When the Baseline Can't Be Verified: Lessons from a Landlord Billing Dispute

A contact-centre tenant in a Gauteng office park received a landlord back-bill reaching back to mid-2023. Augos reviewed the tariff and billing, found demand charges applied to periods with no demand tariff, and found a missed meter read. What we could not verify was the historic consumption behind the claim, because the tenant had no independent metering.

Why do landlord and tenant electricity disputes happen?

Most start with a gap between what the main incomer records and what each tenant is billed. When a landlord later finds it has under-recovered, the fix is a retrospective adjustment, and the tenant is asked to pay for months or years of consumption it cannot check.

What went wrong at this property?

The tenant expanded into additional floor space and its load grew. The landlord re-billed from mid-2023, arguing the tenant had been under-billed. The tenant appointed Augos to review the claim. We found three issues:

Demand charges on a non-demand tariff. The adjustment applied kVA demand charges to periods when the tenant was on the municipality's Business Conventional tariff, which has no demand component. Those charges were allocated by floor area, not measured demand.

A flat tariff for an off-peak load. Once demand passed about 100 kVA, the point at which the municipal tariff booklet moves a customer onto the large-customer tariff, the adjustment moved the tenant onto the flat Large Customer tariff (low voltage) for the whole period. The tenant works an afternoon-to-midnight shift pattern, so much of its load falls outside peak periods, and it asked for the Large Customer TOU (Time-of-Use) version of that tariff from mid-2025.

A missed meter read. No reading was taken on the main incomer at one mid-2025 billing date. Almost two months of consumption landed in a single billing month, producing a load factor of 154%. This site normally runs at around 75%, and no site can exceed 100%.

Why couldn't the historic consumption be verified?

We could check every rate, tariff and calculation. We could not check the kWh the whole claim rests on. The tenant is not an Augos metering client, so there was no independent record of what it used during the adjustment period.

The landlord's figures came from monthly readings on the main incomer, which also feeds load that is not the tenant's. The sub-meters that should separate the tenant's share are analogue. They hold no interval history, so nothing could show how much of the incomer's consumption was the tenant's, month by month, back to mid-2023.

The tenant was entitled to ask for documented evidence of the under-billing before paying. But evidence that was never recorded cannot be produced later. Months went into requesting readings, chasing data from newly installed meters, and checking whether current figures were like-for-like with the adjustment.

How would independent metering have settled it faster?

With an Augos meter on the tenant's own supply, the argument would have been about rates, not about whose numbers to trust.

Question in the dispute	Without tenant metering	With Augos metering
How many kWh did the tenant use each month since mid-2023?	Inferred from incomer readings shared with other load	Measured on the tenant's supply
When did demand first exceed 100 kVA?	Estimated; kVA was allocated by floor area	Recorded maximum demand per month
How much load falls in off-peak?	Unknown, so Time-of-Use savings could not be quantified	Time-of-Use split available from the data
Was a month's reading missing or doubled?	Found only by forensic review, after the bill	Flagged by bill verification variance alerts
Does current billing match actual use?	Available only once the landlord installed new meters, long after the adjustment period began	Compared monthly through bill verification

The tariff corrections would have stood as they are. The difference is that the kWh underneath them would have been agreed, not disputed. Months of correspondence could have been a single reconciliation.

Where does it stand?

The dispute has not yet concluded. Augos's work so far has run in three phases.

Phase 1: tariff review. Our first analysis found that demand charges had been billed while the tenant was on the municipality's Business Conventional tariff. We asked the landlord to remove these charges and to consider billing the tenant on the Large Customer TOU tariff (low voltage) from July 2025, when it would first have qualified. The landlord made amendments, but applied the flat Large Customer tariff to the entire adjustment period and stated that the tenant would have to apply for the Time-of-Use tariff.

Phase 2: recalculation. We reviewed the landlord's changes and recalculated the adjustment, applying the Business Conventional tariff from the start of the adjustment period to June 2025, and the Large Customer tariff (low voltage) from July 2025.

Phase 3: meter reading review. We requested and reviewed all meter reading data for the adjustment period. We found a period in which no readings were taken, where the landlord had billed two months of consumption and applied it to one month. We communicated this to the landlord, who will correct it.

The landlord has since installed new main-incomer meters that measure only this tenant's consumption, and Augos compared that data with the historic re-billed consumption. For the first time, both parties have a measured record of the tenant's actual consumption to test the adjustment against. Augos is reviewing the results with the tenant, and we will share the outcome once the dispute concludes.

Whatever the final figure, the lesson is already clear: the data that will settle this dispute is exactly the data that was missing for most of the adjustment period.

What should tenants and landlords take from this?

Meter what you pay for. An independent meter on the tenant's supply is the only record neither side controls.

Check the tariff before the kWh. Demand charges on a non-demand tariff, or allocation by floor area, can be corrected without any consumption data.

Watch for missed reads. One skipped read can put two months into one bill and produce a load factor above 100%, which no site can achieve.

Ask for evidence before paying a back-bill. Request the readings, the metering layout and the calculation. The lease and municipal by-laws set the rules; check both.

Apply for the right tariff early. Check how your municipality's by-laws handle Time-of-Use applications, and apply as soon as your load qualifies.

Verify your tenant recoveries

Whether you are a tenant facing a back-bill or a landlord recovering costs, verified data ends the argument. Talk to Augos about bill verification and sub-metering, and read our tenant's guide to fair electricity billing. Tariffs: the Augos tariff database, including City Power Johannesburg's Business Conventional, Large Customer and Large Customer TOU schemes.