Well fools is a bit strong
There are a few potential benefits to smart metering, but most of them will be difficult to implement.
While I agree with your assessment of the complexity of the Chang of Supplier process, a couple of the main sticking points will be smoothed by having meters which can get poled for information:
The change of supplier reading will be easier and cheaper to obtain, and less liable to gaming by customers who change their suppliers frequently.
The metering details will be potentially at the click of a button away, meaning that your change of supplier process will be far smoother and there will be less data attrition.
We're not going to see loads of people suddenly out of work over this as there is still a legal requirement to eyeball the meter at least once every two years to make sure no one has tried to tamper with it, no wires are hanging off etc - this cannot be done remotely.
You'll still want to get a regular read or so to make sure that what the meter is sending you is correct.
Hard to get to sites or sites which have high cost to serve such as providing "wind ons" on pre payment meters when some pikey has forgotten to charge their meter on a bank holiday Friday, or obstructive paranoids who won't let the meter reader in to the site will become far less burdensome. At a site visit cost in excess of £50 a throw, this means lower costs to the people who are on more standard tariffs, as currently ofgem rules prevent these costs being passed through to the people who cause them in most cases.
Time of day tariffs are a lovely idea, however, there is a peak in demand for a very good reason - are you going to say to your kids "oh hang on til 10pm for your dinner kids, cause that's when the power is cheaper!!" - that said, you could offer significant benefits to consumers who reduce their peak consumption and pass on the benefits that the supplier will get if they can PROOVE it.
The UK energy market is divided into 6 main suppliers, a handful of distribution network operators, a transmission network operator, various "agents" such as the Data collector, data aggregator, meter operator etc. and the settlement agency. The upshot of this is that you have a lot of legacy systems out there (OMG an IT angle!) which are frankly unable to cope with having high granularity settlement for the 26 mill households in this country. Having time of use billing may not have any relation to having time of use settlement - unless the suppliers sort this out there won't be many benefits for them to pass on.
That said, the suppliers that CAN offer effective time of use tariffs will be able to offer highly competitive rates to those consumers who are able to manage their consumption more carefully.
Smart meters have a cost, and have benefits that are not directly available, but get a grip:
If you are prepared to be a good little eco-bunny, you might just stand to see some serious financial benefits for it. If you aren't going to change what you're doing, you won't get stomped on that hard, ofgem won't let them do it.
Plus - 10k sites out of 26 million plus - not really a problem now is it?