I can confirm that the flaw in the lock was known back in the day. I know people who used the flaw to fiddle their electricity meter when money was tight.
@we need to eat the babies TV meter? What? I know about TV licenses, but how would they measure how much TV you're watching with a meter? The antenna signal goes through a meter?
@@iamaperson1337 Some lower income people hired TV sets from companies who would put a coin box meter in line with the TV's power cable. No coin, no telly. This was still a thing in the 90's, that's when I last saw one.
As somebody who contracted to EMEB from 1994, and who worked with the metering guys, yes, that exploit along with a whole host of others was known about. The key (excuse the pun) was that few enough people knew about it and actually used it - the vast majority of people are either reasonably honest or just to ignorant to have a clue about how to open locks. Dont forget, there was no RU-vid or internet to "spread the word", just a few blokes down the pub (and they were probably too wasted to successfully wield a lock pick). By the '90's, the amount of cash needed to feed the meter, and the mugging of the blokes who collected the cash had made them totally obsolete, and replaced by token and key meters. Now-a-days, its all done by smart meters (yes, there are still many thousands of key and token meters out there, but they are gradually all being replaced). Smart meters run on data comms and have significant data security, but if you know the exploits, they too can be really easy to "work with". And if you really want to risk life and limb, the drug dealers just bypass the meter altogether - easy to detect, easy to do with a ten quid set of car jump leads from Halfords, and really easy to kill yourself with. And then to back up all the physical security, there is always the Revenue Protection teams who will extract back-payments, even if it means police attendance with a warrant, and ultimately its off to court for Billy Bad Boy. There are easier ways to save a buck or three. And the old EMEB is no more: sold to Powergen, who were bought by EOn, with the original headquarters in Arnold, Nottingham now a housing estate off Coppice Road, and the later headquarters in Wollaton, Nottingham sold to Siemens along with the metering business (where I spent too many years) and I believe now either a vacant lot, or being built on for housing since Siemens moved out a couple of years ago. I think that lock must be one of the few physical surviving parts of EMEB, apart from the board room table which is in a friends dining room.
The meter would also have been read when the cash was collected. The discrepancy between the cash collected and the electricity used would show up in the accounting and be attributed to either the meter reader or the household. Over time with rotation of meter readers it would be pretty clear who the guilty party was.
@@CptainCrunch Yet. "What I have for you today is a 5 glorck lock from Proxima Centauri ... I'm going to open it with this tool Bosnian Bill and I made"
Yeah, but surely they would sanction them somehow. I remember in the 80s my family had one of these. And the meters always took more in coins than the electricity you used. So, the collection person would read the meter, count the cash and return the difference. I'm fairly sure if certain families were constantly considerably below their metered electricity in the coin box they would become mighty suspicious. Unless of course this was combined with a bypass. But, well if you made that bypass the coins would last longer anyway.. Really not sure how you'd win at this game by just taking the coins.
r00ty's channel other people take the coins not the people living in the house or they lie and say someone is coming and stealing the coins before the meter man comes to collect
It would be incredibly interesting to have LPL and Ian from forgotten weapons to sit down and have a conversation. Both so soft spoken, straight forward, and experts in their fields.
Being a person from the UK and of the vintage that remembers these being used (albeit when I was very young) these coin meters were normally mounted about 7 feet in the air against the ceiling near the front door to the house, at least where I had seen them.
I should have known this 25 years ago when I was in the UK. 1995 they where still in use and when we had a party, sometimes the power went off and we had to refeed the meter.
Me too. All them years We dutifully paid 50Ps into the meter - even when mid programme of an evening wed miss a few minutes due to a blackout. Think of all the money my parents could've of saved.😭 Perhaps would've now have a bigger inheritance lol.
The only thing this channel has taught me is that I'm more insecure within my own home than I think and that someone with basic lock knowledge can easily break in.
@@diamondlpl Fair enough. I live in a ground floor apartment with a nice big sliding glass door. I lock and deadbolt the front door but I'm under no illusion that my home is secure against somebody who really wants MY stuff. I find it kind of weird that even criminals tend to obey the "only enter through the door" social paradigm; though of course I know some of that is broken windows and doors scream "break-in".
