ICASA radio licenses cancelled

[Gadget]

This gentleman has been very helpfull in trying to resolve this issue and he has given the go ahead for me to put his contact details here if you have problems.

Gavin Miles Taute
Credit Controller
Finance AR
ICASA
Tel:011 566 3889
Fax:011 566 3890
Email:gtaute 8 icasa.org.za

[John Boucher]

As George did... I paid in advance and with their accounts change still owed R 12-00 and duly paid! Curious to see if I'll receive another invoice in 3 months time.

As far as I am aware, a receipt is not proof enough... one should ask for a "letter of validity" from ICASA

[Gadget]

OKIE DOKIE. So this morning I receive a bill from ICASA. R48 for re-instatement, although the license was paid on time, and R48 for renewal, which was paid in MArch already. Guess who is going to have red ears this morning. I wonder if I should try out this new consumer protection thing, anybody worked with them before?

[RV4ker (RIP)]

they applied for exemption....

[John Boucher]

Hey Gadget.... kind of "contradicts" your post on top?

[John Young]

they applied for exemption....

... together with all municipalities - they just "can't" deliver.

Helkom and Eishkom will probably follow together with all other parastatal parasites.

Regards
John N????B

[Gadget]

Ja Nee Boet! That helpfull person is the first one to get it this morning.

[John Boucher]

First we had Eishkom, then we got Helkom..... and welcome to the fray - Ekskasadom

[John Boucher]

http://www.avcom.co.za/phpBB3/viewtopic ... 62&t=77812

It is coming to the end of the first month of ICASA's reshuffled licence year, i.e. 1st April to 31st March, and hopefully most of you will by now have received, and maybe paid, your licence renewal notices. I have to advise, however, that 1,621 licences were cancelled by our Joburg Head Office on 30th March this year due mainly to outstanding or unpaid licence fees. The criteria used for cancellation was: if fees on a particular licence were outstanding for more than 365 days, the licence was summarily cancelled. This effectively means that, if for some reason you did not pay the licence fee at the beginning of 2010, in all probability the licence will have been cancelled, which obviously will be of great concern comes inspection time.

It is obviously not impossible that ICASA may have not credited payments made to various licences because we received no notification of payment. Additionally, your licence address may have changed in the last couple of years and we do not have the new address on record, which means that the renewal notices would have gone to the old addresses and would probably have been "z-filed" by the new owners. There are other reasons which may have contributed to non-payment (or late payment after the cut-off date of 31/03/2011) but, whatever the case, the bottom line now is that if you have not received a renewal advice from ICASA for either the recent 3-month extension period, from 01/01/2011 to 31/03/2011, or for the new licence year from 01/04/2011 to 31/03/2012, regardless of whether or not you have proof of payment, please make enquiries as to the status of your licence/s at the earliest opportunity. Licences cancelled as of 30/03/2011 may be re-instated relatively easily if proof of payment of the relevant fees can be produced and it can be shown that an error has occurred on our side, however, this will not be the case for any great length of time and there will eventually come a date after which a licence will not be re-instateable and a totally new application will have to be made, along with the additional fees involved.

I already hear some of you complaining about government inefficiency, etc, etc, (probably with good reason) but, please, may we leave the recriminations for later and sort out the potential problems first so that as few persons as possible are inconvenienced. You can lodge enquiries at any regional office of ICASA, our Head Office in Joburg or even send me an email (my address is pleonard"at"icasa"dot"org"dot"za but I don't promise to reply by return if there's a lot of queries!, maybe by the following day!!). All our contact details are available on our website at http://www.icasa.org.za however, I would caution against using the "info" address as it appears to operate sporadically. The main details required to identify the licence concerned is preferably the licence number, alternatively the aircraft's registration letters (radio callsign). If you would rather discuss matters first, you are welcome to phone me at 031-3349515 and, if I cannot assist you myself, I'll try and direct you to someone who can. Peter

[Gadget]

Thanks John. I just spoke to the financial manager there and gave her an earfull. If that does not get sorted by tomorrow I will contact this guy. These people do not have a clue what they are doing. They now dug out another R60 in outstanding fees which is not on the statement they sent me. Weird because last year I paid and they issued me with a license. Is it not mandatory for a governement institution to publish a policy change in the government gazette?

[John Boucher]

I think they need an AUDIT especially with the way they are taking Julian Swift on! Clearly they DO NOT have all their ducks in a row....

[Biggles]

I bet it is not that easy to have your TV license cancelled...

[Gadget]

OK.
So here we are at the end of june and still no license on either aircraft. One ICASA office say they have been issued and posted, three times. The other says payments are still outstanding. This is about the time I start getting that little hysterical giggle. So I spoke with the MISASA people and they confirmed this issue was discussed in the last two magazines, which obviously I havent read yet otherwise I would have been much wiser. Apparently there is a meeting scheduled to discuss the situation. So for now just a few words of to half of ICASA to let them know how bad their service is and then try again next year. I wonder, should we ask them to first send the license and then on arrival we pay for it? Progressive thinking me thinks.

Gadget

[John Boucher]

I paid mine timeously and in advance... got a small invoice for R12-00 which I paid and received my licence in the post on Monday and re-issued and valid till next year May!

[Gadget]

Yeah, mine were also paid up but they dont even have the payments I did last year. Their accounting system must be stuffed. BTW I dont think your is valid until may next year, they apparently changed it to run from january to december every year. MMMM John, me thinks they like you.