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Metering of electricity with secondary prepaid electricity meters is an excellent way for property investors, landlords and letting agents to avoid the risk of having to pay electricity utility bills, when tenants don’t pay.

However, feedback from the field shows that prepaid electricity meters also have other benefits. Customers who have installed prepaid electricity meters, in their rental units, are telling PrepaidMeters.co.za that one of the interesting benefits of using prepaid meters is that they are directly reducing their tenant turnover.

Sean Wheller, a Johannesburg Inner City property investor, has fitted Prepaid Meters from PrePaidMeters.co.za to all his rental units. Wheller had this to say about his experience with the meters, “When I installed prepaid meters it was with the view of reducing risk. The meters achieved this. Then, with time, I found that the number of disputes over electricity bills was completely eliminated. With fewer disputes, our tenants have been more satisfied with our services. Soon after, we noted that more of our tenants were renewing their leases. Normally, most tenants would not renew. I am convinced that the improvement relations has been brought about because of the prepaid electricity meters and, as a result, is one of the main reasons more tenants are renewing their leases.”

Building a good tenant base is a key factor for property investors and letting agents alike. They want to keep good tenants for as long as they can. The more good tenants an investor or letting agent has and the longer they remain as tenants, the more profitable their buy-to-let or letting operation is. Costs of advertising and vetting tenants are one of the main costs that chew into the profit made over the rental period. When a rental unit has a high tenant turnover, these costs must be frequently amortised over the period of each lease agreement. It stands to reason that if landlords and letting agents can reduce their tenant churn, that they will incur fewer marketing and vetting costs, and the overall profit from the rental lease will be increased.

Field research conducted by PrepaidMeters.co.za shows that tenants residing in rental units fitted with a prepaid electricity meter, are generally happier with the financial arrangement of electricity bill. The main benefit reported by tenants is that, because of the meter, they are able to monitor exactly how much electricity they are consuming. Tenants also point out that they like knowing how much they are spending as they are paying in advance and do not have to dread receiving a large electricity bill at the month end.

Tenants using Prepaid Meters from PrepaidMeters.co.za have also commended the convenience of the meters. Mavis Mteto rents a flat in Joubert Park and had this to say about the meter her Landlord installed, “Since the meter, we know how much we use. When it’s finishing, we don’t go to go buy credit there at the shop. I’m paying to the owner with cellphone banking and then sending SMS to get the number anytime.”

The level of convenience is attributed to the fact that prepaid meters from PrepaidMeters.co.za provide both metering and vending functionality in one unit. Where some prepaid meter systems provide only a metering solution, all Prepaid Meter models available from PrePaidMeters.co.za combine both metering and vending functionality. The advantage of this is that vending of credit tokens is an integral feature of the meter. The downside of using meters that only provide a metering solution is that the tenant must use a card system and must visit a shop to obtain additional credit. This can be inconvenient for tenants. Cards get damaged, are lost, and tenants often forget to buy additional credit before their current credit is consumed.

The PrepaidMeters.co.za solution is simple, yet effective and very convenient for both the landlord and the tenant. Tenants pay money to their landlords Bank account for electricity using Internet or phone banking services. The landlord credits the sum paid to the tenants meter. The tenant then uses their cellphone to send an SMS requesting a 20-digit credit token. In this way, electricity credit can be easily purchased while at the office, or at home.

Tenants can request credit tokens up to the value of credit allocated to the prepaid meter by their landlord. Credit tokens can be requested at any time of the day or night using SMS technology. For example, if a tenant deposits R200.00 with a landlord for electricity, the tenant can obtain a 20-digit credit token for R200 or any lesser value. If a tenant requests a 20-digit credit token for R100.00, the tenant will still have R100.00 as credit remaining. This can be requested at any time just by sending another SMS request for a new credit token. So if the current credit token value is consumed at 7PM at night while watching a football match, all the tenant would do is request another credit token and immediately restore their electricity. No need to leave the house and miss the match. In under 2 minutes the electricity is restored.

This level of control, flexibility and convenience in attributed to the integral nature of the vending functionality supplied with all prepaid meters available from PrepaidMeters.co.za . It avoids any resentment on the behalf of the tenant for having to use an electricity metering solution that is prepaid. With these benefits and control, tenants are in control, but landlords are protected. Disputes over the lease period are reduced and lead to improved relations between tenants and their landlords. As field experience is showing, improved relations is having a positive impact for landlords and tenants that results more tenants renewing their lease agreements.

A large number of people these days own contract mobile phones. These handsets are fast gaining popularity among the mobile phone users. A brief description of the latest trends in contract mobile phones is given below.

Mobile phones have become a must for most people. These days, many people keep more than one handset with them. Cellphone manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung have released a number of new feature packed mobile handsets into the markets in recent times. These newest models of cell phones come equipped with numerous advanced features like a touch sensitive interface, instant messaging and video call.

Everyone wants to own a high end phone these days. But only few people can afford to buy them in cash as they are generally expensive. Therefore, retailers have come up with innovative ideas to market these devices. Most retailers in the UK are selling cheap contract mobile phones to users at very attractive prices.

Owning a contract mobile phones is the latest trend among phone users across the UK. Acquiring a contract mobile phone under a 12 months contract deal is becoming popular in the UK these days. Under a contract deal, the user signs a contract with a mobile network provider for a fixed period of 12 or 18 months. For this, she or he will have to deposit a fixed amount of money with the network provider for a period of 12 or 18 months. In return, the network carrier gives many benefits to the user. The user is offered some free talktime during the period his or her contract is effective. Besides this, the user is also offered other benefits like subsidised call rates and free text messaging under the deal.Now everyone want latest handset with 12 months free line rental mobile offers.

