Thanks for valuable info discussing this tooic

Converting the postpaid electricity to prepaid, i need to know if anyone can tell me that this will be the end of monthly electricity network surchage service charge from COJ?

Yes the surcharge will be removed once you convert 

On 2023/10/04 at 1:02 PM, zsde said:

Ekurhuleni requires a recharge once in 3 months at least on prepaid else they disconnect you permanently.
I bough R100 a week or so ago at the Municipality when I paid my normal account and the teller gave me the slip which had  3 sets of numbers on it which she explained I had to enter sequentially. The last one then added the units.
When I asked her why, she had no idea.
So the last time I recharged was end of July, so it seems that a monthly recharge is expected and in the absence of that, they then seem to issue one set of numbers for each month that nothing was purchased.
 

The string of numbers (first 2) were to upgrade the software of the meter as they were running out of tokens with the old software. 

On 2023/08/05 at 9:14 PM, system32 said:

CoJ: The first 350kWh on pre-paid are the cheapest.
The bands for CoJ pre-paid:

CoJ Reduced the bands about 4 years back - used to be the same bands as post-paid.
Pre-paid with less bands still cheaper than post paid in CoJ.

COJ is really affordable on pre-paid. Ekurhuleni will NAIL you when you use more than 700 units in a month. 

 

Edited February 1, 20242 yr by Zweli

The big takeaway here is to learn what tariffs are available to you, do some sums, then see what suits you.

Many people in COJ could save the best part of a grand a month if they converted to pre-paid.

Absolutely. Been on prepaid for years now and it's just the best. The ability to even just monitor your consumption on the daily shifts behavior a lot and that brings added savings. 

1 hour ago, Zweli said:

Absolutely. Been on prepaid for years now and it's just the best. The ability to even just monitor your consumption on the daily shifts behavior a lot and that brings added savings. 

Normally when it's working fine no problem. 

Recently we found quite a few people got removed from the database by a munic and none of them were able to load their tokens. Still prefer my post paid without a supply fee. 

8 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

Normally when it's working fine no problem. 

Recently we found quite a few people got removed from the database by a munic and none of them were able to load their tokens. Still prefer my post paid without a supply fee. 

TIP: If you on pre-paid, always buy a few units every month to prevent your account from being deactivated.

I buy R300 every month even though some months I've not used any grid.

Edited February 1, 20242 yr by system32

For the guys who were audited by CoJ when they installed pre-paidd with solar –

How does one go about proving you're not stealing electricity because you have a PV system? What sort of things do you need to submit?

On 2024/02/16 at 3:35 PM, KW39 said:

For the guys who were audited by CoJ when they installed pre-paidd with solar –

How does one go about proving you're not stealing electricity because you have a PV system? What sort of things do you need to submit?

Off the bat  - pictures of your system

COC 

Site inspection 

On 2024/02/16 at 3:35 PM, KW39 said:

For the guys who were audited by CoJ when they installed pre-paidd with solar –

How does one go about proving you're not stealing electricity because you have a PV system? What sort of things do you need to submit?

OK. I know of two kinds of audit, but they really amount to the same thing.

1) Routine audit
2) Checking your meter because the usage has dropped significantly

In both cases they are going to check for tampering, for signs of bridging, and that the serial number on the meter matches what they have on their database for the property. If the meter number is correct and there's no signs of bridging then how you can you be stealing?

They might ask if you have an alternative source of power, but I presume that is they because they are tired of getting electric shocks when they think the power is off.

I've had them several times at my place since I went to prepaid. Since I got solar they have, on a couple of occasions, taken photos of the panels on the roof, but nothing happened as a result.

I'm currently registering my system with the City. There is a process. It is supported by (poorly communicated) by-laws. I figure that at some point they are going to get more aggressive with this requirement. Part of that process is a warning sign on the box where the municipal breaker and the meter live, warning that there are dual sources of power on the property.

Edited February 18, 20242 yr by Bobster.

Actually there's a third reason for auditing. The client phones up City Power and says that their meter is a load of because they can't possibly be using that much electricity a month.

@AlexTZA

 

Please could you send me the info of the third party you used to apply. 
 

Thanks

 

Dunc

On 2024/03/03 at 8:36 AM, Duncs said:

@AlexTZA

 

Please could you send me the info of the third party you used to apply. 
 

Thanks

 

Dunc

Just FYI.. A mate used someone in his area (in JHB) to do this for him. It's taken 3 months so far, (not converted yet) so it's not always a shortcut. 

