Help Understanding Municipal Bill (COCT)

[KungfuKenny]

Hi everyone, I am a new home owner and I have received my municipal bill from City of Cape Town for the first time. This is the very first time I have seen one of these and a few things do not make sense to me. Why am I being charged for things twice in a month? For example on the 06.05.2020 I was charged for 'Water billing receivable' and then again on 18.05.2020 I am charged for the same thing. Is this normal? Also my water bill was around R400 in the first month but then skyrocketed to over R2000 for the second month. There is no indication on the bill as to how they arrived at that figure or even what the actual consumption was. Could anybody share some insights with me please.

 

[Marsie27]

I can't answer your first question, but in our area of CT they didn't do physical readings for April or May during Lockdown 5. If they read the meter it is shown as Actual, or if not then Estimated at the bottom on the last page of account. In our case our Estimated reading was way over what we used, so we made sure we read it ourselves in May a few days before our account date and entered the data - it has to be within 5 days. You need to register for E-services on the website to be able to do this. Seeing you were an unknown quantity in terms of water usage, the system might well have loaded your usage amount. It gets adjusted when they do an Actual reading.

 

[KungfuKenny]

I can't answer your first question, but in our area of CT they didn't do physical readings for April or May during Lockdown 5. If they read the meter it is shown as Actual, or if not then Estimated at the bottom on the last page of account. In our case our Estimated reading was way over what we used, so we made sure we read it ourselves in May a few days before our account date and entered the data - it has to be within 5 days. You need to register for E-services on the website to be able to do this. Seeing you were an unknown quantity in terms of water usage, the system might well have loaded your usage amount. It gets adjusted when they do an Actual reading.

Thank you for the response. I managed to register for E-services and I could then view a much more detailed breakdown. For some reason COCT charged me for 3 months worth of water usage and then proceeded to apply a penalty as the total usage for the 3 months put me in a higher usage bracket. I tried contacting them but I got an automated response back so I do not know if they are in the office.

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

Hi everyone, I am a new home owner and I have received my municipal bill from City of Cape Town for the first time. This is the very first time I have seen one of these and a few things do not make sense to me. Why am I being charged for things twice in a month? For example on the 06.05.2020 I was charged for 'Water billing receivable' and then again on 18.05.2020 I am charged for the same thing. Is this normal? Also my water bill was around R400 in the first month but then skyrocketed to over R2000 for the second month. There is no indication on the bill as to how they arrived at that figure or even what the actual consumption was. Could anybody share some insights with me please.

Post a pic of your bill here so we can actually help.

 

[KungfuKenny]

Post a pic of your bill here so we can actually help.

Appreciate your reply but I managed to get the copy that shows the usage and I am busy following up with the department because I feel they billed me incorrectly.

 

[Marsie27]

Appreciate your reply but I managed to get the copy that shows the usage and I am busy following up with the department because I feel they billed me incorrectly.

Have a look under Meter Reading Results in your Water section. If you see 'Automatic estimation' (see the Snip below from ours) then you know that either they couldn't access your meter if it's inside your yard or else lockdown meant they didn't read and just did estimations. If your meter is inside and you don't have someone at home permanently to let the meter reader in, you will need to read yours and submit in E-services ('Enter Meter Readings' on the left) or you will continue to have the same issue. In our area the CoCT was getting meters moved to the verges a few months ago where that hadn't already been done. We paid to have ours moved many years ago.