Pre-termination complaints and a warning to pay accounts in full

NATHAN STERN WRITES: I manage a complex in Douglasdale and we recently got a pre-termination notice for an account that was not due. The termination of water is illegal as the account is not overdue.

It is ridiculous that the residents of the complex should suffer with no water due to city council’s incompetence. We shall inform all residents of this disgusting action of disconnecting water. CLIVE GILBERT WRITES: I am an estate agent in the southern suburbs and I manage about 100 properties. Our owners have been getting pretermination notices regularly now even though the account is not due.

We are finding that the council is cutting back payment times from 28 days to 14 days.

This is upsetting many people who work on a monthly budget.

THE CITY REPLIES: The city would like to remind its customers to pay their accounts in full and on time. When paying their municipal accounts, customers should use the information they receive from the city in the form of invoices/statements which are sent to them via mail, e-mail or MMS.

We have an increasing number of customers who only pay a portion of the total amount, instead of paying the full amount that is required on a monthly basis.

The problem with this is when the city collates all the shortfalls of the money owed, it comes out to a substantial amount of the total money the customer owes.

Because the customer didn’t pay their account in full, it triggers a pretermination notice as the account was in arrears for 90 days.

The pre-termination notice is valid for three months, meaning if the customer defaults on their payment or doesn’t pay the account in full and on time within this period, credit control measures will kick in.

The city gives its customers 28 days before any credit control measures can be effected on the outstanding accounts. Customers who fail to pay their accounts on or before the due date – as it appears on their statement – are given another 14 days to pay.

Failure to comply with this will result in the city having no option but to terminate services in order to prevent the customer from being overindebted.

This is in line with the provisions of our credit control policy, which governs the consumer and services provider relationship.