I have one of those fancy digital wirelessly read water meters. They just drive by the house slowly on reading day and "read" the meter without getting out of the truck. I've lived in the house for 4 years oct 31st. In that 4 years, they've mistakenly read the meter wrong 5 or 6 times. That or the meter is incorrect. Once, I got a water bill for $970. Needless to say I ran right down to the water office and pitched a fit, told their meter reader to come out the house with me and pinpoint my leak. Says that's not what they do...I said it's your meter, you come find the fault. They agreed, sent the mayor of all people out to the house, actually followed me and read the meter manually. It was WAY off of what their electronic device "read"-and we agreed that the next 3 months' bill was on them. Their cost was likely half of what mine is but nonetheless, I liked his professionalism in the matter vs the meter reader dude-who was a belligerent dip wad millennial that you couldn't talk to; might as well have tried to talk to a cat-and if any of you have ever tried that, you know it don't work, they just talk back with the same words every time and don't obey one bit. Well I pet that cat backwards and they understood then.
Neighbor lady was over the other day griping about her water bill too; said their water usage was all over the map. She showed me the last 12 months of bills and their water usage was not less than 9500 gal/month. Mine is under 1500 every month, but I don't have anyone else here other than the pet, and the neighbor's got 2 kids and a husband. Understandable. According to their usage reports, it's 9500 one month, 18,000 next, 10,200 the next, so on and so forth. I think it's their problem. She'a blaming the water company. Maybe they have a leak, though I have not seen any sign of it (standing water, wet ditches etc).
They want digital meters here too and I told them I wanted to opt out of them. So far I still have a mechanical. But who knows how long it'll be until they force them on us too. They forced them on us at work. Noticed today. Both of them were mechanical now both are digital, but different PoCo than I have at the house.
While on the subject, how hard is it to get them to put up a larger transformer? I don't know the KvA on the current one, but in the summer time, when all the A/C's are running, neighbor's a/c comes on, shop's a/c is on, and then my house a/c comes on, I can watch the lights barely dim for a split second. When I was restringing the weed eater under the transformer the other day (pole mounted), I could hear it (the transformer) buzz when the a/c came on in my shop. I'd imagine they'll try to charge me for that, too.