GOT QUESTIONS?
Everything you need to know about fighting your municipal bill with Billdog.
ABOUT BILLDOG
Billdog is an AI-powered service that helps South African property owners dispute errors on their municipal bills. We scan your bill for overcharges, generate a legally compliant dispute letter citing Section 102 of the Municipal Systems Act, and send it directly to your municipality.
Our AI analyses every line item on your bill — water, electricity, rates, refuse, sewerage — and compares them against tariff schedules, usage patterns, and legal limits. We identify overcharges, estimated readings used instead of actual meter readings, duplicate entries, and charges for services not rendered.
We support all 8 South African metropolitan municipalities: City of Cape Town, City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City, and Mangaung. We are expanding to district municipalities soon.
Yes. To dispute a municipal bill under Section 102, you must be the account holder or have authorisation from the account holder. Tenants should contact their landlord or managing agent.
PRICING & FEES
Nothing upfront. Billdog charges a 15% success fee — we only charge you if we successfully recover money. If we find no errors, or if the dispute is unsuccessful, you pay R0. Ever.
Only after your municipality corrects your bill and you confirm the resolution in your Billdog dashboard. We use PayFast to securely store your card — your payment details are never stored on our servers.
Sure. If your bill has R3,200 in errors and the municipality corrects them, Billdog's fee is R480 (15% of R3,200). You keep R2,720. If the municipality doesn't correct the errors, you pay R0.
No. No subscription fees, no setup fees, no analysis fees, no cancellation fees. The 15% success fee is the only charge, and it only applies on confirmed recovery.
LAW & DISPUTES
Absolutely. Section 102 of the Municipal Systems Act (No. 32 of 2000) gives every property owner the explicit legal right to dispute billing errors. Municipalities are legally required to investigate and respond within 30 days.
Yes — and we're transparent about it. "AI-powered analysis, legally-templated letters" is our approach. Our AI generates the dispute letter using a specialised legal template, citing relevant South African legislation. The result is a formal, legally compliant dispute letter.
If a municipality fails to respond within 30 days, you have the right to escalate. The next steps are: Municipal Ombudsman → NERSA (for electricity disputes) → Public Protector. Billdog tracks your case and advises on escalation.
Under the Prescription Act (No. 68 of 1969), municipal billing disputes generally have a 3-year window. Our system automatically checks whether your bill period falls within the disputable window and warns you if it doesn't.
DATA & SECURITY
We collect your name, email, municipal account number, and the bill you upload. Your bill text is processed by our AI for analysis. We never sell your data. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.
Your card details are handled entirely by PayFast, a PCI-DSS compliant South African payment gateway. Billdog never stores, sees, or has access to your card numbers. We only store a tokenised reference.
Yes. Under POPIA (Protection of Personal Information Act), you have the right to request deletion of all your personal data. You can do this from your account settings or by emailing privacy@billdog.co.za.