Now, fluctuations...

Despite my email of yesterday, we spent the whole evening, the whole night and this morning dealing with fluctuations. 

Those of us who have devices to  protect us from this 'dirty' and damaging power constantly found them switching from red to orange and back again.

Trying to  call Kenya Power again proved an exercise in futility. And btw, when it tells us to report these incidences on Twitter, may I bring them back to the country they are expecting this in - that when we do not have power, many of us do not also have access to the Internet since our devices are connected to this power. Then, not everybody has a twitter account and the majority are not even connected to the Internet!!!

So, please find another way for your consumers to inform you about your shoddy services since you refuse to  answer phones.

Maybe we can go back to learning how to communicate via drumbeats and/or smoke signals...?

Outages started, again...

Why is it that Kenya Power cannot give a consistent supply of electricity to it's consumers? Yet, it has the cheek to ask for advance payment for a 'service' which is highly unacceptable and pathetic in the extreme. I am talking about their pre-paid ambitions. While they LOVE our money, they unfortunately for us, do not do their work with the same zeal.

How dare they even think about making the whole country forcibly go pre-paid in a set-up like this.

I am talking about today and the many days to come when the rains start in full swing. At the first sound of thunder, the power went off in Nyali. And as usual, trying to get these incompetents on the phone is becoming an exercise in futility. 

I  have a suspicious feeling that they deliberately switch their phones off, since they do not want to be asked 'difficult' questions that some people like me will start asking them. They have no answer and no excuse to give us it seems and to add insult to injury there is no apology for  their shoddy 'service' either.

Now, let me inform all of you who still are on post paid accounts. Count yourselves lucky since you can still fight for the questionable bills that this company is in the habit of sending to you. You can as least go and complain to them and raise hell if needs be in their offices if not attended to. This because you are mercifully still on their post-paid system.

I have been told by the many friends and family who are on their pre-paid one, that they truly regret this since these meters seem to swallow money like water. When a couple of them went to Electricity house to complain they started getting a run-a-round i.e. an unofficial 'tour' of the various offices there to get their errant, 'thirsty' meters investigated. Of course nothing happened at the end of it. The frustrated people left their complaints not entertained at all. 

With such an unaccountable company supplying us with this gateway to the 21st Century, they have no business forcing people to accept their pre-paid arrangement.

People who are on post-paid lately have also been receiving highly inflated bills. I wonder why? Are Kenya Power trying to intimidate it's consumers into accepting the pre-paid arrangement?

I know of one poor family in the North Coast who  have no electrical gadgets or even a fridge or fan, and who till recently were paying no more than 700/- a month suddenly get 10 times that amount!

When the man of the house went to their offices to do battle and asked to see the seniors, these 'juniors' quickly tried placating him and telling him that they had made a mistake by sending him anothers bill!!!! That he should come back again the following Tuesday (this was a Friday), when they would rectify his bill.

After reading this account, does anybody think that this power company is at all accountable, responsible, ethical and professional? I am sure that there are many others all over the country who have similar stories to tell. So, imagine if we were all on pre-paid? Post paid is nightmarish enough.

Oh, just now while writing this the power went off a second time today and trying to call an Eng. named Biwott whose number is supposed to be valid this time the prompt voice kept telling me that it found the number 'unrecognizable'!!! How strange....

So, with this I will leave you  to think about  this disgusting and incompetent power company which is holding the whole country at it's mercy.

Now that rains are supposedly here...

At the first clap of thunder and lightening last night, the lights went off at around midnight!

Does this mean that now that our rainy season seems to have started, this will be the norm where we spend an unbelievable amount of time in darkness not being able to join the 21st Century with all that the rest of humanity does, but, we in Kenya and in particular our little 'banana republic' style, Mombasa  with its numerous residents will be spending time twiddling their thumbs waiting for hours on end for power to return to be able to continue with their lives as best they can and getting highly frustrated in the process?

Since midnight last night we have lost power 5 times and it takes Kenya Power (really?), an average of over an hour to restore it. They also do not answer their phones as they are always wont to do.

So, Kenya Power (?), could you please let us in Mombasa and in particular Nyali residents know what kind of improvement you have been gloating to us that you have been doing since last year? Telling us that these outages will be a thing of the past and they still are not? When will they be?

Then, you have the temerity to even think of putting us on pre-paid meters where you will then completely wash your collective hands of any responsibilities regarding our power expenses. When we are post paid we at least have a way of coming to you with contentious bills but with pre-paid we will have no way of disputing hiked up charges. You will be having all the advantages when our meters run out of control due to power surges etc., and we try to get this through to you.

So, Mombasa residents take care before you agree to this utter nonsense of pre-paid till Kenya Power can guarantee to supply us with clean and 

reliable power..... IF, they can!

Do not agree to pre-paid as you will end up paying more at the end of the month than your post paid bills. There are also many other contentious issues where Kenya Power will not even entertain your complains. I can see nothing but frustrations for us and many headaches while they will be sitting pretty without a single problem on their hands. They will be dangling the fact that if we do not keep topping up come what may, we will be the losers, not them - long story short.