How to use the SMS Service
We use SMS to collect data from you. This enable us to collect data from any South Africa with a cell phone.The basic construction of the SMS message is as follows:
| eskom keyword message |
All SMS's are sent to:
34010
The SMS will always start with the initial keyword "eskom", followed by a secondary keyword, which can be any of the following:
|
poweroff
poweron
loss
comment
|
POWEROFF
The "poweroff" keyword is followed by the area the outage is in. For example, to report an outage in Krugersdorp, you will SMS the following string:
| eskom poweroff krugersdorp |
Another example of a more complex area:
| eskom poweroff pretoria cbd and union buildings area |
The "poweroff" keyword could also be substituted by just "off", in other words the following will also work:
| eskom off krugersdorp |
POWERON
If you submitted a "poweroff" message, you can cancel it with the "poweron" keyword, which will clear the outage alert for that area. An example:
| eskom poweron |
LOSS
The loss keyword is used to recrd financial losses you suffered as a result of an outage. For example, if you used R150 worth of petrol for your generator the last week, you can send a summarised SMS as follow:
| eskom loss 150 used just over 20 liter this week in my generator |
As you cansee from the example, the AMOUNT MUST follow the "loss" keyword. Any text after the amount will be logged as a comment.
COMMENT
You can also "vent" a little by sending a comment which anybody with access to this site can read on this page. To do this, simply type your message after the "comment" keyword:
| eskom comment I really wish this will stop now - I had enough :-( |
