The Revenue Department don´t accept our readings since months

We moved in our new property in Kloof in February this year and made extensive alterations because we planned to get as far as possible off-grid. 42 solar panels, a 10 KW inverter and a huge lithium-ion battery got installed and we replaced the warm water geysers to gas ones too.

Since April I’ve sent my meter readings on monthly basis by SMS to the Municipality and got as answer regularly that “my account is under audit, estimated charges may be generated”. My mails sent on the 23.04. and 12.06.2019 to *** as well as to *** in which I asked for a meter reading remained ignored. I tried to contact them over eServices on the 15.07. and the 16.08.2019 asking for meter reading too, and got in both cases the answer, that “the correspondence has been resolved, the query has been forwarded to the relevant department”.

To my last reading sent on the 10.08. I got the message, that our “meter was manually read on 08/08/2019.” My joy about this message did not last long, because I got again estimated charges. Can it be, that they not even believe their own readings? Our grid usage for the last 4 months was overall 285 kwh only, but they estimated for the same period over 4267 kwh!

In their last bill from the 14th of August they are charging us further more with 44 and 36 kl estimated water usage. We are only living with 3 persons on this property and with that consumption we could fill up 1,5 large pools.

I have the feeling that I am fighting against windmills. Is there no one in charge for a fair billing at the municipality?