incorrect billing

<p>My name is Zanele Vilakazi and I am part of a company called Vilakazi Farm Business Enterprise based in Nigel. I would like to bring to your attention a pressing issue regarding our power supply from Eskom.</p> <p>On the 16th February 2017, I received an email with a letter requesting for metre readings from Dorothy Motshwene. I responded by granting her the access she had asked for by sending her the Farm Managers numbers and that the Eskom contractors may go to the farm any day of the week to take the readings as the Farm Manager would be there to grant them access. I saw that she did not get back to me so I then sent another email as a follow-up on the previous email sent, to which she responded by informing me that at the current moment Eskom did not have contractors to take metre readings as their contract expired in January 2017 and they were in the process to procure new contractors. As soon as they get somebody to read, they would contact the Farm Manager. That to me was confirmation that she had taken the Farm Managers contact numbers to give to the contractors.</p> <p>On the 21st April 2017, I received an email from Constance Ledwaba, requesting that I provide her with our metre readings so as to avoid for system estimates. She gave me a time frame to send her the readings between the 21st and the 24th April 2017. She also requested that I send her our account number, metre number, a photo of the readings and our contact numbers to which I did as asked.</p> <p>On the 27th April 2017, I then went on to receiving a statement of account and only to find that we were billed R26 152,48. When I checked the billing dates, I saw that the statement was between 25/04/2016 – 24/04/2017, making it a statement for a whole years supply of electricity. To me that was extremely odd considering that I had been receiving monthly statements of account and had been paying as per the statement stipulation.</p> <p>I sought out some clarification from our nearest Eskom branch in Nigel where I met with Patience Motsomane and she told me that the system had been doing estimates on our account and that the last reading done by us at the farm was on 25/04/2016. I asked why were the metre readings not taken for an entire year but she said she did not know why but it is Eskom’s fault for not taking the metre readings thus leading the system to do an estimate. She referred us to the Boksburg branch where we would meet with Eugene Carolus to get more clarity on the issue.</p> <p>I went to Boksburg and met with Eugene who then went to Constance to check the picture I had sent of the readings and what the reason was which lead to the system taking estimates on the account. He later came back and told me that the Eskom contractors sent to the farm would get to our gate and not gain access to take the readings due to locked gates. It puzzled me how they could make that an excuse as we had allowed them to put their padlock on our gate so as to gain access whenever they had to take readings. They also have the Farm Managers contact numbers to call if they needed to take readings. All in all, we did not prohibit the contractors from doing their jobs as they later went and removed their padlock from our gate and did not tell us why they did so. They would also call Mrs Vilakazi, the Farm Owner, who would refer them to call the Farm Manager to get the readings. We did not prohibit the metre readings from being taken when they were due so for Eskom to demand that we pay R26 152,48 for something which is not our fault is absolutely ridiculous. I was told that unfortunately the money has to be paid regardless of the fault being Eskom’s contractors.</p> <p>We refuse to pay for something that is not our fault and desperately need for Eskom to rectify this issue as we cannot afford for our power supply to be disrupted due to this issue. As we all know, Eskom is very quick in disconnecting the power supply without even investigating what the problem might be.</p>