Edited March 4, 20242 yr by Zombie

OK... this is a heads up for anybody in the COJ supplied area thinking about pre-paid. 

WAIT A COUPLE OF MONTHS.

There have been questions in my community about recent changes to the municipal statements. A city councillor chipped in to say that he can't reveal any details because the new tariffs are not signed off yet, but that there are big changes coming for electricity tariffs.

The speculation is that there will be a fixed connection fee per month. The councillor won't say. I understand this, because is bound from saying anything about tariffs that are not yet finalised. But clearly there are changes coming and so you might not want to apply NOW and then have to deal with whatever the tariff is in 4 months time.

@Bobster.i think this is becoming a reality now,  I’ve switched to prepaid early last year and the electricity line item was completely removed from my COJ statement, from Jan of this year I have an electricity line item with zero charges but 15% vat. I suspect COJ is planning on adding charges to prepaid….

6 minutes ago, Raiden2912 said:

I suspect COJ is planning on adding charges to prepaid….

Stating the obvious that folks should moderate their expectations on saving money through solar while on prepaid. Best case COJ wants to recoup fair costs for grid availability through a fixed cost. Worst case they'll want to keep you subsidising free services and covering salaries. Just my 2c.

5 hours ago, Raiden2912 said:

@Bobster.i think this is becoming a reality now,  I’ve switched to prepaid early last year and the electricity line item was completely removed from my COJ statement, from Jan of this year I have an electricity line item with zero charges but 15% vat. I suspect COJ is planning on adding charges to prepaid….

Yes. That's happened to lots of folks with pre-paid meters.

As I said, there has been a comment from a local (to me) councillor that there will significant changes in the structuring of pre-paid accounts, but he is bound to not give details until the tariffs are placed in the public domain for comment (should be next week). There are figures going around, but the source is unclear, so I have not posted those here.

Adding a flat fee for pre-paid meters has been on the cards for some years now, starting with the Mashaba administration who claimed that it had been added into the budget after sign off and promptly issued a revised document with no flat fee. But it stayed on the radar. One year during the lockdown it was applied then immediately written off as part of the City's relief package. It was clear that this was not going to go away. Last year (I think) it was proposed again, with a provision that indigent residents (this would be means tested) would get this exempted and would pay a lower rate for the first 350 units in a month. They would also have to agree to a 20A main breaker. This was voted down and the indigent and non-indigent got the exact same screwing. 

Eskom have been telling NERSA that they want a fixed connection fee per pre-paid meter because it costs them as much to provide a connection to a pre-paid meter as it does to provide a regular service.

So this one is not going to go away.
 

4 hours ago, GreenFields said:

Stating the obvious that folks should moderate their expectations on saving money through solar while on prepaid. Best case COJ wants to recoup fair costs for grid availability through a fixed cost. Worst case they'll want to keep you subsidising free services and covering salaries. Just my 2c.

Well there's a big hole in the City's finances. One driver of this is poor collection on municipal accounts. City Power have been very active in going after serial defaulters and also illegal disconnections. But the latter are difficult: City Power come out with JPMD for protection. Disconnect. Take the cable away. Usually the connections are back within a day.

But looking back through the years, the City has slowly and consistently been reducing the benefit of being on pre-paid, probably because it's hurting their revenues - somebody gets the exact same service from the City but pays less! How's that a good thing from their POV?

BUT on the consumer's side, they are paying in advance. That's worth something to the City because it's good for their cash flow. 

My neighbour on the one side is on the default post-paid tariff. He is paying for electricity 30 to 60 days after he uses it. My neighbour on the other side is on pre-paid. He is paying for electricity BEFORE he uses it. The second neighbour should be getting something from the City because they don't have any expense of running his account, making sure his payments are up to date etc and more so because he is paying them cash in advance.

45 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

Well there's a big hole in the City's finances. One driver of this is poor collection on municipal accounts. City Power have been very active in going after serial defaulters and also illegal disconnections. But the latter are difficult: City Power come out with JPMD for protection. Disconnect. Take the cable away. Usually the connections are back within a day.

But looking back through the years, the City has slowly and consistently been reducing the benefit of being on pre-paid, probably because it's hurting their revenues - somebody gets the exact same service from the City but pays less! How's that a good thing from their POV?

BUT on the consumer's side, they are paying in advance. That's worth something to the City because it's good for their cash flow. 

