Hyderabad: The Telangana Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TGSPDCL)’s message asking its customers to stop paying their monthly bills through third-party UPI apps like PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay drew flak from customers, who criticised the power utility for its alleged inefficiency.
In a statement, discom chairman and managing director Musharraf Ali Farooqui said that banks and other service providers had stopped accepting payments for electricity bills of TGSPDCL with effect from July 1 and asked the customers to pay the bills through the discom’s website or the app.
This sudden decision without giving enough publicity has caught the public unaware, as many of them have been using third-party apps like PhonePe, GPay, and Paytm among others for convenience and ease of payment.
An irritated netizen, Chiranjeevi, took to his social media account to condemn TGSPDCL’s action. “Misleading: RBI only directed them to register and facilitate payments via BBPS.”
Another customer, Nagaraju, criticised the discom for blaming the RBI. “Don’t have to blame RBI for your super efficiency, please register on BBPS,” he advised.
“What a pity…, finding ways to add stress to a common man’s living. High unit charges + charging an additional percentage for credit card transactions and fixed charges on online transactions — Requesting my elected and selected government to help ease the stress,” said Yaqoob Tucy on his social media account, fuming at the TGSPDCL boss’ insensitivity.
Several customers also expressed their doubts about the capacity of the discom’s website and app to handle the rush of payments.
“Please ensure your servers are capable of handling such a huge load. If servers’ crash and payments get delayed, Telangana Electricity Department will be responsible. Due to this change, you may soon receive complaints where money was debited, but payment failed etc,” a customer warned.
Handling the financial transactions of large companies, which have lakhs of customers with crores of monthly bill payments, is not easy. The decision of TGSPDCL’s new boss Mushrraf Farooqui would dent the monthly exercise of collecting the bills.
The unscheduled power cuts are another source of irrigation, but the southern discom has insisted that there was adequate supply and no outages.
Operations staff of 33/11 substations have taken to announcing power interruption on social by giving reasons like replacement of blown uses and other equipment and removal of tree branches.
One of the discom’s customers, Vishnu T.S., aptly said on his `X’ account, “Mundu power cuts apura nayana” (First, stop power cuts, boss).
