Private Prepaid Electrical Meters good or bad

[duncan drennan]

The best thing to do is to install a private prepaid meter after the municple meter. Transfer the municple account from the tenant to the landlord. Then the tenant has to pay the landlord for all electricity consumed. The landlord inturn pays the munciplality and there is never any outstanding electrical bills.

Okay, I misunderstood. So you actually have a normal municipal account and the prepaid meter piggy backs onto that? How does that work exactly?

[TJFASA]

You cant remove the munciple meter but you can turn the premises into your own private prepaid system if the premises is being rented. This means that the landlord has the munic account in his name and the tenant has to pay the landlord in advance for electricity.

The landlord installs a prepaid meter after the munic meter and issues the tenant with unique recharge tokens. Tokens are programed to that meter only and are only obtainable from the landlord.

If the landlord lives in a different location, once payment is received he can SMS, Email or fax the token to his tenant.

The Tenant punches the number on the token into the keypad of the meter and energizes the meter for the value of the token. Tokens are sold in differnt amounts such as R50.00 , R100.00 etc.

A third party can also collect revenue from tenants and issue the tokens on behalf of a Landlord- Revenue Management.

[duncan drennan]

Where exactly do you (the landlord) get the tokens from?

[TJFASA]

We supply the meter and sell the tokens to the landlord for R2.00 each. The landlord nominates the values he wants on his tokens. Usually they buy 100 tokens at a time which lasts that meter several months. When the tenant buys electricity from the landlord say for a value of R 100.00 he will also be charged R2.00 for the cost of the token.

[TJFASA]

We supply the meter and the tokens to the landlord. When the tokens run out only the landlord can purchase them from us.

[duncan drennan]

TJ, I think that is a really cool system. When we were considering renting out out granny flat, I found out about putting in a prepaid meter there, but shucks, it would have be really expensive (new cables, municipality, bla-de-bla). Your solution would be perfect.

I think it is a really useful service to offer to landlords who don't want to go through the schlep of installing a whole new cable for a granny flat. I'm not sure how difficult it is to have a prepaid meter installed into a house and connected to the municipality's system, so there may even be scope for landlord's renting out whole houses?

Do you have a website?