Hi all - hoping someone here has a suggestion which may help!

I'm struggling to get my permission to install letter out of the city (Cape Town) and pulling my hair out with the lack of communication from both my installer and the city.  Maybe I'm just too impatient - I don't know.

The application has now been sitting with the elect dept for almost 4 months.  Aparrently they 'lost' the application at some point, and then it was resubmitted 2 months ago.  Subsequently, my installer who was handling this on my behalf, appears to have gone awol and have stopped communicating with me on this matter.  (I assume they're either on break or too busy installing other systems to care about existing customers.)

So I've tried taking matters in my own hands by contacting the city directly to find out about progress, and I have been told it is with "a technician" - a technician I cannot reach.  Phone lines are never answered, or are "unavailable".

From all their communication, this part of the application should have taken no longer than 30 days, and people I've spoken to confirmed that theirs took much quicker than that in general.  Is that just boilerplate red-tape-speak for "when we get to it"?  Does thie city generally take this long with issuing permission to install letters?

If I was applying to feed back, I would have understood - but this is a simple application for a hybrid installation with no feedback.  It should be a tickbox on a long list of tickboxes - not a 4 month-long process - or even a 2-month process, if resubmission was disregarded.  Am I missing something or just completely over-guestimating the rate at which the city can roll red tape off their dispensers? 

The approval process does take long +/- 2 months, maybe COC technician is waiting for feedback from installer

Try and get COC technicians details from installer on email confirmation received from COC

 

geeze things have changed, or maybe they are just swamped due to loadshedding going ape. when we had ours done two years ago the process just took two weeks, but then again the installer took care of it, it was part of the deal. yup also one of the reasons i dIdn't DIY the initial install. i've since doubled up on storage and PV - that was easy enough to DIY.

Thanks for the feedback.  I have finally managed to reach someone who is assisting me on the city's side, and things are looking up now.  Turns out my installer messed up the paperwork, plus actually lied to me about when/what they submitted.  Needed some intervention to get that resolved.

For anyone else wondering, the city IS backlogged at the moment.  So things are taking longer than their expected turnaround.  Would have been nice if someone set this expectation beforehand, but my beef here is therefore with my installer and not with the city.