Last week, South Africa’s payCity stopped accepting online credit card payments for its SMS prepaid electricity service for Cape Town customers. The suspension of services occurred without notice too many customers unless they had been to the payCity website to see the notice, leaving them in the dark. Customers, when trying to purchase using the sms service received a sms response stating “We are sorry, but there seems to be an error with your SMS query : SMS service for Cape Town electricity is not available for more details go to payCity.co.za”
We made several calls into the call centre to see why the service stopped. One agent said the reason was that they no longer have the contract with City of Cape Town. Another agent said they were running at a loss with the service.
On the payCity website the notice states:
We, as payCity pride ourselves on our service offering; unfortunately due to downstream technical issues beyond our control we are no longer able to uphold these standards.
We are also faced with the dilemma that due to the pricing structure dictated by the tender, the fees earned for providing this service are not aligned with the associated costs, efforts and disciplines required to do so.
We thank all our loyal clients for the support given to Syntell over the past 12 years, from the early days of energy.co.za and plasma.co.za and their continued support on payCity after the migration.
They also provide some suggestions for alternative SMS prepaid electricity providers in Cape Town.
