Straton Prepaid

The main concern of every landlord is how to recover their electricity, water and gas costs.

Private Prepaid Meters Sequence of Events:

1. Landlord identifies a need to manage a tenants electricity consumption and recover the cost of electricity used (the typical scenario is a flatlet attached to a property).
2. Landlord installs a private prepaid meter in the flatlet provided by Straton Prepaid.
3. Tenant receives a card to be used to purchase credits for the prepaid meter.
4. Credits can be bought online or from any Easy Pay outlet – Supermarkets/Forecourts/Online.
5. A handling/admin/payment processing/re-imbursement/support fee of 10% plus VAT applies to meters supplied by Straton Prepaid.
6. The money paid by the tenant for electricity credits, less the handling/admin/payment processing/re-imbursement/support fee, is paid to the landlord every month.
7. The landlord remains responsible for settling the electricity bill with the Municipality as effectively the tenant is re-imbursing the landlord for electricity used.
8. When or before the tenants credit runs out the cycle begins again.

Advantages:

1. Landlord does not have to read a separate meter, invoice and collect electricity from the tenant.
2. The tenant manages their own consumption.
3. Less friction between landlord and tenant.
4. Energy savings all round.

Disadvantages:

1. The tenant effectively carries the burden of the cost of the handling/admin/payment processing/re-imbursement/support fee.

If you put a meter in for your tenant on our “sub-let” solution, you effectively sell the electricity to your tenant and you’re allowed to charge a tariff that would cover your cost. If your household buys on the top IBT tariff, then you’re allowed to charge your tenant that tariff plus a ‘reasonable’ recovery charge per unit.

The NERSA ruling is that you are not allowed to make a profit out of the tariff. So – if you can prove that your tariff is X, and you need to recover your cost of Y (let’s say “Y” being your present tariff plus the capital cost of the meter that you’d like to recover over 4 years) AND you have communicated this to the tenant, then you are legit. We have had the odd objection – but the NERSA ruling has always been that transparency prevails.

Our technical service is superior –  A lot of our competition do not have electricians to back them up, we offer technical support, during the installation – and a helpline thereafter.

Our meters are well known, we will only recommend the best. We also offer an option of supplying the meters free of charge, (the meters remain our property) to assist the owner or developer in not having to pay the capital portion upfront.

Our vending system is superior, it is supported countrywide and available at a very wide spectrum of outlets. We constantly strive to improve and broaden the outlet arena and work very closely with them to enable us to grow our market to service gas and water metering)

Our Revenue protection offering – tampering with meters has become rife in the pre-paid market. Our data analysis allow us to monitor sales, and we offer a service to the body corporates/owners where we audit the meters to identify and recover tampers. Very high success rate and 99% recovery.

Our reputation – Straton Electrical has been in the electrical contracting market since 1966 and we have always been very active in developing and supporting the industry.