I would love to know what you pay for prepaid electricity/

[adrianh]

Let's do a survey just for the hell of it and compare....
I know there are lots of issues that influence the price but it would be interesting to see.

Area Service Provider Amount Power purchased
Maitland Cape Town CITIQ R 100 36.4 kWh

[AndyD]

This is for my home, I don't have a slip available now for the business premises.
Cape Town (Council, not Eskom).

31st Aug 2016

Terriff; lifeline2

R400.00 (R350.88 Electricity, R49.12 VAT)


Units; 338.2
FBE Units; 25.0 (free units)
Total units recieved; 363.2

Cost of electricity; Step1 - 325kwh @97.09 cents per kwh. Step2 - 13.2kwh @268.81 cents per kwh.

I've just noticed the sneaky sods have cut my free unit allowance, not sure why but I used to get 40 kwh free....

[Christel]

Hi there,
I stay in Framesby, Port Elizabeth and bought electricity on 1 September: 339.5 kWh @ 1.4581 R/kWh (R495)

the following is what I bought on 4 September 2014: (R445)
350.0 kWh @ 119.59 c/kWh
18.9 kWh @ 142.73 c/kWh

[HR Solutions]

2 Jul 617.7 kwh - R1000 - R1.62

[adrianh]

Great, keep them coming. I will build a spreadsheet then we can do some analysis.

[Justloadit]

I have 2 meters, which charge different rated
R 300 - 231.7KwH - R1.29/KwH
R 1700.00 - 1190.9 KwH - Sundries included in the same purchase DSM Domestic - R10.00 & another DSM Domestic R3.82 - R1.43?KwH

I have noticed the rate increase as I purchase again later in the month, to as much as R1.69/KwH on the 2nd meter

[adrianh]

So I pay tis at work

R 100 / 36.4 = R2.74/ KwH - It seems terribly steep

and at home..

R 200 / 106.7 = R 1.87 /KwH


Don't strip the cost of vat out of the calculation. I am really just to get a handle on the real cost for the man in the street.

[roryf]

I looked at some of our shops and the rates vary drastically:

Empangeni R500 = 154KwH = R3.25
Kokstad R500 = 392KwH = R1.28
Ulundi R500 = 266KwH = R1.88

Clearly,Empangeni is and expensive place to use electricity....

[Justloadit]

Quite frighting once one starts comparing the rates across the country.

[adrianh]

Yeah, The problem i think is that municipalities and 3rd party service providers like CintiQ are using electricity as a basis for profiteering. The consumer doesn't notice because we buy in small amounts and we don't compare prices across the country.

Landlords get to make a shed load of money by installing 3rd party managed prepaid meters because they have the access to charge whatever they want per actual meter. When I buy a token I pay say R200. Once I get the token I am forced to enter my meter number via an SMS to receive my pin. The act of sending my meter number enables the prepaid vendor to set the price per specific meter.

I think that some or other organization should do some digging into this business model because I think that this lot gives the prepaid vendors and landlords the opportunity to suck people dry without there knowledge.

[Houses4Rent]

Hm, I do not think so. As far as I know a landlord wil unlikley install thir own meter. They will ask a company to do that. They supply the meter and manage the selling of units too. The landlord does not set the price per unit. As far as I know nobody is allowed to charge more than the council rate. So how can a landlord suck poeple dry? Besides if tenants pay much more for power than elsewhere why should they stay? This might result in vacancy which sucks the landlord dry.

Is it not easier to obtain the info you are looking for the council's websites?

[adrianh]

Marc. The same people that own The Old Timber Yard also own CitiQ (The prepaid metering system)

I am looking at it with the following in mind:
1. I pay R 1.64 at home vs R2.74 at the business Park.
2. The landlord has 100% control over the metering system and the the rate per tenant (I spent many years in corporate IT so I know that it is easy to mangage - a lot simpler than managing the IT infrastructure for credit card system)
3. You say that nobody is allowed to charge more than the council rate, they don't, technically, they simply load on admin fees.
4. Tenants don't know that they are paying so much more because payments are made in very small amounts (i.e. the proverbial frog in a boiling pot)
5. Tenants don't just can a 3 year lease because they are unknowingly paying R1 more per unit of electricity.

I am of the opinion that 3rd party prepaid electricity is one of the best scams out there at the moment. I think that people are slowly being bled dry and that an investigation should be done into the the legal framework of the industry. We need to know how much money the metering company makes and how much profit the landlord stands to make from using the system. I do not for one minute believe that landlords will bat an eye if they had the ability to make some money in this way.

[adrianh]

I quote off the website

https://www.citiqprepaid.co.za/faq/

What does prepaid electricity cost me?

The electricity price charged covers the cost of electricity that the municipality charges plus the costs involved in providing prepaid electricity tokens.
Included in the price is a fee charged by Citiq which covers the costs of all the services provided by Citiq including: the systems to generate the secure tokens, management of collections and distribution of funds back to landlords or managing agents, query call centre support and assisting landlords and managing agents in recovering the electricity consumption. In addition, the costs associated with the specific payment method used is included in the all-in cost.

Those costs are for the tenants account and the company DOES NOT say how much those costs are.

In this case the landlord and the prepaid metering company is the same entity therefore the landlord and the metering company get to charge whatever they want.

[Houses4Rent]

Adrian, you seem to mainly talk about business, not residential? Residential leases are usually annualy, maybe 2 years max as the CPA does not easilily allow longer leases than 2y. I cannot comment on business rentals/pre-paid electricity as I have no experience.
The admin fees are paid by the owner as far as I know, not the tenant. I never really dug into the details as I do not have pre-paid in my home. Its too complex trying to understand it just for fun. Sometimes our tenants do complain though that after moving in they are paying more that they used to pay. Of course this is most likely due to change in occupancy, different geysers, consumer behaviour etc and not necessarily the unit price per KWh. If that goes the other way i.e. paying less than before, we will never hear about such "complaints".

[Dave A]

The admin fees are paid by the owner as far as I know, not the tenant.

Even if it is, where does that money come from?

Reality is where I've seen private prepaid meters installed, the owner isn't even asking about mark-up rates for recharges. They're just interested in the installed cost of putting in a prepaid meter - quite simply because they aren't paying for top-ups.

Adrian, looking at my rates in Durban it seems light industry pays more than residential.