Good day folks. It has been a turbulent period for me since BEDC installed their prepaid meter at my residence. The meter came with 100 units of electricity which the staff told me would be free of charge grin.
However, when I made an attempt to top-up the units when it was running low from a vendor, I was told I have to pay for the “free” 100 units before I would be able to top up. I had no choice than to part with 11,000 naira to pay off the ‘debt’ and buy 5000 naira worth of units for the top-up.
I was told to proceed to the BEDC area office close to where I bought the units to obtain activation tokens being my first transaction on the meter. At the BEDC area office, the customer care agent gave me a series of code to enter on my meter when I get home for activation, and wait for another set of code from the BEDC headoffice via SMS, without which I wouldn’t be able to load the top-up tokens I purchased.
After following these instructions, I waited in vain for the final code from BEDC which wasn’t forthcoming. I placed several calls to their hotline with some below-par agents attending to me at different points, each with a different method of how to solve my problem. Well, I finally got a competent agent who promised to escalate my case, and wait for 24hrs to receive the code.
I finally got the code the next two days but not after making series of threats to their hotline, and I was able to load my top-up tokens. But this is just the beginning grin.
Almost a month passed and I would need to top-up again. This time, I opted to do it online via quickteller since my meter has been ‘activated’.
I made payment but didn’t get my tokens until after 24 hours. I proceeded to load the meter but I got an error message.
I proceeded to call their hotline as usual but no luck this time, my calls keep on getting rejected. I paused for a while and tried again after few hours and I was finally able to speak with agent who told me I need to fill a certain complaint form on their website, after which I would be sent another kind of token from their headoffice.
I proceeded to fill the form on their website but the form wasn’t submitted because “my meter number does not exist” grin.
I tried to get across to the customer care agent again to notify them of the development but their hotline has been unreachable since my last call.
I proceeded to make a google search of their alternate complaint lines(if any) and I was shocked to see that the two other lines quoted on their website, each had 10 digits instead of 11, thereby making those numbers invalid.
I’ve been in total darkness since then, not because I didn’t pay my bills, but for the inefficiency of Benin Electricity Distribution Company cry Mods, kindly help me take this to frontpage for more views.
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