Locals struggle with EFT electricity purchases
The problem could lie with your vendor, bank or the municipality.
Prepaid-electricity users have been unable to purchase vouchers online for the past few days.
This being the case although Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) is listed as a so-called online municipality with third-party prepaid-electricity vendors such as Prepaid24.
According to one prepaid user, who asked to remain anonymous, she has been unable to purchaseelectricity online for the past week. “I truly am at my wits’ end,” she complained on Tuesday morning.
After registering as a Prepaid24 user, she started purchasing electricity online via her bank’s website about a year ago. “It used to work, but recently an error message kept popping up: ‘Vending not allowed’.”
After a number of Mbombela residents had reported the same problem, Nelspruit Post contacted MLM and Prepaid24 for comment.
Ms Vivian Mostert of Prepaid24 explained that they were a third-party vendor, supplying electricity vendors to clients given to them by municipalities across the country. She explained the working of the process: “In order for a client to transact with us, they need to make an EFT payment into our account (we bank with Absa, FNB, Nedbank, Standard Bank and Capitec).
At this time, no payment has yet been made to our account, so the “no vending allowed” error suggests that the issue should be taken up with their banking institution,” she suggested. “Once we receive a payment, we process it and should we experience any difficulties, we communicate the same to the client via email or SMS.”
According to Mostert, this difficulty could be caused by various things, including a municipality being offline, a registration error or the municipality not recognising the client’s meter number. She advised electricity purchasers to contact MLM or their banks to investigate the cause of the issue.
“If the problem lies with the municipality, a technician can be sent out to investigate,” she said. At the time of going to print, the municipality had not yet responded to Nelspruit Post’s queries.
