Prepaid woes
Residents were having problems with purchasing prepaid vouchers over the weekend
Buying and loading prepaid vouchers over the weekend causes headaches to many residents.
On Saturday no-one could buy electricity at some of the vendors and when they finally found a vendor that wasn’t off-line, their prepaid meters at home would not take it.
The Ekurhuleni prepaid system was allegedly off over the weekend and Amanda Stander says they have had a problem getting their tokens loaded.
They went to the metro department in First Avenue, were given two key change tokens and their problem was solved.
“I bought another electricity voucher but it suddenly appears we have changed from tariff A to goodness
knows what,” she adds.
According to Jan Beukes, manager at a garage in Geduld, the X-Link was off since Friday at 6pm.
“It was off over the whole of South Africa and the link went back online at 6pm on Saturday,” he adds.
He explains the X-Link is used by all the stores and garages all over South Africa therefore when the link is off, no-one can pay for anything with a card.
Another problem arose when Wendy Pieters bought a prepaid voucher online.
She tried to load it, but her meter would not take the pin number.
The only option she had was to report the matter to the metro.
But calling the call centre on 086 054 3000 did not help much.
“The number was not available,” she says.
The Addie tried the toll-free number several times but the voice message given is “the number you have dialed is unobtainable”.
Strubenvale resident Johan Boucher says he also tried to load his voucher number but the meter would not take this voucher either.
According to Pick n Pay customer director Jonathan Ackerman, the problems experienced by vendors in the Ekurhuleni system are intermittent connectivity interruptions between vendors and suppliers.
He says it is not limited to Pick n Pay and they do apologise for any inconvenience caused to their customers.
“We will continue to work with our suppliers to resolve these intermittent interruptions.”
No comment was received from the metro at the time of going to print on why the call centre number was unobtainable.
