Drowning in water bill headaches

As many as 80% of Buffalo City Metro (BCM) water meters are probably not being read on a regular basis.

This was a trend discovered by the Saturday Dispatch, after speaking to property management agents whose job it is to get hundreds of property owners’ and tenants’ BCM bills paid and up to date.

Kerry Lee Keightley, director of Roundhouse Property Solutions, and Kate Godfrey, owner of Godlyn Rentals, who together deal with 550 accounts every month, said that when they saw the line item “interim usage” they know the meters had not been read.

These bills also all carried the same charge of R328.30 for 20 kilolitres of municipal water, regardless of whether the home was occupied by a granny or six strapping men.

Cheree Beneke, who manages the office at Rencon Real Estate, said they had the “odd” water bill query, but they changed their strategy after one tenant was hit with a R5000 water bill for an apartment in Beacon Bay.

The agency made it part of their business regimen to read the meters themselves, call them in to BCM, although the reading is not always recorded by them, and diligently record the usages for all their properties on a spreadsheet.

Keightley took it a step further. She logs every call to BCM and keeps fastidious records.

Godfrey keeps such a close record of her queries, that she can say exactly how many days of the working month she spends on the phone to BCM – 10.

The agents said they, and other rental companies, all had at least one staff member dedicated to querying BCM bills.

Here is their list of how to survive the process of querying a BCM bill:

l Badger, call, e-mail, and get bounced until someone is forced to take the call and find the account number on the computer system;

lAlways take your own water and electricity readings. Take a photograph and call the reading in and fill in your own logbook. If the meter is broken, hassle BCM until they come and fix it;

lClean your water meter so you can read it. Take photographs of readings on the 20th of the month, just before the bill arrives on the 22nd;

l Cross-check every item to see if it correlates with reality and fair usage.

One couple, after months of “reversals” which took the form of credits, were billed for 1kl and charged R2400;

lBe prepared to spend 20 minutes on the phone for every item queried, and 45 minutes of being “bounced” from one official to another;

lOf the three numbers available to query a water bill, don’t be surprised “two don’t ring and the third rings and rings”;

lGet a reference. Without it you are in the wilderness.

Keightley said: “A typical query? The phone rings, then there is a voice recording that there’s no one to take your call and then phones cut out. You have to call once for every line item.

“There is no discernible system.

“Because of the volumes we deal with, I get the distinct impression that this is intentional.”

She felt the interim 20kl usage was chosen because it was “the second highest rate they can charge”.

Her bills were telling her that “BCM does not work out the average water usage over 12 months”.

“They just bill the interim usage of 20kl. It is now a standard operating procedure”.

She said interim readings were there for a reason, but “now it’s being abused”.

She queried one bill, which recorded zero water usage in June for a fully- tenanted property, and went on to show meaningless “interim reversal” credits, until, finally, a huge bill for almost R5000 arrived.

“I call and get through and they say they have logged a query for high usage, but it will take up to 90 days to send someone to investigate, and halfway through the call, the line cuts and that person is lost and there is no reference number,” she said.

Other issues raised were:

lBCM struggles to transfer accounts to new owners, and can take two years to do so, while still sending the old owner a bill, or even two bills;

lBills can refer to two water meters for one erf, and each bill receives an interim charge of 20kl;

l“Phantom billing”, where one property or erf just keeps on getting two bills; and

BCM spokesman Sibusiso Cindi has insisted that BCM charges for water consumption “based on council’s approved tariff”.

He said BCM could only investigate claims and queries “once full details of the account are received and a complaint has been made”.

Asked why water readings were not being taken and why residents were commonly charged R328 in the “interim”, he said: “Interim charges are only raised when meter readings are unobtainable. The interim is based on the customer’s average consumption over a 12-month period.

“The minimum interim charge is based on 20kl consumption, however the interim will be reversed once the actual reading is obtained. Cases of non-reading of dirtied-up and not-visible meters can be investigated only once full details are received.”

He said BCM acknowledged there was a lethargy in updating accounts, and was “busy addressing” the problem.

On the issue of “bouncing” complaints from one official to another, BCM blamed customers for “taking shortcuts and not following procedures”, which Cindi said were “in place for the escalation of queries to service departments”.

“Queries can be logged in three ways, via the call centre on 086-111-3017, via e-mail to billingq@buffalocity. gov.za or via personal visits to the nearest pay offices,” he said. — mikel@dispatch. co.za