Retailers across the UK are offering cheap contract mobile phones to the users at a bargain price. Newest cell phone models of leading manufacturers like the Samsung i550, Nokia N95 and Motorola SLVR L9 are being sold by the retailers under one contract deal or the other. Many retailers are also selling cheap contract mobile phones with free gifts. These contract mobile phones are increasingly becoming popular among the users in the UK and other countries of the world. They provide true value for money to the cellphone users.

Although there is a fair amount of coverage in the media about the crime and corruption in South Africa, such as the arms deal debacle and crime against tourists, there is an underlying moral vacuum which is seldom mentioned. Being aware of the situation “on the ground” may give the reader a proper perspective of what exactly is happening here. Only property crime is dealt with here, as violent crime is a subject on it’s own.

What follows is actual happenings and observations during normal day to day life. These are not stories or fabrications or even exaggerations, although it may seem that these items are too far fetched to be real. They are real.

1. A train derailed this week. It was carrying coal for export, and was a few kilometers long. These trains are some of the longest in the world, up to three kilometers or more in length. The reason for the derailment was that people had stolen the bolts that hold the railway line to the sleepers, over many hundreds of meters, to sell for scrap metal.

2. Near Johannesburg, a train carrying bags of cement broke down due to mechanical failure. While it was being repaired, the local people stole all the bags of cement off the train. Not thieves in the normal sense, but everyone: men, women and children.

3. Near Hluhluwe game reserve is a TV and radio broadcasting station. It has a standby generator to keep it on air during a power failure. Local people cut through the fence, cut through the steel cage around the diesel tank, and carried off, in buckets, 2000 litres of diesel. A guard was hired to patrol the site at night. They came again during the day and stole another 2000 litres that same week. There are now guards there 24/7 at a cost of R10,000 a month.

4. People are breaking into electrical substations and stealing the transformer oil out of the large, high voltage transformers, which police say they are selling as “cooking oil.” This results in the transformer overheating and burning out, and whole areas lose electricity supply, including hospitals, restaurants and factories.

5. On windy days, fires are started intentionally in the farmlands to burn out white farmers who are slow in relinquishing their farms. The fires are uncontrollable, and sweep over thousands of hectares of tinder dry grasslands, gumtree plantations and sugar cane fields, destroying everything. People, black and white, lose their lives and possessions in these fires. On Saturday this week the local radio station reported that there were 75 different fires raging simultaneously. 24 people are confirmed dead, and one firefighting plane went down, killing the New Zealander pilot. The smoke plumes were clearly visable in the satellite weather photos.

6. Telephone wires are systematically stripped to get the copper, which is sold as scrap metal. People have now given up, and only use cellphones in some areas, as their land line was never working.

7. A contractor who was building 30 metre cellphone masts offloaded an entire sectional 30 metre mast on a Friday, intending to erect the mast with a large crane starting on the Monday. When he returned on Monday the entire mast had been stolen.

8. People have had their cars impounded at the police pound for parking illegally or some other traffic offence. When they arrive a day or so later to collect their car, it has been stripped, inside the police pound yard, and only the shell of the car remains. This is a very common occurance.

9. A number of kilometers of railway line track was stolen near Johannesburg this last month.

10. Large electrical cables supplying suburbs with electricity, are dug up out of the ground and stolen, plunging large areas into darkness. The thieves do this to a “live” cable by laying the cable over a rock and hitting it with another large rock. This cable is sold for scrap. They may get R700 for the cable as scrap, but it costs in the region of R100,000 or more to replace the cable, plus the labour and time to do the job. Often these cables are pulled out of the ground with a large vehicle, removing hundreds of meters of cable.

11. Cats eyes, the reflectors built into the road surface to aid motorists in the mist, are stolen. Some rural areas have almost none left on the road for kilometers.

12. Any material left on a building site is stolen within hours, even if locked behind a razorwire fence. Only an armed guard can keep it safe.

13. Businesses normally have a razorwire fence, an armed response alarm system, cctv cameras and infrared beams in the yard. And they are still robbed regularly.

14. Water meters, which each house has where the water mains enter their property from the street, are broken off and stolen for the value of the brass they are made out of. Usually 4 or five are stolen in quick succession, and home owners wake up in the dead of night with a loud hissing sound and rain falling on their house from a cloudless sky. This happens regularly. The meters are

With the launch of iphone in the market it is seen that every customer wants to buy this handset along with the iphone accessories. This handset has really impressed users so much that they are willing to spend any amount to buy an iphone. More than the handset people are looking for stylish iphone accessories to make their handset look all the more smart. Apart from adding value to the looks of the handset iphone accessories even act as a safe guard for the phone.

People looking for reasonable iphone accessories can refer to online mobile phone companies that provide with discounted cellphones along with the accessories. Some of the online mobile companies even provide few free iphone accessories along with the handset. Some of the most common accessories of iphone are batteries, bluetooth wireless headsets, car kits, cases, screen protector, headphones etc. Every iphone accessory helps to provide comfort to the user that makes iphone a luxurious handset.

Iphone is a perfect handset that has all the features because of which the cost of this handset is too much. It is very essential to make use of iphone accessories to keep this handset safe so as to add years to it’s life. Make sure that you do not fetch fake accessories and in order to avoid this purchase accessories from the registered iphone outlets. Iphone store outlets will provide with a large variety of accessories for your handset. In case you cannot find an outlet then go for an online mobile accessories company that provides the iphone accessories through a simple click of mouse.

All those who have bought an iphone must buy iphone accessories to make their handset look new always. Add life to your iphone by making use of the accessories that will prevent your cellphone from any kind of damage.