HUGE INCORRECT ESTIMATES FROM ETHEKWINI

[Crawdord Properties]

Hi

I am hoping someone on this forum can help. We had a stopped water meter at our factory complex for 13 months. I am sure there must be rules about how long eThekwini has to replace a meter. We are now severley affected due to this.

This is my proof for eThekwini that their estimate (using 6 months prior usage when we had a fully tenant complex, 11 units of varying sizes) is incorrect. I have been to see the project executive. He just says that there were no empty units and applies the average over the entire period. It also fell during covid where only 2 small units were allowed to operate. Usage was less than 20% of normal usage. He refuses to accept the water consumption went down. I have done a dispute against him and gone to their ombudsman. All ignored. I have now contacted the head of water and have still not received a response. The value is just over R100 000 that they have overcharged.

1. Two months into the affected period a tenant that used about 25% of the entire usage vacated the premises (a bakery that used a lot of water). The unit was empty for the entire 11 months after that. I have a prepaid water meter to prove that no water was purchased in that period. I have lawyer’s letters to prove he was evicted plus a letter from his lawyers giving the date he would vacate the premises. All ignored. The project executive says he has electricity bills to show the unit was occupied. I provided him with the only electricity bills I had. Unfortunately they also only read the electricity meter after a year. The total consumption for the year corresponds to the 2 months that the tenant was still in the unit. I have provided the electricity prepaid meter to show this. It clearly shows no purchases of electricity during the 11 month period after the tenant vacated. He ignores this and refuses to give me his 'evidence'. I also have emails during the stopped period to eThekwini electricity dept complaining about the estimates that they were doing stating that we had empty units. Another unit also became empty 8 months into the stopped period
2. Covid - only 2 small units were able to operate. This makes no difference to eThekwini water and even though it was a law of the country that factories had to close they still apply the average over the entire period.

I have provided our actual water meter readings as we have meters on every unit. I provided photos of the meters at the start and end of the period.
I have offered to do an affidavit, provide all my invoices and Vat returns so that they can see I have not fabricated anything. I also have a court document from my lawyer that was doing the eviction showing all the invoices for the evicted unit with their water consumption so they can see that it was high.
None of this makes any difference to eThekwini.

Please can someone help me with the way forward. I want to try and avoid having to incur huge legal bills just to get them to do their job properly. It is extremely worrying to me that a project executive can behave in this manner.

[Dave A]

Reading that, I had to wonder about the difference between estimates and actual meter-read billing.
Is this a contest about estimates, or final billing?

[Crawdord Properties]

Reading that, I had to wonder about the difference between estimates and actual meter-read billing.
Is this a contest about estimates, or final billing?

Since the meter was stopped there are no actual readings. This is not the same situation where there are estimates and then it gets corrected when the meter is read. Since the meter was stopped they had to estimate the usage for 13 months. This caused huge issues as the water consumption was very different to the previous months due to a bakery vacating the premises and covid shutting down most of the factories during this period.

I have my own meters on every single unit so I know the actual usage. eThekwini only has the bulk meter outside that they read and this was stopped. They refuse to accept my readings with photos of the unit meters. There must surely be some laws that they cannot leave a faulty meter for 13 months. If they had done their jobs and replaced the meter we would not be in this predicament. I know National Treasury has laws that meters have to be read every 3 months.

The huge concern to me is that I have so much evidence proving what the actual consumption was and that the unit was empty but the project executive just refuses to accept this. Just look at the covid period. He just says he is allowed by law to decide how to work out the consumption and then applies the average to the entire covid period where 90 % of the units were closed.

It is actually unbelievable. I am just trying to find the best way forward to resolve this without incurring huge legal bills. I have submitted a dispute and had a meeting with the project executive. I then did a dispute against him that is just being ignored. I have now send emails to the head and deputy head of water. Also ignored.

This is not the only issue I have had with eThekwini water, but all other issues were resolved. This however is the largest discrepancy.

[Dave A]

I suggest call your ward councillor. If they can't help directly, they should at least be able to put you in touch with the right civil servant to escalate the issue.

On the "everything is metered" front, the industrial park I am in has all the units on separate meters, but the common property taps are not on separate meters - the difference between the unit meter totals and the bulk supply meter gets billed under the shared costs line. A fairly common arrangement in Ethekwini, so I suppose why they are looking at your unit total with some scepticism.

(I'm pretty sceptical about the "common property" water consumption numbers I'm billed for. When my share of the common property water usage exceeds the cost of water usage for my unit, I think I have grounds.. But unfortunately no proof of abuse!)

[GCE]

Might be worthwhile installing your own bulk meter directly after there meter as a check meter
We normally do that on electrical to check losses

It would at least give you more ammo for later .
As Dave said , ward councilor should be able to help but it looks like it could end up legal and the bulk meter will make the attorneys job easier

If you looking for an attorney that knows his way around dealing with the municipalities , eskom and Nersa from an electrical billing perspective you could try MC Botha - He has built up a reputation in that field

[Crawdord Properties]

I suggest call your ward councillor. If they can't help directly, they should at least be able to put you in touch with the right civil servant to escalate the issue.

On the "everything is metered" front, the industrial park I am in has all the units on separate meters, but the common property taps are not on separate meters - the difference between the unit meter totals and the bulk supply meter gets billed under the shared costs line. A fairly common arrangement in Ethekwini, so I suppose why they are looking at your unit total with some scepticism.

(I'm pretty sceptical about the "common property" water consumption numbers I'm billed for. When my share of the common property water usage exceeds the cost of water usage for my unit, I think I have grounds.. But unfortunately no proof of abuse!)

Hi

Thanks for the reply. I have already contated the ward councillor. He has given me direction as much as he can but in the end you have to deal woth the eThekwini staff.
At the time our unit was built eThekwini told us that we could only have a bulk meter for the water. I saw while reading documentation that we can get them to also put meters on every unit. We thought about this but I have do not trust them with anything, They previously installed a new bulk meter that was overreading by double the amount, After leak testing (R5000 that we had to pay for) and pressuring them they did eventually reimburse us for the overreading. You may consider that your bulk meter may be reading higher than normal hence the big common water amount. Our meter was actually turning with no water running thourgh it. I did not know this could happen.

I saw another post about Asante Maji. I have contacted them and we have now purchased our own bulk meter that we will put in our property with the ansante maji flow device. We therefore have 2 options checking eThekwini water meter. However, this does not solve my issue of the R100 000 that they have overestimated by.

I am trying one last thing. Apparently you can report them to national treasury who have a law that municipalities have to have timely and fair dispute procedures. We have received neither of theses with our lastest dispute againsg the project executive's conclusions being ignored. For normal people in business this makes no sense. However, this is how eThekwini operates.

[Crawdord Properties]

Hi

Just another thought about them being skeptical about our water meters. When I use my readings and then use their method, which is to take the prior 6 months average (when we were fully tenanted) and apply that over the 13 months, then take off the average consumptions for the units that became empty during the stopped period as well as taking off for reduced consumption during covid, the figures are almost exactly the same. So they have 2 routes that they can check

Our issue is that the project executive says he will apply whatever he deems correct and refuses to accept that when 90% of factories are closed during covid, which is very easy to understand as we all experienced it, he still just applies the previous average (for a fully tenanted complex). Then he refuses to accept 2 units were empty for some time during the stopped period, 1 being a bakery that used about 25% of the previous 6 months average. I have supplied legal proof and their own electricity bills and emails to eThekini themselves to prove that the units were empty. He refuses to accept this. A reasonable person cannot understand this logic. I know if I approach a lawyer we will win as there is so much evidence but I am trying to avoid this until I have tried all avenues myself