I think LPL has done a good job showing which locks and pinnings require advanced knowledge and skill. Not sure thugs will bother picking (or have the above), so this risk scenario would probably also involve hired assassins. 😁 There's also at least one PSA about how to upgrade a Kwikset lock, but maybe it's time for a more comprehensive one?
I can confirm when I was a student and we had coin op gas meters in our dorm rooms a lot of people used to bypass their locks. Me, I just bought an electric heater instead of using the gas fire (for some reason the gas was metered but the electricity was included in my rent).
I watch this channel occasionally, never thinking I would need to know any of this, but a little while back while buying a car the owner couldn't get into his safe for the title, and I managed to get it open by attacking its weak point. And today I got a lock pick kit to get the locking cap off a used gas tank I bought for a motorcycle I am rebuilding. I just wanted to post that because this channel helped with that, and I was happy I managed to do both of those things.
I really like the fact your videos get to the meat of the matter quickly. You leave out a lot of useless commentary like other youtube channels include. You do not try to streeeeetcccchhhhh your video length out with useless fluff and senseless commentary just to get a longer video. Keep up the good videos.
I always love when there's this slight sliver of hope for the lock but even. "This could be used for ___, but doesn't matter you can still bypass that".
The flaw was well know yes, but there were a number of other, and easier ways, to steal electricity with these and other meters of the same era which were also hard to detect. For example a strong magnet would interfere with the rotating disk so they misread the usage. Or if you knew where to drill, you could use the bristle of a paint brush to slow the meter too
Then there was the 'frisbee rewinder', an auto transformer which could be fitted illegally, and which really did rewind the spinning disk in those meters. I knew someone who was caught doing this, not because the device was still attached, but because he had wound the meter back way beyond what was attributable to a previous meter reading error! Modern meters have anti-tamper devices, which defeat any attempt to falsify the meter reading.
Or the time my uncle sat there with a strong magnifying glass focused on the black line of the disc until it slightly warped. Not enough to stop it, just enough to drag as it went around.
Good stuff. Another common one back in the day was inserting a needle through the tiny vent hole in the bottom of the older meters & holding it in place with plasticine, tensioning it so the dial still went around, but at a much slower rate.
A long time ago I used to live in a student digs with a coin operated meter, but IIRC, it was more like a parking meter - there was a dial where you put 50p in and turned the dial all the way around for that amount of power and the coin fell into a locked box that got emptied once in a while.
Think of all the work to go around emptying all those meters! Then there would have to be safety measures to prevent that person from stealing too, like another lockbox for the coins.
@@CallieMasters5000 trust me we had those meters too when I was a student and there was nothing to empty. Everyone found some sort of bypass or workaround. for me it was getting electric heater (because the only thing that was metered was the gas).
I used to rent a small apartment with a coin meter from an old bat. It had a basic cheap lock and the meter ripped me off with what she was charging for electric. I bent a fork prong and Voila. Can't believe how easy it is to unlock these cheap locks. She refused to give me my deposit back because I was 1 DAY late in giving my notice. Lets just say I left the meter empty :)
@@CallieMasters5000 I've looked some up online and the box the coins fell in was locked too. I'm sure it wasn't uncommon for people to try and take their coins back, or tamper with the thing but it was also a regular meter so I'm sure they could make a good guess how many coins should be in the box for the amount of units used. And it's not like they'd have trouble identifying the main suspects.
Prepayment meters thankfully weren't very common; mainly low income households who had a poor credit rating got them. We still have these today, but you top-up an electronic key at your local convenience store. Electricity costs a lot more this way, about 30% more than a standard billed meter. Most electricity meter fraud was and still is committed by by-passing the meter altogether, though tamper seals tried to mitigate it. In any case, that's all I have for you today.... ;)
'Electricity costs a lot more this way' - no longer true, as there are now suppliers who offer a single standard tariff regardless of the type of meter. Bulb are one example. Once prepayment became electronic it made little sense to penalise the prepayment meter customer.
@@innocentoctave True, though sadly those on the lowest incomes and the elderly are not always the most savvy when it comes to the best tariff. This is something that needs regulating.
They were in fact very common in the UK. Most rented properties had one. I actually had one put in a flat I owned & rented out in the late 1990s, after being advised to do so by the electricity company.
Gives new meaning to the phrase "feed the meter"! I can't imagine needing to "pay as you go" for electricity! They must have had a really big problem with people skipping out and not paying their electricity bills.
