PLN Receives 65,786 Complaints of High Electricity Bill
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11 June 2020 20:41 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The state-owned electricity firm PLN said that it has so far received a total of 65,786 complaints of the surge in electricity bills.
“These (complaints) are recorded from our posts across Indonesia,” said PLN Director of Commerce and Customer Management, Bob Saril, in a video conference on Thursday, June 11. Most of the complaints, he added, were lodged by customers in Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya.
Many people recently voiced their complaints about a hike in their electricity bills. The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) recorded a variety of increases of up to 200 percent.
The YLKI chairman Tulus Abadi asked people who received a hike bill to file a complaint to PLN in order to be checked and handled.
Saril added that his side had opened all offices to accommodate customers’ claims that could also be reported via the company’s complaint center or social media. According to him, the company observed that the hike was purely caused by customers’ higher consumption.
PLN claimed the bill spiked due to the Covid-19 outbreak that hampered officers to visit customers’ houses to input data on electricity usage. Thus, the company calculated the average consumption of the past three months for a month's bill and that is carried over to the next month’s bill, leading to a significant hike in electricity bills.
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