said by garys_2k:I think that the issue here is the utillity blindly plugging the meters into pans that may not be in good enough condition to accept them. The crew doing the meter swaps (at least around here) just went house to house, yanking the old meters and slapping in the new ones. It almost seemed like the more they got done in a day, the more they were paid.
It sounds like a competent inspection of the integrity of the meter pan could prevent many of the problems being reported (assuming, of course, that the speculation is correct). But around here the "inspection" likely amounted to a quick glance to see that no dead squirrels were in that box.
A couple of years ago the POCO changed out our old analog meters with new digital meters that they could read by driving around in a vehicle. Evidently it was a sub-contractor because they were not in a POCO vehicle. When he got to mine which is 300 amp service he just scratched his head and said he didn't have a meter to fit my service and he would have to come back. The one they put in looks just like the old analog meter with the dials and not the digital readout. Bottom line is this guy didn't have clue. He just pulled the old meters and stuck a new one in. Nothing else.