In many cases, the utility company reads your meter once every two months but bills you once a month. That practice is called "estimated usage". Your utility bill should show whether it's estimated usage or actual usage. Depending on how they estimate, your bill will fluctuate a little month-to-month.
In your post you mentioned that they swapped in a used meter, is it a solid-state meter or electro-mechanical meter? If it's a solid-state meter, you may be one of the lucky ones to try the new technology...
See this link http://www.itron.com/pages/news_press_individual.asp?id=itr_011189.xml