CatatonicBug Still do! Take your electricity key (plastic chip) into shops and they top it up by however much you pay...put it in the meter when back home, no bills...but its costs more per unit of electricity. It's another way the less well-off get scammed
I was proud the other day, my oldest has watched a few of your videos with me, and I walk in the house and she tells me that she picked the lock on her diary with a zip tie. Yes it was a cheap lock on a kid’s diary, but she did it all on her own.
I wish I had known this in the late 70's when I was a student in the houses where we lived in the Midlands. We had to resort to a mould of the coins we put in, filling with water and freezing then inserting that into the slot. Sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. But there was no evidence left when the ice evaporated in the coin box.
Indeed, it was never a problem getting water to freeze in houses like that. There was normally a block of ice in the toilet bowl, and all the drains were blocked with plugs of ice. No fridge was needed, because the whole house was a fridge.
So in the last 3 days or so I’ve watched probably 50 of your videos and for some odd reason I’m now obsessed with locks. Thanks for that. Anyway, I just ordered my first lock picking set and an acrylic clear lock so I can get an understanding of how picking a lock works while I get a feel for it. I guess I’ll go to Walmart and get some Masterlocks to start easy for practice once I’m ready. Anyway, thanks for the new hobby. If I come across an unusual lock I’ll send it your way.
The exploit was definitely known, my mum grew up quite poor and well remembers my grandpa opening up the electricity meter to reuse coins when money was tight. Great vid!
I've been on a weird trawl through your channel over the last day or so, and I just have to say, in addition to the fascinating insight into lock mechanisms you've provided, I really appreciate you ending each video wishing your viewers to have a nice day. It's a heartwarming little touch that lightens things up just a little bit.
Or half way through a programme in the eve suddenly it all goes black with a load click. Scrabbling around in the dark looking for a torch then a 50p...🙈
Could be worse, cash may have been phased but it ws replaced by worse things, either a a top up key which very few places actually top up. Or the dreaded punch cards with a magnetic strip, which my landlord used at my first flat and the only place to get more was the landlord which involved phoning him up in advance waiting a few days for him to show up or taking two buses to his office, £2 a pop
we were still running a coin meter at a holiday home in the 1990's/early 2000's, used to leave a stack of coins on the top just incase it ran out mid evening you could always find one.
And as for loses, NOPE. You still received a bill for the amount of electricity used. 'Meter Men' would call, read meter and collect the cash that was deducted from the bill. Meter men, some were dodgy, other were targets for robberies...Also remember the meter jamming rather too often. Found an article www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/europe-uk/electricity-prepayment-meters-in-the-uk/ for background reading.
Ws that coin meter a long vertical black box with a round knurled know at the top you turned clockwise I think until the 50p thunked to the bottom. Our coin meter knob was a black /silver in colour (paint had rubbed off inplaces) due to the many yrs of use.
I used to work security at the old Eastern Electricity Board warehouse next to the M25 once Eastern had left. It was an amazing place, it had all the infrastructure from when people were buying stuff from the old electricity board showrooms
I thought the same thing, but it seems that the lock is freely accessible when in use: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PNdeYW5Plwg.html Comments below all mention this exploit being used at the time.
Thanks, LPL. Some history for you: I live in the area which was covered by the EMEB, and saw quite a few of those locks, with various electricity and gas board initials, all around Britain. They were becoming quite scarce by the mid-1970's, but the last one I saw was in Wales in the late 1990's. The locks were fitted quite close to the coin box body, often under a protruding part of the mechanism box, so my guess is that the exploit was known, and the coin box shape was an attempt to foil lockpickers. Towards the end, an adhesive plastic seal replaced the paper. In practice, most electricity meter readers were not too bothered if the seal was broken, because he knew that people often did not have enough suitable coins in their possession. Payday was 'feed the meter day'! The meter reader (always a man) would arrive at the house, be invited in, open the box, count the money, check it against the gas or electricity meter reading, calculate the amount due, log it in his ledger, and either give a partial refund or else collect the deficit from the householder. He would gladly exchange those heavy coins for paper money, so that you had plenty in hand for the coming weeks. Then he would (usually!) close the lock and (sometimes!) add a new seal. Inability to pay would be dealt with as necessary, and generally very amicably. People tended to be much more honest about bill-paying in Britain back then. In practice, the people whom I knew did not bother to pick the locks. Instead, they collected foreign coins, used brass washers, or any other disk or wooden stick which would trip the mechanism, if suitable cash was not available. Some more modern prepayment meters are still in use, but they're card-operated, with electronic feedback directly to the electricity supplier, through the power lines. Pre-payment cards can be bought at many authorised shops. The one reason why they still exist is because a tenant, or previous tenant, has defaulted on payments repeatedly. They then pay a premium price for electricity or gas, so the meters are unpopular, and are best avoided.
