THOUSANDS of energy company customers have woken up this morning to smart meter readings as high as £42,000 for just one day.
Confused users have been sharing images of their readings onto social media this morning.
Twitter user @radiomukhers posted a picture of his smart meter which shows how within the first eight hours of today, he has racked up a bill of over £41,100.
He captioned his post: “Your smart meter seems to believe my house got turned into a cannabis farm last night.
“Should I call the police?”
Janet McRoberts was also left confused after spotting that her reading was showing an exuberant price of £41,420.
She said: “SSE, are you playing an April Fool’s joke, or is my smart meter broken?”
Jaimi Lea replied to her picture, writing: “Ours is the same. Bloody better be an April Fools.”
Jason Smith also said: “I’m hoping this is an April fool.
“Our smart meter says we’ve used over £40,000 of energy in under nine hours.”
While some customers have caught on to the trick straight away others have been left confused.
Steve Taylor posted this morning: “Just seen our smart meter reading for today…think there may be an issue with your meter!? Help!”
Like the others, Steve’s meter shows a reading of £40,436.
Other images shared by customers show similar prices of £42,798 and £41,727.
Much to the dismay of customers, SSE today revealed that the system error was not actually an April Fools joke.
The energy provider has today apologised to customers and revealed that the incident was part of a widespread technical issue.
A spokesperson for SSE Energy Services today said:“We’re aware of a fault on some of our Smart Energy Trackers and In Home Displays that’s causing them to show incorrect costs.
“This impacts the display only, not the actual meter readings.
“We’re working hard to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Customers do not need to do anything at this time and we apologise for any concern.”
