While the City of Johannesburg claims the pre-termination notice delivered to the Mandela house was erroneously delivered, and an occasional problem, commentators say the problem lies with the integrity of raw customer data, which is "flawed".
The city has issued an apology to the Mandela family after confirming that a pre-termination notice was incorrectly delivered, and that the address and account number belong to another customer and property in a neighbouring suburb, not to the Mandela residence.
In a statement issued by Kgamanyane Maphologela, acting director of communications and stakeholder management in the city's Group Finance Department, he says customer data is being cleansed and updated and, as a result, occasional errors like this may occur. "We wish to apologise to any customer who might have had a similar experience."
Not isolated
However, Democratic Alliance (DA) billing spokesman Linus Muller says these sorts of errors are not occasional and have affected many people. Some have received accounts for properties they do not own, while others have received accounts with the correct address, but wrong account number, he says.
"This is what we face on a daily basis."
The DA believes the problem is bigger than the city admits, adds Muller. The incorrectly-delivered Mandela notice is only one of the many types of billing errors experienced, but because the family is high profile, this type of issue is now receiving more attention, he adds.
Muller says the exercise to clean up information is actually contaminating it. He suspects the city restored old data onto the database after a crash, which would explain the problems some residents are facing.
Maphologela says, while a full investigation is being conducted as to how this error occurred, the city has decided to take action against people involved.
Ongoing problem
When the city moved from Venus to SAP several years ago, the city should have cleaned its data then so that the take-on data on the new system was accurate, says Muller. The city's R580 million project Phakama - to change systems - led to inflated statements and incorrect readings, among other problems.
The city has been working on resolving the issue and clearing the backlog of complaints, but has not released numbers showing its resolution rate for about a year. Muller says the complaints about addresses being incorrectly changed are part of the "ongoing billing saga in the city".
Lee Cahill, founding member of the Joburg Advocacy Group, which has since suspended activities, says "there is clearly a database problem". She says, however, there is no way of assessing how many people may be affected out of the city's more than a million account-holders.
Cahill says the Mandela incident is not isolated and has been happening for years and she hears of many incidences where the information on bills is wrong. Cahill says the city cannot run its billing system when the core data is flawed.
Muller explains that when a pre-termination notice gets delivered to the wrong address, a disconnection will occur at the wrong address too, unless the recipient notifies the city of the mistake.
The city has to pay the agent for the delivery of the pre-termination notice, the disconnection and reconnection, and cannot recuperate the expense from the client as the wrong client was disconnected, says Muller. The same goes for any action taken against a customer with an outstanding billing complaint, he adds.
Wrong house
Maphologela says the contractor should have delivered the notice to the neighbouring suburb. However, Muller adds that an investigation into the addresses - both Mandela's Houghton house and the one the city says the notice was meant for - show they are actually the same property.
Maphologela says the city has an obligation towards its customers not to disclose any personal information relating to the agreement that customers enter into when opening an account.
Pre-termination notices are normally triggered by the system to all customer accounts once they are 30 days or more in arrears. If the account has not been paid by the due date, the system will automatically generate a notice. This is delivered to the property owner's physical address by the city's delivery contractors.
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