What do you do if your normally frugal municipality bill is suddenly inflated to R67 000 in one month?
Nobody looks forward to their monthly municipal bill, but for pensioner Wilhelmina Kuhn-Steyn of Westdene this, compounded with electrical surges damaging her house, was a bit much to swallow. And she’s not the only local resident who has received a ridiculously inflated bill.
The Van Kleist family woke up one morning to a bill of R15 000 after months of steadily increasing bills after having a smart meter installed in their home.
And Sophiatown’s Colin and Clare Fitzgerald have been battling with increases on their bills for years.
For many of the residents of Westdene and Sophiatown, the charges on their July – and in some cases previous months’ bills – were staggering. Some complained that their bills had doubled, or in some cases tripled overnight.
The City of Johannesburg admitted that errors were made on most home-owners in Johannesburg’s municipal bills in the July month.
Stan Maphologela, spokesman for the City Revenue department, said it was correct that a number of customers had received billing statements for July with duplicate VAT charges.
“It’s an honest error that happened on the system,” Maphologela said.
“The City has issued a statement that they will be correcting this error. VAT charges of six or eight percent was inflated to 25 percent, and in some rare cases, to more. People shouldn’t pay the extra amount. It won’t be a difficult task to adjust, the overcharged amount will be reversed and shown on their August statement, so wait until your August bill arrives and check that it has been rectified. Those whose bills have not been adjusted should call City of Johannesburg on 0860 562 874.”
He said that the City of Johannesburg ”regretted any inconvenience caused in the meantime.”
A Pikitup spokesperson said that their department was aware of the error and had finalised a solution which would be implemented for the next billing run.
But these explanations do not neccesarily account for bills as large as R67 000.
The City of Johannesburg has been replacing the old meters with new digital Smart Meters in homes and businesses. Quite a few of the residents, who have received Smart Meters, are now reporting problems with high electricity bills and/or estimated readings.
City Power spokesperson Sydney Mpahlele said that they would look into the reported matters, and address the over-inflated charges if these were not caused by the double VAT billing errors.
