They said everything will be better when they installed.
Sometimes back the electricity people appeared in front of the door and said we have come to replace your existing meter to a smart meter. But why ? Because it will come with lot of benefits to the consumer and you can manager your account real time. Seriously ? Do you have any instructions manual or can you explain more ? They said they will replace and then other people will come later to explain, but then nobody else came in. The installation people handed over couple of documents which are pretty useless for us. After a month or so, I started getting SMS : "Available balance in electricity connection XXXX is Rs XXX. Pls recharge immediately. To recharge click XXXX - TPCODL."
Clicking on that bityl short link took to a page where I had to enter my consumer number and submit. But then the next page did not load with a gif playing like its loading for ever. I was not comfortable with that, so I tried to find some information and landed at their page https://www.tpcentralodisha.com/ and found out a pdf on the smart meter.
Download the booklet and read you will be shocked :
So the government made it mandatory ( you can't escape) but at least they came in 2023, that is why they must have put that word preferably. And look at the benefits and tell me if it really helps us, the consumer ? So far I have never got an accurate SMS about the power outage alone.
The booklet does specify few Payment options and I did few payments throw PayTM / AMAZON pay as I used to earlier. But then it fetches only the amount that the bill presents and you cannot change it. And it sends you SMS daily until you pay - pretty annoying, especially when you are out in am emergency as I was in hospital. You will feel like they will cut your power by the time you come back to your home. So finally I decided to do an NEFT and pay them a bigger amount to cover my monthly spend and they forgot to mention the account type which I configured as a Current account. Even on the Account no. they should have given an example but I assumed it would be TPCODLxxxxxx (without space) and tried a payment of 100/-. Usually you will get an instant SMS on your payment when you pay through PayTM / AMAZON pay, but nothing happened after the payment was done. TPCentralOdisha is active on twitter advertising daily but they never bothered to respond to any of my queries even though I tagged them multiple times. Today I called their call center and they said someone will call me back later. Another call came after few hours and they said to check the payment details online.
So go to their site and on the right top click on the Customer Login.
Put your Consumer Account / Old Account Number, and enter the text and submit.
It will show you all details and expand the Payment History.
There you see the NEFT. But why didn't I get an SMS ? They could not explain - technical glitch is the perfect answer. So this confirmed that the account type and the account number I used worked. Is there any other way you can pay more to stop them shouting at you every day ? Yes, you can pay your bill online from their portal and choose Odisha One and that will allow you to pay more.
So click on that Pay Your bill link and fill your details. Email is not mandatory. It will land you on this page.
Select Odisha One and it will take you to the Odisha One portal. This is the first time I saw this portal, but seems they are working on something to provide better service online. After all election is coming next year !!
It seems there were an issue and clicking on that button again, it brought up the payment details.
So they still present the minimum payable amount which is probably the weekly amount ( not sure how they calculate it though).
Put a smaller amount they show an error. However, they don't do the same when you put a bigger amount than maximum even though they say "Maximum payable amount will always be Total Bill Amount."
Who does not love more !! Then click on Proceed you will see the following options.
It should have at least shown the amount that I entered. To make sure it takes that amount correctly, I went and selected Razorpay.
It did show the amount and you just need to enter your payment details and it should go through. The entire process seemed more complicated than the NEFT to me, so I decided to do the NEFT again and transferred them 4000/-. But then when I check the payment details online, it's yet to reflect. Without the SMS, there is no way to know but they say to check after 4 hours - ଅପଡେଟ୍ ପେମେଣ୍ଟ ସ୍ଥିତି ପାଇଁ ଦୟାକରି 4 ଘଣ୍ଟା ପର୍ଯ୍ୟନ୍ତ ଅପେକ୍ଷା କରନ୍ତୁ ଯଦି ଆପଣଙ୍କର ବ୍ୟାଙ୍କ ଆକାଉଣ୍ଟରୁ ଦେୟ ଡେବିଟ୍ ହୁଏ ଏବଂ କାରବାର ସ୍ଥିତି “ପେଣ୍ଡିଙ୍ଗ” ଅଟେ, ଦେୟ ପୁନରାବୃତ୍ତି କରନ୍ତୁ ନାହିଁ
And it will be refunded in 5-7 days if not successful. 4 hours already gone, so I am going to check again tomorrow. But tell me honestly, is it really simple for a common man to pay bills like this ? Even the educated people will find it difficult, if they are not very comfortable with online payments. So does that mean they will have to go and pay their bill every week over the counter ? Or may be they will allow bigger amounts over the counter. But then I still do not get what benefit this smart meter brings to us.
If anyone finds it please let me know. And by the way, you can change the language of that Odisha One portal to English, it was a good feeling to see it showing up in Odia, our native language. May be they want to impress people this way :)
Hopefully this post will help many people to figure this out quickly.
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