think he would have taken me up on it? Is it like offering a cop a bribe?

Has anybody ever been a meter reader, ever had someone offer you a bribe, ever had any other weird stuff happen? How much do they get paid, anyway? Is it worth being harassed by beagles or mistaken for burglars casing the neighborhood? And do they really write down an actual number at each house, or do they just “guesstimate”? How accurate is my IP bill, anyway?

2

Don’t know about where you live, but 'round here they usually estimate, and send a guy around once every few months to tally up. Even if you did bribe the guy this time, they’ll eventually catch you cuz the meter doesn’t reset itself every month - it just keeps going ad infinitum. I guess at some point it must turn over, but not on a monthly or even bi-monthly basis.

3

All meter readers do is read the number accumulated on your meter. If he shorts it this month, it’ll catch up to you the next.

4

All the above is true, but my electric company is in the process of installing automated meter-reading equipment, i.e., your meter will dial-in or otherwise get in touch with its mother ship on a specified day and communicate its current reading, so we aren’t even going to have the option of trying to bribe a real person.

Our meters have four digits, and the turnover from month to month is roughly 200 kw (or whatever it’s measuring). Based on this, I figure it would take about four years for it to turn over completely.

I don’t even have air conditioning, and my bill was up to $126 this month. [painful]