Buy electricity from legal vendors, says Eskom

Consumers are being warned against buying electricity tokens from unregistered or illegal vendors.

This stern warning was issued by Eskom on Tuesday amid a reported rise in illegal electricity sales scams on social media.

According to the power utility, scammers are offering customers fake prepaid vouchers online at discounted rates.

“Once payment is made to the fraudulent website, often through electronic funds transfer (EFT) services at major supermarkets, the scammers disappear with the money, and no credit tokens are received.

“In some cases, the scammers even impersonate the Eskom brand to deceive unsuspecting customers,” said Eskom.

“Eskom is deeply concerned about these illegal activities, as they not only defraud customers of their hard-earned money, but also compromise the integrity of the electricity distribution system.”

Anyone with information on unlawful activities, including illegal electricity sales, fraud, theft of coal, fuel oil, diesel, and critical and essential infrastructure crimes is also urged to come forward.

‘Zero electricity buyers’

This comes amid ongoing efforts to help zero electricity buyers, with lost, bypassed or tampered prepaid meters ahead of next week Friday’s deadline for the Key Revision Number (KRN) 2 rollover.

Consumers had initially been given a 24 November deadline to update their prepaid electricity or be left without power.

This resulted in long queues at Eskom offices as many faced challenges with updating the meters to KRN2.

“The result of this technology changeover has brought Eskom around 400 000 previous zero buyers to become new paying customers, and provided us with a wealth of data to bring further zero buyers into legitimately purchasing electricity.

“Eskom is doing everything practically possible to make electricity users pay for it in the interest of those who already pay for power, maintain the sustainability of Eskom to drive the economic growth of South Africa and reduce our burden on the taxpayer,” said Eskom group chief executive Dan Marokane.

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