Johannesburg - A Craighall family got the fright of their lives when their electricity was suddenly cut off and they were told they owed the City of Joburg almost R14.2 million.
Mark Kyle said they hadn’t received a pre-termination letter warning them of the arrears.
“We always pay our account, so you can imagine the shock,” he said.
After spending six hours at the Randburg walk-in centre, Kyle was told they had been in arrears and they would send someone to reconnect.
This didn’t happen and the family spent two weeks without power.
“The walk-in centre staff were at a complete loss to explain why we had been disconnected, citing an outstanding payment for R14 199 752, but still we waited for reconnection. No matter how many people I spoke to, no one could explain where this figure came from. There were lots of helpless shrugs all around,” he said.
In fact, after he did a reconciliation, he found he was in credit of R3 353.
“We have also made a payment of R6 652 this week in another attempt to get reconnected, which will take our total credit to R10 005,” he said.
One of the issues, said Kyle, was the smart meter installed in July last year. “It seems it was never connected to the database at the council to pick up the readings - hence the estimates, but how they got to R14m is unbelievable,” he said.
The City of Joburg’s revenue department said Kyle’s bill had been corrected.
Spokesman Kgamanyane Stan Maphologela said: “The City of Joburg has since proactively corrected the anomalies in the affected customer’s bill and unreservedly apologised to him.”
“The customer has been reconnected.
“The city is not obliged to disclose the current status of the customer’s account with any third party due to confidentiality clauses,” he said.
Maphologela said this was an isolated case.
The Star