Meter Tampering: Picking the Pockets of Honest Customers

Meter Tampering: Picking the Pockets of Honest Customers

It’s common knowledge that if you want access to a public utility’s service on your property, then you are required to pay for it. Seen as one of the necessary costs to maintaining a home or building, most people succumb to taking full responsibility of their energy intake and pay the fees without question. However, there is a small percentage of those who try, and maybe even succeed, to beat the system with utility theft of service, especially with gas meters. Meter tampering is illegal, dangerous, and increases utility costs for honest customers. 

Gas meters are not the only meters vulnerable to utility theft as electric and water meters suffer just as much. In fact, the United States as a whole loses about $6 billion a year due to electricity theft alone, according to Forbes. That ends up being $6 billion that honest customers end up having to pay themselves.

While A.Y. McDonald is a manufacturer for high pressure gas products that are used with gas meters, we rely on the expertise of other companies to create high security and locking devices. When installed with our meter bars and valves, these locking features help protect the meter from tampering.

With YouTube videos and Google searches accessible for everyone, it’s hard to take all the proper precautions as a manufacturer when the Internet can provide easy-to-find and often inaccurate information. For every one post about the necessity for locks on gas meters, there are multiple ones explaining how to break into them. How counterproductive is that? In the end, we can make our products safe and secure but a lock will only keep an honest man honest.

Seeing as utility theft of service is a crime and that the act itself could lead to an explosion, protection from meter tampering is a must. Knowing this, many gas utilities now have hot lines where customers can call to report suspected theft of service. While high pressure gas manufacturers are only part of the equation, utility theft awareness is something we all can have a hand in!