Failing to Top up your ZESA Prepaid Meter?

Have you been failing to top up your ZESA prepaid meter? Then this article will show you what you need to do to get going ago. It’s based on my own story. The good news is that in most instances, it shouldn’t be difficult to top up your meter by following the steps that are outlined in this pos.

Problem topping up ZESA prepaid meter

A few days ago I encountered an interesting situation with regard to the ZESA prepaid electricity meter in my home. That is a situation that many, I dare say, could have encountered before. You know how load shedding has become a normal thing in Zimbabwe that ZESA now has a running schedule on its website? Well, this could have been a contributing factor to my embarrassing situation.

I forgot to top up ZESA prepaid meter

What happened was that I totally forgot to top up the prepaid ZESA electricity meter in my home. As everyone knows, those meters come with annoying alarms that make it almost impossible to forget. However, this time around, someone in my household woke up in the dead of the night and turned off the alarm.

As a result, I didn’t know that my electricity was about to give out. The next day, I woke up and discovered that someone had forgotten to turn off the electric stove in the kitchen. Fortunately, the thing no longer heats up as it used to, and there was no real danger of it burning anything.

However, it still meant that the stove ran for 8 hours after the sounding of the ZESA prepaid meter alarm that I had not heard.

A freaky streak of coincidences

In the morning, I left for work, oblivious to the fact that there was  a problem with the electricity at home. Those that I left behind say an hour or so after I left, the electricity was abruptly cut off.

Now, as already mentioned, there has been a resurgence in load shedding in past few months, and they naturally thought that the whole neighborhood had been cut off.

Indeed, the situation stayed like that till I got back from work in the evening. When I arrived, they told me that ZESA had done it again, and we were in the middle of a particularly long bout of load shedding.

Everyone else had electricity

Anyway, it took me only a few minutes to realize that everyone else in the neighborhood had electricity. That’s when I got the confession that yes, indeed; the annoying alarm from the meter had sounded the previous night and had been turned off.

Buying ZESA Prepaid Electricity via ECOCASH

Ecocash has really proven to be convenient when it comes to buying such things as electricity and DSTV (once upon a time). There was a time a while back when people had problems buying ZESA via Ecocash. Fortunately, that was not the case on this particular day. To resolve the issue, I immediately bought prepaid electricity token via ECOCASH. That, as it turned out, was the easiest part.

ZESA Prepaid Meters wont be reloaded if there is no electricity

The ZESA prepaid electricity meters that are in our homes have backup batteries, so it shouldn’t be a problem to reload a token when the household has no electricity.

However, it turns out that things are not that simple. See, you wont be able to reload your ZESA if you do not have electricity in your home. That is what I discovered while trying to get the lights switched on in my home.

The electricity meter in your home just won’t connect to the network without a connection to an AC power source. That’s despite the fact that it will actually be on and running on battery power.

Solution to top up ZESA prepaid meter

Anyway, to cut the story short, after a few minutes of struggle, I finally went next door to plug the meter into a power source. Fortunately, I have very good relations with my neighbors!

As soon as I plugged the thing into an AC power source, I was able to top up my account without a problem. In fact, the electricity had already been switched on by the time I got back home from gossiping with the neighbors.

So, once your electricity has run out, the ZESA prepaid electricity meters will not allow you to top-up without a connection to an AC outlet. That may be the reason why you are failing to load your ZESA meter. The above steps are the solution if you are failing to top up your ZESA prepaid meter.

47 Comments

  1. My Zesa prepaid metter device is not working.it had a red light nd when I’m trying to recharge it only say connecting nd it is not showing my units I’m trying to recharge my units but it is not working..nd it is making a sound like tititi tii

    1. Wakamboedza here kuchidzima. Or trying from another room on the other side of the house. Try one that’s closer to your meter. Otherwise unenge wakuda kutobata vanhu vezesa vacho.

  2. My recharge gadget is displaying a message “loosen” and not displaying the correct units purchased.
    How do I reset it or correct such an error

  3. my gadget fell down and its no longer working, where can I get a replacement meter as soon as possible, it has been 2 days without electricity now.

    thank you

  4. I have edmi 16 HD meter that is failing toconnect to the meter box.
    I am failing to top up electricity. Have entered the token several times but no success

  5. When I enter my token into the meter, it gives me a message that says “USED”. I have bought tokens twice now, and still the same error.

      1. Hi.Mine is saying the same..Reject_1 and I tried Pa all ma sockets in the house plus even asked my neighbors but zvaramba.What could be the problem?

  6. I tried recharging magetsi and the meter is showing 23,the other token is being rejected..what should I do?

  7. My token is saying rejected. I’ve moved from house to house and it’s still saying the same. What should i do ???

  8. Am facing a big challenge with the hexing meter we can’t top up or request balance or date it just continue saying processing then result it’s failed for any request and the date is of May 2023 anyone to assist

  9. My zesa meter is showing Eeee 20/21 when recharging from neighbours after it ran to zero. What should l do?

    1. Hopefully the issue is resolved by now. We have noticed in a number of cases that attempts to recharge from a neighbor’s house were problematic. You probably need to be on the same line as the particular neighbor. Sometimes the meter will throw an error but when you get back to your home, you will notice that the recharge was successful. Otherwise, you will have to reach out to ZESA directly

  10. I am trying to buy zesa token for the first time but its saying it cant recognise my name, what do i do?

  11. Failing to load token it keeps saying reject1…changed sockets,checked token still saying reject1 please help

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