Not good enough. The guy ALWAYS had to come out and read the meter, the cost is already built into today's rates (not to say that it would still be built in five years from now after three more rounds of rate hearings). If they want to save themselves money and just accidentally spy on you, and the only alternative to them spying on you is to reimburse them for the money they would have saved, then let them come up with a meter that can be PROVEN to be incapable of doing nothing more than totalizing usage and reporting one monthly total. THEN it would be OK to force people to take them or pay the meter reader, and not before. The utility is the one that tried to tie the semi-legitimate cost issue to the outrageously ILlegitimate spyware issue, the other party shouldn't be the one to suffer from the linkage of the two. Let the utility expend the cost and effort to separate the two issues and defend them separately.
I hear you, but you’re barking up the wrong tree here. It is MUCH CHEAPER for the utility to have you use power WHEN THEY TELL YOU TO than it is for them to read your meter.
I do realize that meter reading is already built into the cost of service, but the arguments against “Smart Meters” are much more important than a few bucks a month. These things are the second biggest threat to privacy in the past 100 years (the biggest is GPS tracking of cars, that Governor Perry is trying to impose here in Texas).