My neighbour on the one side is on the default post-paid tariff. He is paying for electricity 30 to 60 days after he uses it. My neighbour on the other side is on pre-paid. He is paying for electricity BEFORE he uses it. The second neighbour should be getting something from the City because they don't have any expense of running his account, making sure his payments are up to date etc and more so because he is paying them cash in advance.

I have to agree with @GreenFields although we don't like paying for a connection.

Just like the cell providers can manage this contract and prepaid the same should perhaps happen for power. 

We know the clever advisors in this industry have warned for yrs to get off the grid. This circle has a long way to go to be complete. 

Eskom is relying on fewer customers to cover their whole operation and is doomed to fail. 

I belief we will see a lot of changes in the yrs to come. 

Allowing free power to the illegal connections is not biting big time. Unfortunately it does cost money to put systems in place and keep it working. This does mean meter readers and disconnecting those not paying. We have our meters read about 8 months per year. Out of the 8 houses in the kiosk that feeds me there are only 2 still on post paid. It does suit me. My turn meter is now running for 34 yrs and prepaid meters have been replaced on a regular basis due to being faulty. This is turning out to be another expense for the munic. I guess consumers don't pay when a meter has to be replaced?

1 hour ago, Scorp007 said:

I have to agree with @GreenFields although we don't like paying for a connection.

I don't! That's part of why I switched. COJ has very high "admin" fees on electricity accounts. In Johannesburg it's the reason you make the change. You pay more per unit, but this is more than offset by not having the service charges.

But there's a little part of me that can see that there is still a cost of providing a reliable connection to my house. This is partly offset (In Johannesburg) by the higher unit fee. And, as I always say, pre-paid users are paying in advance instead of (by the time you make the payment) 60 to 90 days. Any sensible business would give you a consideration for that. 

1 hour ago, Scorp007 said:

Just like the cell providers can manage this contract and prepaid the same should perhaps happen for power. 

Well they're going down the same route, I think. Because there is no apparent rhyme or reason behind cell tariffs. Last time my contract with Vodacom ran down I told them I wanted to close my account. My intention was to move to Telkom, who are cheaper and will port your old number onto their network. 

Then I got a call from Vodacom's retentions department. They offered me a spectacularly good deal rather than lose my business. It was very hard to say no, but I did ask why the heck I've been paying so much all these years when they could have offered me this deal years ago. 

Other Vodacom users on this forum please note: You may be subsidising me.

I'm not a shill for City Power, but there is a key difference between the two situations you are comparing: City Power have to maintain a physical connection to my home. So although I fight that fixed charge, and although it will hurt my wallet, I can still see a bit of a point to this.

I do think that COJ's fixed fees for post-paid accounts (the default tariff) are daylight robbery. No other metro has such high fees. I just checked the Tshwane tariffs. R154.80 network charge. Add VAT and you're at R178 and some change.
Ekuruleni charges R62.95 (VAT exclusive) a month for post-paid users.

Joburg is nearly a grand now. How come it costs COJ so much more to provide a connection and get a meter read?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn't. We're just being put over a barrel and spanked. 

And, of course, there should be an implied contract between the City and residents. We pay rates and we pay for services, and they, in turn, give us good services, good roads, street lights etc.

That pact is well and truly broken where I live. Street lights have been out for years. Water bursts are nearly daily, certainly more than one a week. This leads to roads being dug up but never resurfaced. And when they fix one burst by removing a length of rusty old pipe, the consequence is usually that 20 meters further along another bit of rusty old pipe bursts. There's no maintenance being done.

If the CIty are bringing their side, then folks will grumble a bit about increases, but won't get too irate. When everything is breaking down all around us then the increases breed resentment.

1 hour ago, Scorp007 said:

We know the clever advisors in this industry have warned for yrs to get off the grid. This circle has a long way to go to be complete. 

Eskom is relying on fewer customers to cover their whole operation and is doomed to fail. 

I belief we will see a lot of changes in the yrs to come. 

Allowing free power to the illegal connections is not biting big time. Unfortunately it does cost money to put systems in place and keep it working. This does mean meter readers and disconnecting those not paying. We have our meters read about 8 months per year. Out of the 8 houses in the kiosk that feeds me there are only 2 still on post paid. It does suit me. My turn meter is now running for 34 yrs and prepaid meters have been replaced on a regular basis due to being faulty. This is turning out to be another expense for the munic. I guess consumers don't pay when a meter has to be replaced?

In COJ it depends why the meter is replaced. Mine recently was. Because it failed. There was no charge for the replacement. Provision for this should be built into the tariffs - you know some are going to fail each year. If you decide that you want to go pre-paid and a meter replacement or reconfiguration is required, then you have to bear the cost of that. But that's not something that happened to you, it's something you decided you wanted done. This seems fair enough.
 

