Trying to sort City Power bill was stressful and infuriating

DAVID Fleminger writes: Since City Power installed a smart meter six months ago, I’ve been getting estimated readings that are double the actual reading.

I’ve been paying my usual amount while trying to rectify the issue – with zero results. They came to cut me off. I showed them my bill and the actual reading on the meter and they left, saying they would speak to credit control. I don’t know if/when they’ll be back.

Over the past six months, I’ve made many phone calls, received reference numbers, had the issue escalated, sent emails with meter readings, had two meter readers come to the house, and have been to the walk-in centre three times. Nothing has happened.

On the advice of my councillor, I printed out everything and went to the Daisy Street walk-in centre for the third time. I waited two hours and was second in line when the system went down.

This apparently happens several times a week, usually in the afternoons. I was advised to come back earlier, before lunch when they often go off-line.

Obviously, people were angry – most of the people I spoke to have also been trying to sort out similar billing issues for months. The poor staff of the walk-in centre all went out the back to hide.

I’m feeling helpless and beyond frustrated. I’m also angry at the contempt with which I am being treated by a utility that is doing nothing to help the people it’s supposed to serve.

Fleminger writes again: There’s been progress. It seems the guys who came to cut me off got credit control to do something and they have refunded me for the over-estimations. I have logged additional issues, such as getting a refund for the interest and pre-termination notice charges.

Based on my experience, I humbly submit some simple and productive solutions to try to make a difference for the better:

Upgrade the IT infrastructure urgently to prevent the system from going down so often. This is beyond frustrating – especially when you’ve been sitting in line for an hour.

Reduce waiting times at walk-in centres. They are awful places filled with angry people (many of whom are there for the fourth or fifth time). The city needs to understand that taking two to three hours out of your working day to log a query isn’t acceptable. The best solution would be to have more staff or a system for making appointments, or at least let customers log in and put themselves on a virtual waiting list. They could then be given an approximate time to come in based on the queue. Updates could be sent via SMS.

Revise the reference number system. Between the call centre and walk-in centre, I must have spoken to dozens of people – each of whom wanted to give me a new reference number. It was a mess. There should be one reference number per case. Introduce dedicated case managers for long-term issues. This would certainly have speeded up what was, in my case, a simple error that just needed someone to take responsibility for the correction. Improve access to credit control. Following my last point, I received several pre-termination notices (which are stressful). I tried to lodge a written objection with the credit department but there was no response from the email address and it’s impossible to speak to anyone on the phone (unless it’s a low-level service agent and then the whole process starts all over again). A new mechanism needs to be found. I hope the suggestions might be taken into account on some level.