Crazy Things People Say On Radio
So I was listening to Raido 4 the other morning (it's taken me a while to write about this).
And they're talking about energy consumption, and then something to do with pre-payment meters. Apparently, they're surprisingly common, but I can't think when I last happened accross one.
Still, they discuss the normal pros/cons, but with whoever the interviewee was being a bit cross about the concept in general.
Prepayment is more expensive than regular credit meters. (Interviewee points out that this is backwards, as the user has paid in advance, so surely should be doing the company a favour).
Prepayment is good for people who want to manage their energy budgets, except that, that runs contrary to the previous point.
Etc.
Then he goes and puts his foot in it. Apparently, he wants the energy companies to look at ways of topping up the prepayment cards/keys by SMS, internet, etc. He says that in todays technological climate, there's no reason not to, and people expect it.
Except. How is this easy exactly? Prepayment meters, unless I'm very much mistaken, are standalone appliances, they're not even Automatic Meter Reading enabled, they tend only to authenticate with the payment tokens, hence why you have to take them to a kiosk to top them up. There's just no way to communicate with them that you've topped up via any other method. He's either suggesting a complete retro-fit of all installed pre-payment meters, which I can see people taking offence at. Or else, they need to build a new piece of hardware for home users, that lets them use their computer to reprogram the key. Of course, it'd be about 10 minutes till someone hacked anything that useful to get unlimited credit, so I can't see them wanting to let that happen either.
Why do they let people suggest these things on reputable live radio?
And they're talking about energy consumption, and then something to do with pre-payment meters. Apparently, they're surprisingly common, but I can't think when I last happened accross one.
Still, they discuss the normal pros/cons, but with whoever the interviewee was being a bit cross about the concept in general.
Prepayment is more expensive than regular credit meters. (Interviewee points out that this is backwards, as the user has paid in advance, so surely should be doing the company a favour).
Prepayment is good for people who want to manage their energy budgets, except that, that runs contrary to the previous point.
Etc.
Then he goes and puts his foot in it. Apparently, he wants the energy companies to look at ways of topping up the prepayment cards/keys by SMS, internet, etc. He says that in todays technological climate, there's no reason not to, and people expect it.
Except. How is this easy exactly? Prepayment meters, unless I'm very much mistaken, are standalone appliances, they're not even Automatic Meter Reading enabled, they tend only to authenticate with the payment tokens, hence why you have to take them to a kiosk to top them up. There's just no way to communicate with them that you've topped up via any other method. He's either suggesting a complete retro-fit of all installed pre-payment meters, which I can see people taking offence at. Or else, they need to build a new piece of hardware for home users, that lets them use their computer to reprogram the key. Of course, it'd be about 10 minutes till someone hacked anything that useful to get unlimited credit, so I can't see them wanting to let that happen either.
Why do they let people suggest these things on reputable live radio?