City issues R400 000 water bill for La Rochelle resident
"The City will also send its meter readers for both the water and electricity services to the customer’s property to investigate.
LA ROCHELLE resident Rheinholdt van In was shocked when he received his March account statement from the City of Johannesburg stating that he owes close to R400 000 for water.
He said he believes that they are the ones who owe him. “Council says I owe R400 000 for water, but they owe me money. Since the end of July 2015 the council has not read my water meter; instead they would give an estimate and charge accordingly,” he said.
“At first I was told that they sometimes take three months to read the meter, but after a few more months I started to query the meter not being read (Reference numbers: 8002547416, 8002600305, 8002827230, 8002803288, 8003102684, 8003198089). The real problem came for me when they would estimate two and even three times the actual readings.
“In the beginning I tried to pay the bills as best I could while still following up on the queries but eventually I had to take a further home loan from the bond to keep up with the payments which fell further and further behind. All the while I would visit the offices monthly to give them photos of the meter so that they could give an actual reading and reverse all the estimates.
“Finally in January 2017 when I went in to the offices to submit my monthly photo, the lady told me that they had read the meter and all would be corrected. When February came I received a bill for R387 463.85. On further inspection I realised that the council had read the meters correctly, but when they did the calculations they added 10 000kl to the reading,” explained Rheinholdt.
He then went to the council offices to point out the error and the man who helped him said he didn’t know how they did the calculations but when Rheinholdt tried to explain that the problem was caused by a simple addition error, he refused to take him seriously, he said. The man did, however, promise to pass the case on to his supervisor for inspection but Rheinholdt says he has not heard anything since.
In addition he emailed the ward councillor, Clr Faeeza Chame, in the hope that she would help sort the issue out but she, too, has not responded, he said.
Clr Chame said she forwarded all the queries regarding billing to the MMC for Finance, Dr Rabelani Dagada. “I will have to follow up with him and I urge the resident to follow up with me once they send something. My number is 082 518 4375,” she said.
“By my calculations the council owes me roughly R20 000. I have been charged over R4 000 for interest as well as pre-termination notices even though the issue has been on query the whole time. I just want this matter to be put behind me and I feel that I have tried every avenue that I can think of – thus the reason for my asking Southern COURIER to help. If there is anyone that can maybe help me get this issue resolved I would be more than willing to give you all my records for inspection. I just don’t have much money available to pay for lawyers due to most of my money going to pay the council. I have had sleepless nights, health issues and stress relating to this matter – it has even taken a toll on my family,” noted Rheinholdt.
COURIER contacted the City of Johannesburg regarding this matter and Kgamanyane Maphologela, Communications and Stakeholder Management Group Finance, said:
“The City of Johannesburg has moved swiftly to contact the customer (Mr Rheinholdt van In) in order to assure him that the City will investigate the abnormal bill.
“The City will also send its meter readers for both the water and electricity services to the customer’s property to investigate.
“We need to do a thorough investigation and finally get to the bottom of the problem, which is why we will be sending the meter readers to check both the water and electricity meters. After the investigation is done, the City will formally give feedback to the customer.”
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