While the convenience of Kenya Power’s prepaid meter service is commendable, the inconvenience that comes with purchasing tokens is anguishing on equal measures. In April 2009, Kenya Power rolled out the prepaid metering project on pilot basis. The company wanted to give customers control of their electricity consumption and improve accuracy of the system by eliminating estimated bills.

By June, 2011, Kenya Power had installed these meters in about 123,000 houses, mostly in Nairobi. This system has been received well, according to data released by the company last year, with 75% of the customers connected giving it a nod.

However, there are areas that Kenya Power has overlooked, and some serious fleshing out is needed.

Earlier this week, the Kenya Power token venting system was experiencing delays. Judging from the power distributor’s social media page, quite a number of people were enraged by this. The only solution provided, expectedly, was an assurance that the technical department was working on it. And the technical department sure worked on it, and worked, and worked, and for some, 34 hours later, tokens had still not been processed.

Options?

The idea behind a pre-paid meter was to save clients from the hassles of paper bills, disconnections and reconnections. Currently, one has a few options as to where they can purchase tokens, the first and most reliable being mobile money platforms like M-Pesa and Airtel Money. We are well aware that these systems experience delays as well, and sometimes, a transaction takes hours to process. In a case Pesatalk highlighted here for example, it took three days to process tokens. Kenya Power held the argument that the payment was not reflecting on their systems, while Safaricom (M-Pesa) said that the funds had already been transferred to Kenya Power.

The other option is to purchase tokens from the Kenya Power offices, an option that does not come in handy when you run out of power in the middle of the night. Lastly, one can purchase tokens from Uchumi Supermarket, but this service is only available at Uchumi Ngong Hyper, Capital Centre and Langata Road.

The company, in a statement released in June 2011 to Cofek, acknowledged the glitches in the token system, promising to increase the vending footprint by engaging three additional third party vendors. It also promised to make the purchase of tokens convenient by providing points at residential areas. More than one year later, this is yet to happen.

Recharge cards

Perhaps, Kenya Power should consider decentralizing their systems, and introducing recharge cards or smart cards. Imagine how convenient this would be. If the idea is to avoid the inconvenience that came with the postpaid meters, then it does not help creating more inconveniences while attempting to solve some. The current billing system is centralized. Everything has to go through the main system first, and recharge cards like in the case of telecoms, cannot work. This I find very limiting. Why not have a client’s meter as a proxy point that can be recharged, independent of the Kenya Power main system to avoid delays? Perhaps, a meter intelligent enough to communicate with the central system and automatically load it?

I do not want to go to the details of the inconsistency and faults in metering, but a few people have complained about this as well. And as we know, where there is smoke, someone doth light fire. Evidently, Kenya Power rolled out the system unprepared, and the consumer has had to pay for this, as described by blogger, Dennis Kioko here.

The company even acknowledges the faultiness of the meters, saying that there has been a few cases, but below the 5% of the total population of the meters installed. This margin, they say, is internationally acceptable as the failure limit for postpaid and prepaid meters.

Customers really don't care about margins and limits though. All a customer wants is a working system.  Technology is undisputedly unreliable, and at some point, we might have to cut Kenya Power some slack. But the frequency at which their systems experience a ‘technical hitch’ is alarming.

Whether Kenya Power needs to put some money into upgrading their current infrastructure, or whether they need to consider recharge cards, something sure has to be done. Otherwise, who needs convenience if all that convenience will do is cost you more money and cause more anguish?