Residents of Corfu Island at their wit’s end with incorrect electricity bills

It has been an uphill battle of three years for Corfu Island residents against City Power.

This is because City Power engineers incorrectly connected Corfu Island’s power meter with another residential complex which has three times the amount of units.

The substation that feeds power to Corfu Island is also home to three other complexes in the same street. Now Corfu Island is being forced to foot the bill and has been getting nowhere with City Power.

Corfu Island’s problems started in early 2015 when City Power removed the old power reading meter, metering the bulk power usage of the complex Corfu Island, and replaced it with a modern telematic meter.

They also rewired and changed the current transformers (CT’s) used to measure the power consumption.

Since the installation of the new transformers, the Corfu Island’s Board of Trustees noticed that what was recorded on their internal metering did not agree with the billing statements issued by the City of Johannesburg.

Corfu Island’s Trustees member Jeff Hollingdale said they contacted City Power’s metering department to find out why the power consumption recorded was about three times more than what was normally calculated.

“We contacted City Power Metering to complain because what they recorded was more than what was normally calculated based on the sum of readings taken from each of the 14 unit’s meters, the means by which each owner is billed individually,” said Hollingdale.

After two years of battling the issue and getting nowhere, Corfu Island’s bill had steadily grown and they eventually got an independent consultant to investigate.

“The consultant we engaged duly checked the City Power metering system and demonstrated, by the simple act of switching-off the Corfu Island power breaker that it didn’t affect the power to Corfu Island but did ‘blackout’ an adjacent 42 unit complex,” said Hollingdale.

“Further inspection revealed that the current transformers measuring the power consumed by the 42 unit adjacent property were, in fact, connected to the Corfu Island bulk meter. Problem solved.”

Once the real issue was found, calls to City Power were made and they sent a team to change the cables.

The Corfu Island residents were hoping that the discovery of the problem would see their account rectified but this was not the case. They are still getting letters of demand for them to settle the amount, even though they were incorrectly billed.

“We want to be credited for the amounts we have paid to the City of Johannesburg because the installation was incorrect and the error did not come from us.

We cannot be made to pay for human error not, of our own doing, but we have gotten nowhere. If we do not pay, they threaten to cut off our power which they almost did at one point before. We need help.”

ALSO READ: All you need to know about Joburg’s social benefits programme, the ESP