Joburg customers alerted of maintenance to improve customer satisfaction

The City of Johannesburg announced system maintenance earlier this month to improve customer service quality.

The routine maintenance, which began on March 4, was initially scheduled to conclude on March 21 but they have extended it to March 28, due to further remedial actions that were identified.

The database maintenance exercise is necessary for improved end-to-end business processing and customer satisfaction. As part of the ongoing maintenance, hardware inconsistencies will be fixed and some database discrepancies slowing down the system addressed to ensure optimal functioning.

During the extended maintenance period, some services, such as applications for new service connections of water and electricity, applications for meter tests, applications for pensioner rebates, closing and opening of new accounts, applications of clearance figures, issuing clearance certificates to conveyance attorneys, refunds processing and the call centre cannot process service requests or view accounts and will remain unavailable.

Customers may experience temporary difficulties accessing their current invoices through the e-Joburg platform. However, some services are still available, including accessing historic customer statements and uploading meter readings through the e-Joburg platform, making payments on the system at walk-in centres and EFT payments through third parties such as Easy Pay or Shoprite Checkers.

They encourage customers who do not receive their most recent invoices to pay based on their previous month’s bills to avoid falling into arrears or an average where there are accounts disputes. These payments will reflect on customers’ statements when the system becomes available.

Although some services remain unavailable, the city is continuously rendering other services without interruption.

These services include:

• The call centre continues to service all priority requests and incidents for city parks

• City Power and Joburg Water continue to render query and issue support through the Forcelink App.

• The Johannesburg Road Agency find and fix app remains available

• The managed-engine solution for logging incidents that relate to fibre and Wi-Fi failures remains available.

• The construction permit system remains available to submit all development plan requests.

The city understands the inconvenience that the maintenance may cause and apologise for it. The city is committed to delivering excellent services to customers and would do everything possible to minimize the impact of the disruption.

Customers may contact the city’s customer service centres for further information.