Confusion with cross connection explained

Confusion with cross connection

This is regarding a billing discrepancy in my Dubai Water and Electricity Authority (Dewa) account. We have been charged an additional adjustment fee of Dh774.24, and when I checked with the telephone support at Dewa, they informed me that the charges were for cross connection to the another meter. We have been regularly paying, as per the bills we receive.

I visited the Dewa head office on November 5 in the morning, and explained the issue to one of the representatives in customer service. I waited more than 1.5 hours as per the request from the customer service representative, as he could not clarify. The respective section head reviewed the issue and contacted the technical department to explain it. Finally, customer service took all my contact details and told me that the technical department would call and explained the details. No one called and Dewa has not reversed the amount till now.

I am not aware of any cross connection of electricity/water connection, as all the connections are supervised by Dewa, and I don’t believe Dewa has connected the meters. I request Gulf News to help us resolve this issue, as customers are being charged additional amounts without any usage of water/electricity for no fault of theirs.

From Mr Haridas Kozhissery

Dubai

The management of Dewa responds:

Our technical team inspected the premises of Mr Kozhissery and found that his home had a cross connection with another property for the water meter. A cross connection is when the meters are recording information for the other property and vice versa.

In this instance, the other resident had called on September 17 about their bill being much higher, which resulted in our technicians discovering that this was the case and that Mr Kozhissery’s household is actually using more water than the other property. We fixed the matter on September 22 when the water meters were swapped to their correct locations.

The other resident has been credited for the utilities used and this adjustment has been reflected to Mr Kozhissery, as this is what he would have been expected to pay over the last six months. We explained to Mr Kozhissery that, as his household had used this water, he was liable to pay for it.

We trust that this explanation will finalise the matter. If Mr Kozhissery has further concerns about his bills, we have a range of conservation tips available at our website, www.dewa.gov.ae, to help his household to lower them.

(Process initiation: December 2. Response from organisation: December 3. Process completion: December 16.)

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