Prepaid meter customers decry inability to recharge

Electricity customers using prepaid meters under the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) have continued to lament their inability to purchase electricity units to recharge their meters.

Daily Trust reports that the AEDC had on October 29 posted an apology to its customers on the difficulty they are facing in purchasing electricity tokens.

It blamed the issue on “an ongoing system upgrade, expected to be completed this week,” and provided an alternative link where the tokens can be purchased.

But as another week begins, the problem is yet to be fixed with customers complaining of not getting their tokens using the new link while those who used the former means of purchasing the tokens had their money stuck.

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It would be recalled that the Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) also faced the same issue in July but its downtime lasted for two days; it was followed by Ikeja Electric Distribution Company (IKEDC).

An AEDC customer in Lugbe, Abdullahi Ibrahim, said he was not aware of the issue when he tried recharging his meter last week Tuesday.

“When I used the mobile app to purchase the token, the token was not sent but I was debited, I decided to go to their office close by but they too could not help. So, I had to spend three days without electricity to pump water, to iron my clothes and other stuff,” he said.

Another customer, Abbah Adeh, said he used the alternative AEDC provided in buying the tokens but it took over three hours before it was sent.

“AEDC needs to work on its system for prompt response. I recharged through the alternative link they provided but while AEDC confirmed receipt of credit, sending the recharge token became a problem.

“Even the PoS I later ran to could not help; the owner tried in vain and told me several people had come to load theirs but failed, adding that most of the transactions didn’t even go through,” he said.

Commenting on the situation, the President of Nigeria Consumer Protection Network, Kunle Olubiyo, said if the downtime continues to linger, customers may be forced to bypass their meter, thereby increasing electricity theft.

Olubiyo said, “Customers are increasingly experiencing difficulties in vending their pre-paid meters and the distribution licensees’ metering platforms seem to be generally designed to manifest some kind of glitches that have reduced customer satisfaction and efficient service delivery. Lots of end users and customers are finding it difficult to vend thereby increasing energy theft due to frustration associated with inability to successfully vend without bottleneck.”