The Hair-raising Electric Bill

By Margaret Sheard

I had noted that my electric meter had been read on Friday 13th September, is this a superstition or not, and I forgot about it for a couple of days but going out on Monday evening I remembered to retrieve it from the meter box. Did my hair stand on end or what!! The bill was for 13,074.05TL (around £4,100) oh dear I thought, what on earth has happened here, am I going to have to take out a second mortgage?

After a fairly worrying night, I inspected the meter the following morning in daylight and took a photograph of the reading. I could see what had happened, the first 2 digits had been transposed from 57,— to 75,— hence the extremely high reading. But my main worry was what reaction would I get at the Electricity Board (kib-tek) when I tackled them about it, especially with the language problem.

I need not have worried, I went to the Electricity Board, firstly to the payments section where a nice English speaking cashier directed me to another department and gave the name of the person to ask for. On entering the office, we were passed immediately to another English speaking man. This was Huseyin and he could not have been more helpful and polite and very quickly put my mind at rest telling me that the error had been noted when the meter reader’s figures had been entered into their system and the bill amount had already been cancelled and an estimated amount, based on past readings, had been registered. He then proceeded to give me a new bill and also a statement of all of my payments for the last 12 months.

While I was there I thought this would be a good time to have my address corrected. Many years ago I had the builder’s name on the bill altered to show my own name and I remember being charged for this, so I asked the question about showing the correct address rather than the site address which was still being shown, and was told there was no charge for this. Within minutes Huseyin had run off a new current bill for me with the up-to-date address shown.

I was very impressed with the way in which this matter was dealt with, very courteously and efficiently, so gone are any doubts that I would have to go through a lot of hassle to have the situation rectified. The TRNC is definitely developing quickly in line with the services we would expect in the UK and with far more smiles and politeness.

Well done KKTC Elektrik Kurumu (kib-tek) from a very satisfied customer.