City Power faces another electrical bill issue

Resident is fed up with City Power’s inability to resolve his billing issue.

A week doesn’t seem to pass without a City Power client complaining about how the City’s electricity supply has failed to rectify a billing issue.

Horst Koster, a Northcliff resident, has been trying to get City Power to correct his bill, which now sits at over R314 000.

Koster said the reason for this incorrect bill is the fact that City Power is using the wrong meter readings to estimate his monthly bill.

He said, “Almost two years ago I noticed that the charges on my electrical bill had gone all the way up.

“Upon inspection, I realised that the meter reading on my property didn’t match the reading on my municipal bill,” he said. Koster then went on a battle with the City to correct this and to this day hasn’t been successful.

Koster said he’s made multiple attempts to resolve the matter.

“I have a file of letters written to the City as well as photographs of my meters and readings. I’ve sent Mayor Herman Mashaba letters and I’ve even had the town councillor involved.”

After all this, Koster still hasn’t been able to anyone to correct his bill.

Failure to correct the matter has resulted in Koster receiving pre-termination letters on a monthly basis.

These threats to turn off his power are received even after Koster makes monthly electricity bill payments of between R4 500 and R5 000.

Not only is Koster fed-up with the lack of urgency from the City, but also with the fact that he is still being billed and charged for meters that were removed by City Power.

He said, “What complicates the matter, even more, is that I used to have three meters on my property and City Power sent someone to take them out and install one meter.

At the end of the month, I received the bill and noticed that I was still being charged for the meters they had taken out. My latest invoice shows I am still being charged for the old meters and the new one!”

A hopeless Koster added that he has no faith in City Power correcting its mistakes.

He said, “I don’t even look at their meter readings anymore, it’s a waste of my time because they are always wrong.”

He said the meter will read 8 000 units while the bill says 10 000 units; that difference accumulates every month and he is charged for it. All he asks for is to be billed correctly.

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