The huge R202 841 609 bill sent by the City of Joburg’s debt collection agency to Richard O’Flaherty appears to be his account number rather than the money owed. Now In-Quest, the debt collection agency has admitted it made a mistake sending out 100 bills that were incorrect.
The highly inflated amounts reflected in these bills appear to be the residents’ account numbers that have been confused with the amounts owed.
Inexplicably the City of Joburg has recently changed the addresses of some of its residents and Michael du Plessis of Berea who was also hit with a municipal bill for R206 861 099 (again its almost the same as his account number) has now had his street number arbitrarily altered from 28 to 32.
The property has been in the same spot since it was built in 1912.
Brian Watcham of Bryanston also reported that his street address was changed to a new number that does not exist and despite repeated pleas to fix the error, the council has failed to reinstate the correct number.
City of Joburg spokesman Nthatisi Modingoane claims that the city has “never denied” that it faces challenges and difficulties and “acknowledge that some residents have been negatively impacted by the municipality, its management and personnel”.
He says that disciplinary measures are being taken against all employees and managers for any wrong-doing or any unbecoming behaviour. It’s a distinct about-face from the earlier statement by Mayor Amos Masondo denying that Joburg had any billing crisis.
With regard to the enormous electricity bills sent to several residents, Bernard van Rensburg, a director of In-Quest admitted that the company had made an error in sending out service bills to clients.
He blamed an unnamed information technology company for installing a faulty SMS system that sent the incorrect information to about 100 residents. He says that In-Quest has sent SMSs of apology and has rectified the errors in the system.
The City of Joburg is due to meet with the ANC’s Gauteng provincial secretary, David Makhura to discuss, among other things, the city’s billing problems and the Auditor-General’s report on municipal financial management.
Readers' Comments Have a comment about this article? Email us now.
This is a very sad and actually funny excuses they are using for the incorrect billing.
The amount quoted on my bill doesn’t even come close to my account number. This just shows the incompetence that they don’t even know what the mistake or problem is.- Vanessa
My home address was changed on my statement from 18 Victoria Road to 34 James Street, this happened in July 2009, we went to theJoburg cityoffice (region 9) to fix it, they said theycouldn’t fix it on the system, so on the statements we still have the incorrect address, and we cannot useour statementsas proof of address. - Lydia
I too have had the “physical address” changed on both my rates and my services accounts – 6 years ago!!!! I have phoned, written in and even went in to Eureka house armed with a map and proof of stand numbers etc. They assured me that it would be rectified a year ago but it never has. - Nicola
I have tried unsuccessfully to get City of Joburg to correct my physical address on my account for a year now. It was correct but suddenly they decided to have it changed without our knowledge. When I finally got through to the Call Centre on how my address suddenly got changed, the bright spark on the other end asked me whether I changed it. I complained that I needed the address to be corrected for FIFA purposes. - Desi
"Brian Watcham of Bryanston also reported that his street address was changed to a new number that does not exist and despite repeated pleas to fix the error, the council has failed to reinstate the correct number". We have the same problem. The Council has us down as 14 Louise Avenue. There is no Louise Avenue in Windsor West. There is a Louise Street. Number 14 Louise Street was the address of the previous building on the erf, but that dates prior to the construction of the current buildings when the entrance was in Louise Street. Our entrances are 21 or 23 Lords Avenue, but they refuse to acknowledge this. - Ian Samson
Our water was nearly cut with an incorrect bill with our house number on. The more we told the person that the bill is not ours, the more he wanted to cut the water. Our house addresses are wrong on the statements. Why don’t they get a office in each town and employ well trained staff to fix the problem asap. The wrong info on the statements started June last year - Isobel
The solution to all of this is we should fire all these municipal councillors and their incompetent workers! Hand all the billing over to SARS, OUTSOURCE the refuse and cleaning etc...
The problem is they get their salaries at the end of the month and could not care less!
Hopefully when it is time to vote everyone is going to make the right choice, how much More evidence do we need to convince ourselves that the ANC GOVERNMENT is in this Only for themselves, everything they touch turns to dust! - Suraya
Any respectable billing system has routine programs to maintain master data. If anybody changes a clients information in a system, then such changes would be logged in the system. Thus, one could pull a report indicating date, time, name of person when the data was changed. They create the impression that their systems are controlled by another life form. Before any system goes live, there are phases under which the software has to pass - it's clear that there was no quality assurance process, no user aceptance testing, etc. etc. Perhaps they have the misguided perception that a billing system implementation, is like buying a toaster - just unpack plug it in, insert 2 slices and in 5 minutes - it's done! It may come as a shock but like a computer, when one get's to work one has to actually switch on ones brain before we start working with information technology. - IT Consultant
I own a property in Parkmore and have been trying for 10 years to get the correct street number changed on their system. I have personally visited the offices of a deputy director to make sure it is changed on their systems and that it is done at the highest authority. Accounts are still incorrectly addressed.
I have tenants in the property and succeeded after 8 years of repeated visits to the offices to have incorrect billing rectified. Since the property is in Parkmore I finally succeeded in getting prepaid meters installed.
During the same period that all the incorrect billing happened to the 100 residents my tenants PREPAID meter was cut off as the ACCOUNT was not PAID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- Martie
About 5 years ago my street name (on services bill) changed from Nerina to Nerissa. I have been living at this address (Nerina Street) for 25 years. The street name on the kerb has not changed and remains Nerina. - Gill
Print
