City Of Cape Town Municipality
Extremely expensive electricity

I offer this as a cautionary tale. The City of Cape Town has a trap built into its tariff schedules, whereby a low electricity consumer can find himself trapped on the highest tarriff charge.

At the beginning of July, I had to buy electricity from the local supermarket, and was horrified to discover that I was being charged at the upper end of the Lifeline (cough) tariff, i.e. at R2.10 / kWh, despite, never breaching 400 kWh per month, including the free allocation.

I now realise that I had fallen into a trap: electricity purchases are not charged according to average consumption, as I had thought, but according to purchase within a calendar month. On 4 June, I purchased R330 electricity, which yielded 388kWh. On 2 July, I had to recharge again, and purchased R380 electricity, diligently building in the tariff increase. However, for this I received a paltry 180kWh, which lasted just under half a month... more than a 100% increase on last month. Apparently, because I did not wait until 4 July, a new calendar month to recharge, I got charged at the highest Lifeline tariff: R2, 10 / kWh! For not waiting until 4 July to recharge, I get penalised by more than 100%.

Company: City Of Cape Town Municipality
Country: South Africa
City: South Peninsula

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