Thursday, September 18, 2008

Electricity bill online in Chennai and suburbs!

When the Tamil Nadu Government declared a holiday on Sep. 15, I thought I would take a chance and see if the TNEB office is open to collect the bills as it was the last day for payment. (By the way, why do we keep it till the last date? I resolve to pay it early next month, but somehow it gets dragged till the last date every time!)

I had to make a trip to the EB office on Sep. 16. The counter at Besant Nagar opens at 8 am. So most office-goers stop by at 9 O' clock and make the payment. If you can be there around 8.30, you can be the first or second in the queue.

But on Sep. 16 at 8.15 am the counters were overflowing. Apartment watchmen and maids were seen holding bunch of electricity cards and each one took more than 15 minutes at the counter. I was getting late for a consultancy session and wished if there was an alternative mode!
But I could reach the counter at 9 am and paid my bill. On way back I saw a board getting ready - Payment will be accepted on Sep. 17 till 2.30 pm!

I do spend most of the time online. I had earlier checked out online bill payment facility - Bill Junction - when we were residing in Bombay till 2004.
I was wondering if TNEB itself would come out with an online payment facility!

Yes, my wishes came true. This facility was inaugurated by the Electricity Minister Arcot N. Veeraswami yesterdaty. Read here-

I am now waiting for the next month's electricity bill to pay it through www.tneb.in!

2 comments:

Karthik Narayan said...

nice blog... will visit this more often. But u need to update it :)

Deepak Andeli said...

Your post was a great help mainly when I had just a day to pay my Bills and being new to Chennai and wondering how to find time to do this whole thing.
Saved lot of my time Thanks again :)