We had one of these when I was a kid in England. Never heard of anyone picking them but regardless, the money in the collection box had to tally up with the readout on the meter otherwise the collector would suss out fiddling was happening.
My grandmother had a slot electric meter. With no warning everything would just turn off / as a child it was an exciting novelty to get the torch and feed the meter and everything would come back on
When I was a lad in the East midlands we had a pre-payment meter for our household gas supply. The coin used was a "shilling" which got decimalised in the 70s into 5 pence. A "shilling" was colloquially known as a "bob", ten shillings = ten bob. To this day in some areas of the East Midlands, and certainly in the factory where I worked for many years, the 5p coin is still often referred to as a "gas bob".
I don’t know why I’m watching your channel. The one thing is it’s fascinating I live and work on a farm of 5,000 acres and when we meet a lock we use a grinder or oxygen , acetylene fuel mix to cut locks with a proper cutting torch
I remember 50p Coin Electric Meters in the late 70's.... I also remember that you could make 50p shaped ice cubes with Plasticine moulds that would be accepted by the meter and then magically evaporate in the coin box ;-)
Around 1978 a couple of friends rented a static caravan whilst they were on detached assignment. Had a similar prepayment meter and lock, they'd jiggled that so the same coin was passed through the meter multiple times.
I once read a story about a cool bypass of this system, not related to lockpicking: people would carve fake coins out of ice for their coin operated home heating system, and that way when the owner would come around to collect the money, no fake coins would be found inside, since the ice would have molten by then. I am not sure if this is true or just fiction, but it is a cool piece of trivia this video reminded me of :)
I am from Nottingham in the UK (one of the areas where East Midlands Electricity Board used to operate), my grandad always used to open the coin box when they were running low on money haha.
My father used to work for Lowe and Fletcher as a zinc diecast machine operator. I had one of those locks as a child without the electrical board logo. Apparently they where made or issued as some kind of anniversary lock but who knows 🤷🏼♂️ I remember having LF master keys for all of the school lockers that my father misplaced 🙈
late 80s we had a recession, no work no money. i remember my dad regularly emptying the 50p meter for food or petrol, i also remember the panic hiding behind the settee when the meter man was due round. oh the good old days lol
Greetings from Nottingham, the East Midlands! Yeah the pass was known, usually people used it if money was particularly tight and the electric would get cut off
Bypassing meter locks was definitely known of back in the day. The lock on my bedsit's meter wasn't the same as that one, but it could be, and was regularly, easily shimmed.
Back in Uni, almost 30 years ago now, we didn't bother with the lock at all (well, not until we got really bored one night after a few too many drinks). We just made 50 pence coins out of ice and fed it that way. The meter ended up being replaced because it was 'mysteriously' rusting quite a bit. It was put down to a faulty unit and we got away with it. Can also testify that this exploit did /not/ work with the Granada rented TVs... that particular coin meter shorted out the first time we tried it :s
Back in the early 90s, I spent a year of college in England. Some of the students I knew that didn’t live on campus had those coin operated meters. They would complain that the power could go out, and if they didn’t have any change they were sol.
I’m East Midlands born and bred, trust me some scrote will definitely of worked that bypass out while they were still in use! My mates landlord legit offered to get someone to fit a bypass switch below his meter for him so he could save money but run it on the meter a little bit so they didn’t get suspicious 😂.
We had a meter on the side of our tv. This was 40 yrs ago when I was around 10. I discovered a bent paperclip took care of the pins and nail scissors turned the lock. Helped myself to a few 50 pence coins and locked it back up. Feel so guilty now. Cheers
For the record we didn't know about picking the lock, all I knew about was getting cold showers as the money would invariably run out mid shower, leading to a towel wrapped trot downstairs to top it up.
