Here's why City Power doesn't want you using the EskomSePush app

City Power has thrown shade at popular load-shedding app EskomSePush, urging Joburg residents to rely on communication from them and not third parties.

SA has experienced fluctuating power outages over the past week with unprotected strikes leading to Eskom being unable to fix or maintain struggling generating units. Citizens have experienced stage 6 load-shedding since last week and the power utility said blackouts are expected for several more weeks. 

City Power said the most reliable source of information on load-shedding can be found on their website and social media pages.

“There is a lot of misinformation on external apps, including EskomSePush, among others, who do nothing but create confusion for customers,” it added. It said customers using EskomSePush were sometimes directed to the wrong blocks and times for load-shedding.

“The app is not updated, for example, when City Power has changed the load-shedding blocks for different operational reasons, including when we backfeed customers using a different feeder board.”

EskomSePush responded, thanking City Power for pointing out the issues and said they were “super willing to work together”.

“Thanks! Let us know if you see other issues. We don't know when you update. We are super willing to work together. DMs are open.”

Speaking to Sunday Times last year, EskomSePush cofounder Dan Wells said keeping schedules accurate was “the hardest part of the app”.

“We have to manually load all the different schedules from all the municipalities and so on into a spreadsheet, and then load this information into the app. Then the municipalities change their schedules without notice and customers of the app complain and we have to fix it again.

“If there was a way to get all municipalities to use the same template it would be much easier,” he said.