ZAMBOANGA CITY – The local electric cooperative is now the subject of a complaint after a house owner said they were overbilled not once, but twice after a meter reader deliberately and falsely misread their actual power consumption on December 2020 and January 2021.
In his complaint posted on the ZAMCELCO Consumers’ Complaint Page on Facebook, Joules Abubakar Susulan questioned how the meter reader computed their electric usage from December and January.
On his electric
billing, Susulan said reading from their electric meter showed 959.9 kWh. But
the meter reader recorded 1,000 kWh.
And he said the
same thing happened again in January, the electric meter reads 983.8 kWh and
the meter reader listed it as 1,000 kWh.
“Always check the actual meter reading,
it happens that they will do like this. Kung sana no read, no
write ako abay magpapasalamat talaga ako sa kanila dahil wala na akong bill sa January,”
he wrote on his complaint, showing the 2 electric bills.
The electric meter measures
the amount of electrical energy in kWh that was consumed in the
house. The kWh meter has a counter display that counts units
of kilowatt-hour. The energy consumption is calculated by the difference
of the counter's reading in the specified period.
Other power
consumers also criticized how the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative computes
actual electric usage.
“That’s what they
call Table Reading tsk…tsk…,” wrote Edmin de Guzman Lagonera in his reaction to
Susulan’s predicament.
Aivhan Blocknyt said: “This
is the problem, even I. This is (a) big headache.”
“That's why our bill from P1800-P2000, (now
is) P3,600. How come?” asked Ion
Raz Jangayo.
Marinela Ordoña Redoña said the electric reading was obviously inaccurate:
“Eh, di parang nag mano-mano mag reading kasi hindi accurate ang reading. Di
tumutugma ang reading sa actual (count) na nasa meter. Ginagawa tayong mga
tanga nitong Zamcelco na ito.”
“Messed up, always,”
said Anne RaRa
Susulan said he
complained to the cooperative, but he was told that the billing was advanced by
ZAMCELCO. “Ang sabi ng nakausap ko sa ZAMCELCO bale daw na advance na yung bill
sa January,” he said.
But no one believed
ZAMCELCO. “Puede bang i-advance ang pag reading ng meter? Parang nag guessing-guessing
ang meter reader niyan dahil hindi makabigay ng accurate na reading,” said Redoña.
Last month, many
house owners complained that they were overbilled by ZAMCELCO after it imposed
back-billing to many residential accounts following a massive installation of
new electric meters.
Back-bill is a catch-up bill sent
when a power consumer is incorrectly charged for energy usage. It covers a
longer period than the usual billing cycle and will likely be for a larger than
usual amount.
This was confirmed to the
Zamboanga Post newspaper by ZAMCELCO General Manager Gannymede Tiu who said
that “in the past several months until December 19, we conducted massive
installation of kilowatt-hour meters to more than 10,000 consumers that has no
installed meters for so many years back.”
Tiu said many residential
accounts here have no electric meters and ZAMCELCO only billed them through “averaging”
or minimum amount compared to their actual electricity usage.
He said back
billing of customers is to ensure all power consumers pay for the utilities
they use. “That is the reason for the ZAMCELCO back-billing,”
he said.
Following the outcry, ZAMCELCO
eventually adjusted the overbilling.
ZAMCELCO is now being managed
by Crown Investment Holdings, Inc. and Desco Inc. The two firms
took over ZAMCELCO in January 2019 after bailing out the heavily-indebted
and poorly-managed electric cooperative for P2.5 billion. (Zamboanga Post)
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