Bescom consumers prefer queues to online bill payment

BENGALURU: “I travel to Bescom’s HAL office to pay the bill. There are too many glitches while paying online,” asserts 55-year-old Vinayaka (name-changed) from C.V. Raman Nagar, who walked into the office to pay the bill on Tuesday to avoid paying late fee. On being asked why he does not pay online, he shot back, “What’s the point when we have to pay extra charges along with the bill?”

“I pay the bill for the whole apartment before due date at the Bangalore One centre,” said the owner of Sai Nivas Apartment in Thippasandra. On being asked about online payment, he said, “The site crashes most of the time and I cannot take the risk, when it comes to payment of a huge sum.”

Though the IT city may be home to e-commerce giants such as Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and eBay and its residents spend lot of time and money buying products online, but when it comes to public utilities like Bescom they prefer to sweat it out in long queues, as their online payment modes inspire little confidence.

“Online payment in the city is yet to pick up, though last few months we have seen a marginal increase,” said Pankaj Kumar Pandey, MD, Bescom. As for poor response to online payment, Pankaj said, “There is an additional percentage that needs to be paid, which the consumers don’t want to. These charges do not come to us, but go to the service provider like Visa and others. We are trying to absorb that additional percentage in some time, so that consumer stands to benefit.”

Out of the city’s customer base of 81 lakhs (including the farming sector, rural and urban sector), approximately 50 lakh are urban consumers, the target market for online payment. But according to Bescom officials around 3.5 lakh consumers use that facility.

“We have gauged this issue and we are in talks with the engaging an agency which can do carry out awareness campaigns. The agency will be responsible for getting more people online,” Pankaj said.

Regarding Bescom website’s frequents snags, he said, “We are working on that area and the performance of the site has been tweaked by introducing another software. Furthermore the security aspect has also been taken care and we are encrypting the ids and card details of our consumer. We urge our consumers to go for online payments.”