Elizabeth Akintade 8:19PM

For some years now we have been receiving estimated bill,firstly our meter stopped working since 2009 I went to the office to complain and I was ask to write a letter and apply for a prepaid meter with 10k processing fee in 2012, and uptill now nothing has be done. 2013 there was a promo to pay half of our total bill which we paid 60k to write off the outstanding bill.immediately after then the bills started coming,some months 10k ,15k,20k e.t.c for a three bedroom flat that has no AC,nor electrical appliances except for TV and freezer. I really want to know how they get their reading when they dont even know the appliances we have in our flat because right we have accumulated bill due to this crazy billing which I cannot afford less for the current charge. Which at times is even crazy considering the hours of electricity supplied .

You have been a victim of arbitrary and excessive billing by your DISCO. It is a rampant evil being inflicted on 80% - 90% of electricity consumers in Nigeria. The law allows you to seek a review of your billing from 2009 till date. Section 9(1) and (2) of the NERC Meter Reading, Billing, Cash Collections and Credit Management for Electricity Supplies Regulations 2007 (read here: https://nepawahala.ng/Uploads/article10009.pdf) provides that a customer can request for his/her bill to be reviewed. Ordinarily, you would need to first approach IKEDC to do this review but, since you have written to them in the past without a response, you can dispense with writing to them and write directly to the NERC Forum Office at Ikeja. Before writing to the Forum, you need to arm yourself by doing the following: 1. Find a way to measure the average supply to your area i.e. the average number of hours in a day in which power is supplied 2. Do a self-assessment of the consumption capacity of the electrical appliances in your premises. The link below can help. 3. Multiply the number of kilowatt hours consumed by your appliances by the tariff indicated on your monthly bill. 4. If you find that your result is lower than your usual monthly bill, then your estimated bill is excessive. After you have obtained your figures, write to the NERC Forum office as below: The Chairman NERC FORUM OFFICE No. 199, Obafemi Awolowo Way, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos State. Other contact details for the Forum are: Telephone No: 08106807298 Email address: [email protected] You need to ensure your letter is duly acknowledged by the Administrative Secretary of the Forum or any designated officer. The letter should contain your name, phone number, email, meter numbers, IKEDC account numbers, as well as a full narrative of the issue. Also attach your personal load assessment, as well as copies of your estimated bills. If you have difficulty putting this letter together, click the Get Help link and we will send you a template. After submitting this letter, wait. You will get a notification SMS or email from the Forum informing you of the date fixed for your hearing. You do not need to do anything extra to get this date. Dont offer gratification. The process is seamless. However, if there is any delay in notifying you, you can call the Forum office on the number provided or send an email. NERC regulations require that every dispute must be settled at first instance within two (2) months of the date of presentation, so if you initiate this process immediately, it is likely it will be resolved before the end of May 2018. While waiting for the hearing, you can stop paying those estimated bills. The law we cited earlier provides that pending the review of your bills, the DISCO and the customer can agree on an amount to be billed each month (we advice that you reduce this to writing if you go this route). However, if such an agreement cannot be reached, such customer should pay the average monthly bill for the 12 months immediately preceding the disputed billing period while the dispute is being resolved. Ordinarily, this would mean, go back to when this issue arose, check the month when you first received an estimated bill, go back 12 months, add up the total bills for that 12 months, divide it by 12, then pay that sum as your monthly bill until the NERC Forum hearing. This might present some difficulty though, because the tariffs have changed since 2015. So your best bet would be to calculate your average kilowatt consumption for 12 months before your meter went bad, then multiply that by the present tariff rate to get the proper average monthly bill to pay now, pending the resolution of the issue. Inform IKEDC in writing that you have initiated a bill review at the NERC Forum (please attach a copy of your letter to the Forum) and that, pending the conclusion of the review, you will pay ONLY that assessed average till your petition is disposed off. You may find that, as the hearing date approaches, IKEDC officers will inundate you with phone calls/visits to try and persuade you to drop the issue. They will promise to resolve it for you. Resist those offers. If they have not responded to your previous appeals to them and you had to go to the Forum, it is better for you to let the Forum handle it. From experience, their solution will be more permanent than anything the DISCO will offer you. We hope this was helpful. If you need further clarification, were just a click away. Best of luck as you work this out.

Admin

Apr 06, 2018