The H1 Meter Multiplier Effect

I was sent this email, who wishes to remain anonamous:

Mr Wakefield

I read an old article online that you were mad as hell at Hydro One regarding a huge jump in your hydro bills once your old meter was changed out with a smart meter. I have read many such stories online. I can't imagine the pain of receiving these large monthly bills. I had the opportunity to talk to one of my in laws over Christmas who happens to work at Hydro One as a technician (10 years or so). I asked him what was going on.... well I heard an answer that was very surprising but seemed to make sense for a lot of the stories out there. He had a service call where the customer was really polite and asked him to see while he was there if he could figure out why his bill might be about 5x higher since the smart meter went in. Well when they get a work order, it includes info on the previous meter,this is the shocking part, some meters where geared and designed to turn slower but they had a multiplier factor 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, some maybe even 20x. Well looking at the history at the address the tech could see that indeed the customers old meter did have a multiplier, and when the new smart meter got installed the multiplier was carried forward, ALL SMART METERS are a 1x multiplier as they are digital. So no matter how many times you test your smart meter it will likely always come back testing just fine. There is one line of code in a computer program at hydro one multiplying your usage, causing a much higher than normal bill. My in law passed the info to his supervisor but I don't think this will help. My hope is that Hydro One is held accountable for this mix up and corrects the problem.