My Day Today - 29th Nov 2006

After lunch to kill the slumber which had surrounded me, I thought I will go out & finish some house hold tasks.
Basically there were two big things to finish….

A BESCOM bill which was supposed to be wrong, I had to get it corrected & pay it & other one was BSNL bill, I had to pay the 3 month dues, and then request BSNL to disconnect the broadband as we had taken the Airtel connection.

I started with BESCOM, on the web I found a contact number for my zone & rang them up.
The guy asked me to come to one office, he gave me full address, I reached there after some 5 lefts & 5 rights from indiranagar 100 feet road, and realized that if I had come from airport road side, I would have reached pretty quickly.

Anyway, I reached the office which was told to me, and the guy had taken his lunch break, he was supposed to be back by 230 PM, I looked at my watch and it was 130 PM only, a precious one hour, I thought I will finish the BSNL task.

BSNL task is some thing like this, the broadband comes with the landline connection, because on non payment the landline & broadband both are disconnected.
Now because the outstanding is more than 1000 bucks, they accept only Draft, funny isn’t it?
Why they don’t take cash? Might be it is too much to handle…. Why they don’t take a cheque? Because once our check had bounced & they don’t have faith in us (I mean in checks issued by us) any more…..

So one more task for KK, get the DD done, I walked in ICICI branch, CMH road, indiranagar, printed the coupon and waited for my turn.
The environment in a private organization is much more soothing than govt organization like BESCOM & BSNL….

About 10 customers before me but I did not mind waiting, did I ever tell u that I wish to work for ICICI one day, only problem is they don’t pay enough, but work is really challenging.

My turn came & also a surprise, they guy at the counter told me that because they are no salary credits in this account, DD issue is not free any more.
I had a choice to chuck this DD form & go to Citibank @ MG road, because my salary goes there nowadays, but I realized I had no money in that account J
Had to pay 84 Rs for getting a stupid DD issued.
But I was happy to know this privilege given to salary accounts. I thought when I will take the customer account session next time, I will quote this example and felt happy.
Anyway 84 rs is what less than a quid (pound J).
So I took the DD and went to BSNL office near BDA complex on old madras road & stood in the queue to pay the bill, cash queue was long but DD queue was pretty small, I felt good.
There were two people at the counter, a lady in the age on 50s, looking pretty efficient, and a guy little more older and looking really slow in what he was supposed to be doing. Accidentally I had to interact with him only. He had severe eye problem but was not wearing glasses. Some how he managed to read my bill & accepted the payment. He came up with another surprise that, current bill’s due date was yesterday so I have to pay another 19 Rs, I asked how I can make the payment, he said in cash, but I had to go and stand in the cash queue now, hmmm…. 4250 Rs paid by DD in a minute & I took 7-8 minutes to reach the counter to pay rest 19 rs.

Anyway, I was happy that this long pending task was about to get concluded, not really.
BSNL server hanged in the middle, it did not respond to the HOT keys, techis inside could not kill the session & so on….
Lady at the counter waited, hit few keys several times, and then surrendered.
I suggest “ma’am press escape and come out of the session…” generally these people get irritated by these comments, luckily this lady did not…
She said it does not work…. She started counting all the notes she had received for the day, about 100 notes of 500 each, some 50 notes of 100 each, some 10-15 notes of 50 each…. She counted them, twice, but the server was not in a mood to respond, people behind me started panicking as if I had done some crime…..

“Try now – I have killed your session” a techi lady shouted to the lady at cash counter & ya, the server was alive and kicking now.
I paid 19 Rs, thanked the lady and kept 1 rupee coin safe in my wallet…. And was about to take my bike out and got a pat on the back…
Parking fee please….. the one rupee coin was bewafaa, it took the other one rupee coin along with it…..

I headed to the BESCOM office expecting the officer to be back, on the way withdrew 1000 bucks from citi ATM, machine laughed at me at told, u r left with 84 rs & I wont give u any thing more…….

I met the officer, and he told me the bill was correct, we had not paid nov, oct & sept bill as well.
I was not quite sure, so asked him if we had made the payment earlier, what will happen. He said that can be adjusted in the future bills.

I came out & thought I will pay this bill online from citi website, but this guy had told me it takes 10 days, so I chucked the idea and thought of paying it off.
I was looking for a payment counter & saw a machine, I had used a similar machine long back in kormangala when me, sharma & chetan used to stay together.
Scan the bill, click ok, insert the notes, machine is hungry, it pulls the notes as it will eat them all.
On the display it keeps telling how much u have inserted, I mean the notes…..
Bill was 888 & I paid 900.

Thought I will go back to office now, but remembered that I had to request for BSNL broadband disconnection after paying all the dues.as I had paid the dues & had all the docs / receipts with me, thought I will finish this off…

I went and met the commercial officer, he suggested that I talk to accounts guy & get it confirmed that I have made the payments. Weird isn’t it?
Cant u check it in some of your online system? Anyway I just followed what he said & met a guy in accounts.
He scribbled on my application of disconnection that every thing is paid….

I brought it back to the commericial officer, he read the entire application and told me that I had written few lines which are not required, I was afraid that he will ask me to write it again fortunately he did not.
He suggested that by tomorrow Broadband disconnection orders will be out, and phone will start working by evening itself.


Well done KK….