Let us assist with your billing disputes
Dispute management (Residential Properties)
The Urban billing dispute management strategy allows us to handle account billing disputes that clients may have between themselves (property account owners) and the supplier (Council/Municipalities).
Urban Utilities provides an independent dispute resolution service for utility account complaints and disputes about “electricity and water” consumptions, billing and services.
No dispute is too small or too large as we focus on the dispute itself, enabling us to review and implement a specific strategy towards the unique dispute. This combined with the dispute management process will allow us to follow the trail on all utility consumptions and provide a resolution on the dispute that would be a working model between the property account owner and the utility supplier to have the account processed and brought up to date. All this with the mindset that the billing structure moving forward is transparent and auditable for accurate billing on the account.
Who will handle your dispute?
Ted Blom joined Urban Utilities to lead an innovative “Utility Management Department” focusing on client utility account disputes and billing strategies that would streamline the utility process end to end.
The department led by Ted Blom has a key role to play within the holistic utility scope looking at the financial management cycles and billing processes implemented by utility suppliers, Councils & Municipalities.
This allows for the “Urban Management Processes” to form part of the utility service we offer to each and every property owner within South Africa that has a registered property.
Do You Want To Lodge
a Complaint ??
Complete the form and let us handle your utility dispute on your behalf
How Does
The Process Work?
What and How we do it
As per the standard process each property owner that has a registered property within South Africa that receives a formal utilities account from a “Council/Municipality, has the right to ensure that their accounts are accurate and up to date.
if you feel that your property utility account is a mess and that the utility service provider cant resolve your issue you can lodge a formal dispute and this is where Urban Utilities can help!
What we do:
- Once we receive your dispute as lodged with us, we process the dispute to ensure that the information provided is accurate and all supporting documents are in place.
- We then make contact with the person that lodged the dispute to validate the details provided on the dispute.
- We take the dispute on review and make contact with the utility service provider to discuss the dispute in detail. During this, we ensure that a formal dispute process is activated with the supplier and that we gather more details needed towards the process.
- We then lodge a formal dispute with the supplier and make sure that the dispute reference number is captured on both the supplier and the Urban Utilities dispute system and that this is linked with our online dispute resolution software that will allow us to track the process in detail.
- We provide the supplier with all relevant information towards the dispute lodged for investigation. This will allow us to initiate our dispute resolution strategy to put a blog on the account that would halt any disconnections due to arear accounts that would allow the process to resolve the dispute or come to an agreement on the account between the account holder and the supplier.
- There are different stages during the dispute process that we work on, each dispute is different thus it can take anything from 2 to 8 months to complete the dispute process and have the utility account scrubbed and up to date. It’s important to know that when lodging a dispute its not just the now we look at but a key focus is to ensure that each dispute is processed accurately with focus on implementing a process for no repeat in the future.
- During the dispute resolution process, we are in constant contact with the account holder and the supplier to ensure feedback on the progress until completed, this allows for a piece of mind that your utility account is in good hands now and in the future.
Info Needed on Dispute
Your complaint is as important to us as it is to you, thus it’s important that you make sure that the complaint that you will lodge is as detailed as possible.
- Gather all the details with regards to the dispute to ensure that when you lodge the dispute with us, you provide a full
summery of the account history. - Ensure that you have copies of
atleast 3 months utility account statementsavailible to provide to us - Copy of account holders ID
- Complete the online form and let us do the rest
What will it cost?
As you know lodging a dispute with a “Council/Municipality” is frustrating and a tedious process.
We at Urban Utilities has taken the dispute process and made it part of our main utility management process, this allows us to use our expertise in the field to have the dispute managed fast and effectively, taking all the frustration away from the account holder and providing a piece of mind.
As per the norm, a dispute process like this will be charged on hourly rates that can easily cost upward of R10 000 to resolve a single utility dispute.
Our Cost to our clients:
Full dispute resolution = R1200
- We take the pressure of the account holder and divide the R1200 over a period of 24 months.
(R50 per month – paid over 24 months)
- Thus allowing each dispute to be paid over a longer period to ease the financial constraint on the account holder.
Useful Links & Tips
Urban Utilities Office
Cnr Leslie & William Nicol
128 Leslie Avenue
Design Quarter, Fourways
South Africa
Information Contact Number
National Office
+27 (0) 11 513 3047
