At last COJ have started rolling out the soft upgrades for the prepaid meters.

When you buy a token you get THREE numbers to input. The first two perform the TID update, the third is the credit and will only work on the upgraded meter. 

I did this yesterday. I bought a small amount through FNB as per usual, and got a message with three numbers (as is supposed to happen).

Punched them in one at a time and got the amount I paid for. The existing credit balance was retained, and the meter serial number did not change.

Go to @CitypowerJhb on X and look for the announcements that were sent out RE the TID upgrade. The upgrade window is date limited and the dates are different for each area. Midrand, for example, is open from 15th until the end of the month. Where I live opened yesterday and is open for one week. Don't ask, I don't know.

So this nonsense of sending people out to do this...they came to me to do the upgrade,  I smell another tenderpreneur who scored big time.

1 hour ago, Douw G. Gerber said:

So this nonsense of sending people out to do this...they came to me to do the upgrade,  I smell another tenderpreneur who scored big time.

That was the original plan. It would enable them to do an audit at the same time. But there were too many problems with technicians not being able to get access, so they went the soft upgrade route instead. 

The auditing is still going ahead. They were in my street on Friday, auditing all properties with pre-paid meters, or trying to.

And yes, the guys who do it are doing contract work for the city, getting so much for each completed job. But they are not all working for some big company with links to political organisations. A lot of them are individuals with more than one stream of income. I once caught an Uber of a morning, and the driver's other hustle (he wouldn't say which was the "side hustle") was installing pre-paid meters for City Power.

Edited April 22, 20242 yr by Bobster.