Coin operated meters are still used today in the UK - I am using one! It even got replaced with a new one that accepted the new £1 coins that were brought in in 2017.
When I was living in Kilburn North London back in the early 2000's we had a pay as you go electric meter. It wasn't coin operated. You had a little RFID tag thingy that you took down to the corner shop and loaded credit onto it. Then, when you got back to the flat, you inserted the tag into a slot on the meter to pay for your electricity. Coming from the United States, it felt like the oddest thing ever. Especially since I paid for the gas, telephone and cable TV in the usual way of just getting a bill in the mail.
We had one of these on our meter when I was a kid living in the East Midlands. Plenty of people used to fiddle the electric, but as I recall the meter man would come every week and empty the box out counting it all out in front of you. Normally, you overpaid a little (e.g. the meter uses more cash than the electricity actually cost) so you'd get a rebate there and then. I imagine the opposite would be true if there wasn't enough in the meter to cover the electric used (It's still read out on the front of the unit). I imagine if you are desperate enough to need money for food though, this was a viable option. Related to this, when I worked in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, I personally fitted a bunch of lockable coin operated electricity switches to our rental television sets. We didn't run the scheme for very long, but it worked reasonably well.
We still have prepayment meters in the UK, I have one, but they are now electronic, you charge a plastic key "chip inside" up at local outlets with an amount of money and insert it in the meter witch then tops up by that amount.
You can still find examples of coin meters with locked coin boxes in use in the UK, though the locks are usually more modern. They are often seen in buildings with multiple occupants who have to use some common facilities - cooking, or water heating, for instance. In theory, the use of prepayment meters limits the landlord's exposure to tenants who might run up a big bill and then do a runner. In practice, it often causes conflicts between tenants who use the resource at different rates. The old single-household coin meters were frequent targets of theft and fraud, as were public payphones before the advent of the mobile phone. If you include vending machines, launderettes and parking meters, quite a lot of cash was stored in accessible places with varying degrees of security.
Shilling-in-the-slot gas meters were a common feature in student digs (rented rooms in someone's house) when I was at uni. The landlord (in our case a landlady) could set the volume of gas you would get for your shilling, and if she was mean enough you could fork out pounds to stay warm in an Edinburgh winter. These meters also gave rise to the insult "here's a shilling, go and gas yourself".
When the meter man came to collect the 50p pieces, as a kid you'd hang around for the rebate you always seemed to get. The meter in our home paid for Gas
Never seen one of these locks...when I was a kid back in 60’s, we had a ‘coin meter’ for electricity, but the lock was much bigger and when positioned was tight against the meter...the key hold was on the bottom of the lock...the locking hasp of the meter filled the lock hasp and the lock could barely move...some later coin meters had no separate lock, they had a box and the lock was integral, welded to the inside of the box with just a key hole in the box itself...
When the guy came to empty the meter he would also take the kWh reading as well. If the amount of money in the meter didn't cover the amount of electricity used ,and the difference was significant the household would receive a bill for the balance. Usually, the deficit/over-payment was quite small due to the estimation of covering the standing charge, so he would usually just adjust the meter rate up or down very slightly to compensate.
Now we use a little plastic thing with a loop of wire that can be cleverly cut so it snaps back into the plastic! But the new fangled smart meters are difficult to fool.
I lived in a flat that had a coin meters for gas and electricity. When the guy came to get the money they read the meter and you paid what was due. If the coins covered it you were good. If the coins were short you made up the difference. Sometimes you got a bit of change back. They even had a dial that could adjust the rate the coins covered if it was off.
Although they could of nicked the money out of the meter, they still metered the electricity in. So if there was a deficit, you'd also have that put on you bill and the meter readjusted so you got less for your money.
[LPL'S HOUSE] Robber: *breaking in* *suddenly from behind* LPL: "Alright you got a click from 4, its probably in the gate. Though your technique is could use work." Ms LPL: "Alright I got the groceries, lets head in-" "And thats how to get into any home in under thirty seconds! you've come far in this past hour." Robber: "..... Thanks LPL!"
![[1123] Vintage UK Electric Meter Lock Bypassed (Lowe & Fletcher)](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
