Picture: The Citizen/Michel Bega
Eskom announced on Wednesday that its Vending System has been fully restored and electricity purchases are back online, following weeks of disruption that left residents across South Africa unable to purchase electricity.
“Eskom’s Vending System is fully operational and electricity purchases are back to normal. Should a customer continue to experience challenges with buying electricity, please update your details via Alfred,” the utility announced via social media.
However, numerous customers report continuing difficulties with electricity purchases, contradicting Eskom’s announcement of restored services.
The utility had previously acknowledged technical issues with its system on 19 October, advising customers to use alternative purchasing methods.
“We are aware of the technical issues preventing some customers from loading credit tokens purchased online. If you encounter this issue, please buy from any nearby authorised vendor or retailer,” Eskom stated, at the time, providing instructions for token uploads.
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Multiple customers have taken to social media to express their ongoing struggles with the system.
“@Eskom_SA [I] can’t buy electricity since Saturday and tried Alfred but still no luck. Today marks three days without electricity,” said user @Dorah_A_ on Wednesday morning.
Another user, Samkelisiwe Ntuli, described their predicament: “It’s been 65 hours now and still no electricity…. my laptop is dead…all that is keeping me company is the fact that I have English exam papers to mark and also prepare for Maths classes on Saturday…but nje Eskom usiphilisa kabhlungu angifuni kungasho.”
“It’s my fourth day without power, I reported [the issue] on Sunday. I went to your offices on Monday, yesterday and even today,” said Helper Chauke.
This disruption comes as Eskom has been urging consumers to upgrade their prepaid meters by 24 November.
The upgrade is required for all Standard Transfer Specification (STS) compliant pre-payment meters to prevent service interruption when the Token Identifier (TID) expires on November 24.
Eskom has introduced a “Do It Yourself” option for customers, to speed up the conversion.
“Eskom has opted for a “Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach which is the same way that customers are using when loading their electricity tokens, KRN coding is two more additional steps to the electricity token loading,” said Magubane.
During the DIY process customers are guided on how to obtain and load the required Key Change Tokens in their prepaid electricity meters.
Eskom will provide a pair of key change tokens when a consumer buys their usual top-up prepaid electricity through any of the Eskom-approved vending channels and outlets.
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1. Lock in the first 20 digits of your re-code token and wait for it to be accepted
2. Type in the second 20 digits of your re-code token and wait for it to be accepted
3. Key in the 20 digits of your purchased token to recharge your meter.
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