New gadget will reduce monthly municipal costs

A NEW water metering gadget is aiming to assist consumers to keep track of water bills, cut costs and improve their credit rating.

In many instances, consumers are in debt to municipalities for their water and lights bills – in fact, some eight million people are known to be in exactly such a position says Larry Symington of MyWater.

“The MyWater meter enables consumers to keep track of exactly what their monthly water costs are, while encouraging good water use habits through alarms that warn the user if water has been running for more than 15 minutes at a time. The meter is connected – via the cloud – to both the municipality, which also receives constant updates, reducing its need to send out meter readers, and the user’s cell phone. This means the consumer always knows what is going on with his water account.”

Symington said the water account can also be paid via cell phone. More critically, he says that credit providers have agreed that they will give consumers additional credit rating points for timeous payments.

“MyWater meters offer a whole lot more than just improved credit ratings however. These meters can also be of enormous benefit to the municipalities themselves, as they could eliminate the need for a municipality to print out and send invoices every month, which can be an expensive undertaking.

“Furthermore, since the vast majority of citizens are currently in arrears, these municipalities are losing out on a lot of potential interest. By encouraging citizens to pay their water bill timeously, municipalities would find themselves with more money available to improve services.”

MyWater will lease the metering equipment to customers on a maintenance contract for a fixed pricing term, with the company lobbying municipalities to encourage people to invest in the technology by wiping away their existing arrears and offering them a fresh start.