One way to make sure people pay for their utilities is to have them pay up front, before they receive the benefit of those utilities. According to the UAE’s Gulf News, that’s what the Saudi Electric Company has decided to do. While this is certainly to the company’s benefit, it does seem to put more control over power usage into the hands of the consumer. Because prepaid electricity cards can be purchased at a wide variety of shops, it also makes it easier to ensure that the power stays on. No longer will it be necessary to try and find someone at the power company to reconnect homes that have been shut off for non-payment as non-payment should become a thing of the past.
Saudis to get prepaid electricity cards
Miriam Al-HakeemRiyadh: The Saudi Electricity Company will introduce prepaid electricity cards in about six months, Engineer Ali Al Barak, Executive President of the company, said.
These cards will replace the current electricity billing system, Asharq Al Awsat daily quoted him as saying.
Al Barak said the main reason for this step is to enable power consumers to rationalise consumption.
With prepaid cards they will see exactly how much power they consume.
…
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
September:03:2008 - 10:31
Pre-paid allowed me to turn my lights on, without a deposit.. and I don’t get penalized if I run out of power. Why should I pay a penalty if my car runs out of gas? Now I can buy a Juice Card and top off my juice when I get paid.
I know what my usage is every time I check my e-mail (Wwwaaaay too often…) because my utility uses a Juice Gauge that shows up on my Google home page. They get it all from some company called
UtiliFlex..