Electricity Thieves

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User121314

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One of our neighbours is, shall we say, a tad unsavoury.

Have had many problems over the years - basically he is just not a nice/decent person. The type of bloke who thinks it's OK to hit his wife in front of their children, buy his kids a puppy & then tie it to a pole with no food or water and kick it on a regular basis.

They are also serial levy defaulters & the Sheriff has been three times to attach & remove goods to sell. Levy arrears are currently in excess of R105k excluding interest & penalties, but including legal costs.

Despite this they drive the latest Merc E-series and BMW X5, wear R10k+ suits, fancy watches etc. - tenderpreneurs of note they would have us believe.

All this, plus loads more nonsense, we've dealt with over the years.

They've previously had their electricity cut off, we presumed for non-payment, on 2 occasions. Second time Eskom pulled the supply cable to the house as far out as they could & cut it, letting it drop back into the conduit that feeds the house. Owner had to have a new cable pulled. :)

We had new smart meters installed about 2 years ago, & the installers never connected to next door as there was no account for the property. At that stage there was nobody living in the house so it didn't matter. It did explain why they had been previously disconnected though - they didn't even have an account! Unfortunately Eskom follow up on instance like these is clearly non-existent, so they were only ever caught stealing electricity twice.

Fast forward to February this year & there are suddenly new people in the house who claim they are the new owners. But the previous owner is there often, as are many of his old pals. House is occupied by 3 females, never to be seen before midday, and then only seen when fancy cars are parked outside. My opinion - knockshop. Real party girls, bring lots of men home at 02h00 & make a noise until the following morning. HOA is useless, no point in fining them if they don't pay levies!


This morning our electricity was behaving in a haywire fashion. Like a brownout, most appliances wouldn't work, lights were dim & went off when another was switched on etc. etc.

I phone Eskom at just after 6 this morning.

Technicians arrive at around 11h30. The open the box & the first thing they say is that the one meter is bypassed. Turns out the neighbours meter was not connected at all, cable went direct from the trip switch, past the meter & to their house.

My problem was a burnt neutral on the connector block, which they fixed within 10 minutes.

They then phoned their office to establish who to write the tampering fine to - lo & behold, there is still no account for the meter or the stand number! These people have been stealing electricity for 10+ years!

Neighbour was disconnected - cable cut & dropped back into the conduit (again :) ), meter was remotely disconnected as well, and they lady of the house who appeared in a dressing gown & socks was fined R12k.

Box on the pavement was locked & Eskom technicians have given me their mobile number & told me that should I see lights on in the house it means the neighbours will probably have connected to me, & to phone the technician who will gladly come round again & disconnect & issue another fine, plus a credit on our meter!

Unbelievable how people can get away with being so dishonest for so long!
 
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