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Why ZESA Vendors Charge Extra for USD Payments

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See on zimpricecheck.com

This post does a good job explaining something I though would be solved by switching from Zim Dollar Payments to USD for ZESA.

I got annoyed at how buying electricity with local currency was since they used an incredibly shit exchange rate. Because of that I switched to using USD which you do by going to your electricity depot. I work in Avenues so our depot is the CBD one which is along Livingstone and Enterprise.

Having changed that it turns out that most places don’t sell USD electricity but I was able to at HotRecharge since Wynn Street was down (which usually works otherwise). I also wanted to see if I can sell Zesa through it but there’s 0% commission and as the article says, the actual commission is 3% which isn’t as good as 10% from airtime.

I hoped to get a better deal with USD but I didn’t. $100 gave me 413.20kWh broken down like this:

  • Energy: USD82.64
  • Debt: USD0.00
  • REA: USD4.96
  • VAT: USD12.40
  • Total Amt: USD100.00

It basically cost the same since the published tariffs don’t include VAT and REA levy which are about 17% put together. When I buy $100 equivalent in Zim dollars, I usually get 395kWh so USD gets me 5% more. Like the article says, the charges were always there but were hidden through the exchange rate offered by the vendor. I guess the switch to USD makes it more apparent.

ZETDC’s website said that I could get more energy with the same $100 and this is after I bought from HotRecharge so I should be getting more without stepped tariffs.

This is crazy, but this is what living in America is like where the prices aren’t inclusive of tax. I hope ZESA use the money wisely.