Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (Ikeja Electric) has announced that its pre-paid customers who use smart card meters can only purchase their electricity units through self-service Point of Sales (POS) machines provided at its offices.
The power firm said that the development is due to the recent system upgrade that it is currently carrying out.
This disclosure is contained in a notice issued by the Ikeja Electric management on Thursday, August 25, 2022, and can be seen on its official Twitter account.
Ikeja Electric in the statement urged its customers that have any issue with purchasing energy units to their meters to visit any of its offices or call customer care lines to get the issues resolved.
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What Ikeja Electric is saying
The statement from Ikeja Electric reads, ‘’Kindly be informed that due to our recent system upgrade, customers who use smart card meters can now purchase electricity units only from the self-service POS machines we have provided at all IE offices.
‘’Should you have any issue with purchasing energy to your meter, please visit any of our offices close to you or call our Customer Care lines 01-7000250, 01-2272940 for assistance.’’
Bottom line
- This new arrangement would likely cause a lot of inconvenience to the Ikeja Electric pre-paid customers who may not be able to buy electricity units from the agents who are easier to access but can only buy from Ikeja Electric offices.
- This will also likely affect customers that want to buy electricity units through their bank accounts.
- Recall that Ikeja Electric had earlier last month announced the shutdown of its customers’ billing and vending channels and infrastructures for 48 hours between July 15 and July 17, 2022, to enable it to carry out a system upgrade.
- The power firm in the notice advised its customers to buy energy ahead of the shutdown as they might not be able to access necessary information, vending and data.
- It later on July 20, announced the completion of the system upgrade on its billing and vending infrastructure and the restoration of suspended services
This article has been updated to reflect the correct detail.
The most stupid ideas on earth comes from Nigeria. Tufiakwa
What about those of us buying through our online banking services?
I thought we were looking for a way forward but then I realize that This is Nigeria!
What is wrong with Nigeria? Can’t we ever get it right? Now we must go to the IEDC offices and queue up and suffer indignities and loss of productive time just to buy electricity units. What was wrong with doing it online or from Buy Power app? Much faster and stress-free. Why must we take one step forward and five backwards?
Lol this is one of the dumbest ideas i have ever heard
This new order or idea from ikeelect, is to cause inconvenience and will be very cumbersome for customers unlike simple enter the agent offices within your area and purchase your unit and find your way, why do they like to be suffering Nigerians unnecessarily if I may ask?? Just like what people are going thru now with NIN on the mistakes made by them on date of birth or names, why cant this ikeekect still continue with this their several agents around instead of this new directives , when u now get there u will see a lot of cues and sometimes they will tell you no network and one mightl likely spend a whole day there in the name of purchasing elect units. When will this country grow ??????? My opinion is that the ikeja elect should continue with their old way of buying units thru their numerous agent offices everywhere instead of this their new directives. I rest my case.
This news report is not complete. Kindly explain what you mean by smart meter.
So you people expect me to spend 2k on transport to buy 5k units? It won’t work o coz this wasn’t our agreement before purchasing the meter in the first place so if you’ve decided to bridge your own agreement definitely I too can bridge my by simply called an electrician to remove my wire from your prepaid meter and connected direct to light. If anything came up then we’ll all meet in court to resolve the whole thing… Stupid fellow. I read your buying law before applied now it’s law bridging.
I have recharge twice from a pos in my area,without problem.but this news seems confusing.Is this news items suggesting recharge from your office only again? No to other pos?please clarify.
It’s clear that Nigeria lives chaos because one is clearly brewing.
Ikeja Electric is worse than NEPA in electricity distribution.our hope should be towards coming government in Nigeria.
So much for the cacophony about upgrades that is only a downgrade.
But, this is Nigeria, a country that treasures inflicting miseries on its Citizens .
They are deliberately frustrating all the indices for innovations in the power sector just to sustain the means through which they milk and extort the public/consumers!
Don’t be surprised to find out that, these are state sponsored policies directly and deliberately targeted at creating technological retrogresion in the power industry! They are not comfortable with the emerging patterns of automation in the system because such is capable of disabling all the machineries of corruption, stealing and institutional thefts in the foreseeable future.