Electricity Update

The electricity is back on and I have not moved home. The matter still has not being resolved though: I have an appearance at a preliminary court before everything is settled 🙂

Apparently the neutral wire of my power meter at the apartment block ground level was not connected. Or something like that. This allowed my meter to not record the total amount of energy used. I found this extremely hard to believe as I, a bachelor in a small (tiny for Mersin) apartment, have electricity bills as large or larger than many of the other tenants. After speaking with my apartment owner he explained that my hot water heater consumes a lot of energy. Many other apartments have solar water heaters (or don’t have showers :-). I reluctantly agreed to pay most of the money with the owner and Ahmet paying the rest. The amount to be paid (372,750,000 TL) was not calculated scientifically and was based on complete guesses. On Thursday Serkan went to TESDAÅž’s headquarters with the millions and when I returned to my infamous apartment Thursday night the electricity was back on.

On Friday Ahmet accompanied me to the Soğuksu police station just down the road where we signed a statutory declaration saying I did not know anything about the faulty meter. Ahmet signed as the tercüman (translator). There were several other people with the same issue. In the afternoon we drove to the court building near the train station and waited outside a preliminary court. After a while doing nothing we were told to go and come back when called, probably in a month. ı will write about it when it happens.

I must thank Ahmet and Serkan for their help during this drama. Except for the wasted time and money I have enjoyed the adventure. I am also happy the government is cracking down on the massive electricity fraud committed in Turkey. I believe Turkey’s expensive electricity prices are due to the amount of fraud that goes on. I am only unhappy that I drew the short straw.

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