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Public out-cry over the increasing problems customers using the prepaid metres face has reached its highest peak-with regular data mix-ups, rampant replacements of rampantly breaking down remote controls, some dubious practices and many others rocking the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) stations across the country. Constant supplications by customers to the ECG�s customer care service department to rectify these prevailing problems have fallen on deaf ears as staff keep frustrating their customers with the overused phrase �go and come�. The Heritage newspaper received several of such complaints from a section of the customers either through phone calls or on the many occasions the paper�s office was inundated by the visits of agitated consumers who insisted on being heard publicly. �Though technology is good and every developing country must strive for it, this one is too stressful and too frustrating, as the consumer has to call at too many ECG stations just to be able to get his faulty remote control repaired,� one consumer, Dogbe Ebenezer, lamented. �As it turns out, any time officials of this company tamper with the prepaid metre, it reads faster to the disadvantage of the customer,� he went on, adding �since the introduction of the prepaid system I have been buying GH�20.00 every month.� His claim is that, before the prepaid, he was paying less. He complained that �three days ago when I came from work, my wife told me an officer from the Bubuashie branch of the ECG had came to fiddle with our metre; that same night, we were visited by power outage.� When the Korle-Bu, Bubuashie and Nkrumah Circle branches of the company in the capital city was visited for fact-finding, hundreds of customers were met at the pay points and the technicians� sections wailing over other, equally frustrating, experiences with the prepaid metre. Some customers the Heritage newspaper spoke to said, �When we are in a queue, some of us pay monies to the security men at the gate to buy the units for them. �Prodded to the fact that it is criminal and unnecessary to pay bribes, they agreed on the criminality but contended strongly it is imperative that they pay the bribes. �Why shouldn�t you pay the bribe and get what you want and leave in peace, if abiding by the law robs you of the opportunity?� they virtually sung in unison. Emmanuel Okai at Abeka Lapaz, a suburb of Accra, added his voice: �I was directed to the Bubuashie branch for them to fix my remote control; on reaching Bubuashie, I was again directed to Avenor. I ended up at the Nkrumah Circle branch for one problem to be fixed.� He contended that, whereas the prepaid introduction is good because it is supposedly to stem the ECG�s continues accumulation of postpaid meter debts, and make the consumer the sole controller and user of power; it has turned out to be a burden for the power user. It is time-consuming as one has to spend hours, sometimes days; of one�s busy work time looking for units to buy or mending a faulty remote control. When contacted for explanations that could calm tempers down, the company�s Public Relations outfit surprisingly failed to help matters. On Tuesday October 20, for instance, The Heritage filed a questionnaire at the offices of the Managing Director and the Public Relations Department with the hope that the personnel there would address customers� complaints the questions captured. But nothing came out of the paper�s repeated efforts to solicit responses from the two offices. A couple of visits back to the offices and several phone calls that followed earned underserved silence. In another development, the paper has noticed that, over the last week or two, the ECG has put out power five, 10 or more times daily in some suburbs of Accra and other Ghanaian communities, putting power users in the offices, homes and factories on edge. Eunice Abban, a fashion designer and modeling instructor at Osu, remarked on the deteriorating service delivery thus: �I wonder if Ghana�s ECG now wants to compete with and wrest its Nigerian counterpart�s famed nickname, Never Expect Power Always.� If you ask me, someone who has worked in Nigeria before, I can tell you ECG is trying to outpace the Nigerian Electric Power Authority.