Politically speaking, one business practice that preserves the trust and confidence of customers is the accurate determination of the value of goods and services rendered for the purpose of payment settlement but with the recent behavior of some Discos, it seems as if they care less about the feelings of their customers because they have formed this annoying and bad habit of serving these customers with crazy and arbitrary bills.

This is a call out to the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) to desist from this practice because it is inimical to their business. As a victim of being served with crazy and arbitrary bills since September, 2023 to date, their attention has been drawn to this anomaly but up till this time, they are yet to correct the anomaly. Imagine having an actual average monthly consumption of 250kWh but receiving a bill of 800kWh!

Furthermore, it is very annoying to prepare a customer’s bill based on estimated values when the customer has a digital post-paid meter that is functioning well. The information from unofficial sources is that the company desire that their customers migrate from post to pre-paid metering system.

If this is the thinking of the company, the most decent thing for it to do will be to formally engage such customers of the need to decommission their present post-paid meters for pre-paid ones and fashion out a suitable arrangement for a seamless transition instead of their present practice of adopting a subtle, coercion style to implement the new policy.

With this development, the honorable Minister of power who is currently campaigning for a cost-reflective tariff meant to eliminate electricity subsidy should establish a framework to determine the actual indebtedness level before pursuing for the implementation of this policy.

This call is necessary because the Discos have made the issuing of ‘crazy’ bills to their customers a norm in their operation. The practice is now brazen as it was previously restricted to non-metered customers but has now been extended to customers with digital post-paid meters as shown in the above case.

Finally, the Discos should be wary of their conduct because the product of electricity is no longer monopolistic as there are several alternatives, especially with the advent of renewable sources of electricity production. It is hoped that the Discos heed this call and do the needful because a stitch in time saves nine!