IHFM incorrect billing and terrible service

We moved into a property managed by IHFM on 01 July 2017. This was our first time as home owners so when we got the bill for R350 average per month for water usage we didn't think too much of it.

However, with the recent tariff increases, our water bill has been averaging on R1000 per month which we found utterly ridiculous because we are only 2 people in the flat. We are away in excess of 8 hours each day and we have made radical changes to our life style to save water.

We therefore suspected that we were billed on someone else's water meter in the complex and when we mentioned this to IHFM they said they'd contact the meter reading company. This was done and we were told the only reason our bill is high is because of the tariff increases.

This simply made no sense so we reached out to the meter reading company ourselves to get our water readings. According to these readings, we were expected to believe that we (2 people) make use of 10kl every month. And one month there was a usage of 15kl. Where our neighbours who are in excess of 4 people plus pets make use of an average of 4kl each month.

We then complained once again and were told it's just the tariff increase. We then had a leak and had to access the service area to switch off the water while the repairs were done. Now that we could verify for ourselves we thought we would conduct a simple test to see if we were indeed being billed on someone else's metre. So we flushed our toilet and checked which of the water meters had moved.

Our suspicions were thus confirmed and we were being billed on the incorrect meter.

Again we let IHFM know and they then said they needed to verify for themselves. This took about 2 months but finally their own plumbers came and confirmed that we were billed on a different apartment' s water meter as we had reported initially.

We reported this in February, we are now in mid June and we're STILL being billed on the wrong meter.

The portfolio manager advised us to just pay our levy and not water until it gets sorted which is what we did but now we get hit with a letter saying our account is in arrears.

When I query it with the portfolio manager's manager, he says he can't really do anything about it and we just have to wait.

Our own portfolio manager is slow to respond (if at all) to our constant follow-up

Not sure what to do going forward..