Monday, July 29, 2013

Getting Some Power

On Jan 17, 2013 I went to the Botswana Power Corporation for the second time, to get electricity for our apartment.  I waited a long while, filled out some papers, and then paid 1000P for pre-paid electric.  For roughly $125 I had purchased 1677 Kilowatt hours of electricity, or so I believed.

A couple of days later, I found my electric meter.  I wrote down the reading.  A few days later and the meter reading was higher!  Go figure.  I would have thought that a pre-paid meter would slowly show the diminished of the purchased power.

By mid-Feburary it was clear to me that the meter was recording my usage, not the use of pre-paid power.  I dutifully went to the nearest BPC office and explained the problem.  The lady referred me to a young man who smiled indulgently and told me, in so many words, that I didn't know of what I spoke, and that most assuredly I had a pre-paid account. I bought another 1000P of electrcity, because that is something hard to do without.

In late May I heard from a neighbor that BPC was going to come and convert all our electric meters to pre-paid!  I made another visit to the local BPC office, where they, not surprisingly, referred me to the main office downtown.  Downtown, fortunately I got to see Ms Nfali quickly.  She wanted us to be permanently available for a technician to... wait for it.... convert our meter to pre-paid!!!  I suggested that I was not sure we could be permanently available, so she told me that tomorrow before noon our meter would be converted to prepaid. I asked her if there was a hand-out, or any info on how to operate the pre-paid meter, and she looked at me as if I were crazy.  Go figure.

Sure enough at about 1230, Abel showed up and converted our meter.  Fortunately, I saw him and ran down to thank him and get instruction.  Kindly he showed me how to insert the codes off my receipts to insert credit into the meter.  The day was 31 May, and my original purchase way back in January had already expired.

Well, to shorten this post, it only took one trip to 5 different offices to get it done.  We now have over a years worth of electricity to last us for 6 months.  Just another small gift for the future occupiers of our apartment.

But, at least I am not crazy (and remember I have a paper to prove it).

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