A number of residents in Kensington have been complaining about inconsistent billing and the City of Joburg (CoJ) failing to conduct meter readings.
The CoJ told the EXPRESS it will introduce a regionalised billing system on December 1.
This new system will form part of a new credit control policy and will be aimed at improving billing accuracy and increasing operational efficiency.
Mr Kgamanyane Maphologela, from customer communications and stakeholder management, said the new move will give customers the freedom to choose their own due dates, between the 15th and the last day of the month for the payment of services.
Customers will be able to create a predictable, common date for billing and meter readings.
“This move will improve billing accuracy, reduce the number of estimated bills and create a platform for shorter turnaround times on query resolutions,” said Mr Maphologela.
The new billing system will assist the city to profile customer queries per region and gather accurate customer intelligence on every region.
Mr Maphologela said the development was the result of the current billing schedules being open on all working days of the month, consisting of 21 portions.
“Each portion caters for each regional township in the city, which strains the physical meter reading and impacts on billing accuracy. From December 1, there will be dedicated meter readers per region.
“We want to reduce the number of portions, focus on each region and improve the quality of meter reading and query resolution,” said Mr Maphologela.
“The move to the new system will reduce the number of billing portions from 21 to eight. The transactions of customers who pay their bills via a third party on the due date will only reflect on the city’s systems three days later, resulting in the kick-in of credit control measures. Customers who currently have debit orders must amend their debit order dates with their financial institution to reflect the new, correct deduction date,” he said.
A list of suburbs per region will be published on www.joburg.org.za from November 1 for ease of reference should customers not know which region they reside in.
Also, a list of meter reading dates per region will be published on the website.
From now on customers are encouraged to pay their bills as per the normal due dates.