Edited March 21, 20242 yr by Bobster.

24 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

Tshwane tariffs. R154.80 network charge. Add VAT and you're at R178 and some change.

Ekuruleni charges R62.95 a month for post-paid users.

Joburg is nearly a grand now. How come it costs COJ so much more to provide a connection and get a meter read?

That pact is well and truly broken where I live. Street lights have been out for years. Water bursts are nearly daily, 

 

I fully agree with CoJ basic fee and feel for those consumers on post paid. 

Not sure where the network charge for Tshwane is stated as we are lucky with no basic charge up to now for both prepaid and post paid. 

For water and sanitation use we have a basic fee. 

We also pay a higher rate than CoJ but it does not make up for the exorbitant basic of CoJ. 

I wish we had 60-90 days to pay. We get less than 30 days. 

We get our accounts about 10 days after reading and then less than 20 to pay. 

Edited March 21, 20242 yr by Scorp007

On 2024/03/21 at 2:42 PM, Scorp007 said:

I fully agree with CoJ basic fee and feel for those consumers on post paid. 

Not sure where the network charge for Tshwane is stated as we are lucky with no basic charge up to now for both prepaid and post paid. 

For water and sanitation use we have a basic fee. 

Apologies. I've just been working through my browser history for Thursday, and I went off half-cocked and didn't read a document properly. That fee I refer to is indeed a "network access charge" for water provision.

This doesn't reduce the amount by which COJ residents are getting spanked. I am paying R600 a month for a sewer connection. This is fixed. It is calculated according to stand size, not to the amount of water that is consumed.

On 2024/03/21 at 2:42 PM, Scorp007 said:

We also pay a higher rate than CoJ but it does not make up for the exorbitant basic of CoJ. 

I wish we had 60-90 days to pay. We get less than 30 days. 

We get our accounts about 10 days after reading and then less than 20 to pay. 

OK... so I had to check my historic accounts to be sure of this. Electricity seems to get their data in more quickly than water (which still relies on people visiting every house and reading a meter). But as far as I can tell, March's electricity will be included in the bill that one would pay end April. So this is my point: We pay for electricity 30 (end March) to 60 (beginning March) days after use. Pre-paid users are paying before use. So pre-paid users deserve consideration because they improve the City's cash flow (and because nobody needs to read their meters, correct for estimated billings etc).

15 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

Apologies. I've just been working through my browser history for Thursday, and I went off half-cocked and didn't read a document properly. That fee I refer to is indeed a "network access charge" for water provision.

This doesn't reduce the amount by which COJ residents are getting spanked. I am paying R600 a month for a sewer connection. This is fixed. It is calculated according to stand size, not to the amount of water that is consumed.

OK... so I had to check my historic accounts to be sure of this. Electricity seems to get their data in more quickly than water (which still relies on people visiting every house and reading a meter). But as far as I can tell, March's electricity will be included in the bill that one would pay end April. So this is my point: We pay for electricity 30 (end March) to 60 (beginning March) days after use. Pre-paid users are paying before use. So pre-paid users deserve consideration because they improve the City's cash flow (and because nobody needs to read their meters, correct for estimated billings etc).

OK I see how you got to the 60 days. In our case the power used at the beginning of the month is 60 days but the power used the day before reading the meter is only 30 days.

We get nailed about R180 for a reminder being place at the address if you did not pay by the due date. A good source of income for Tshwane. 

What about following most other services again like cell networks by paying up front. My medical aid and other insurances I have to pay up front. 

Could the cash flow not be much improved if one had a meter that can/must be read but annually you pay for power up front based on the average you used the previous 6 months. Employ people to read and disconnect power if the outstanding amount above the up front payment is exceeded and not paid within say 30 days. It is shocking to see how castle's have outstanding munic accounts for over R200th and they don't get cut off. Even for these massive houses this amount is perhaps more than a year's use. 

It all boils down to is there a will to get the money owed. Create some work on a per reading/disconnect basis. We have enough unemployment to get this service working. 

Just a thought? 

20 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

What about following most other services again like cell networks by paying up front. My medical aid and other insurances I have to pay up front. 

If I look at my bill, some of it is billed upfront. Rates are billed up front for EG. Everything that is a fixed charge is billed up front. But anything where usage varies and has to be metered is billed in arrears. Unless people are on pre-paid and buy a certain amount of credit and manage that, it can't be any other way.