- I Paid A Bribe
- 13 years ago
- 3592 views
Faulty Electric Meter Replacement
- Electricity and Power Supply
- Meter Replacement
- Paid INR 6,000
This happened in a residential area in Noida. I do not remember the exact ********** for this event. For reference, the monthly bill for this house was typically between Rs. 3000 and Rs. 5000. Here's the story:
Our perfectly fine meter starts advancing abnormally fast when the bill collection person shows up to take a reading, says he had left his bill printer somewhere and needs to return with that. He then decides to takes a couple of hours to go around the neighborhood and return to our house to give us a printed bill and by then the meter shows an incredibly large number which would result in an electric bill of about Rs. 1 Lakh. He then informs us that we have only two options:
1) To pay the Rs. 1 Lakh for now and hope the Electricity supply office will replace the meter in the next month. In this case, we are very unlikely to get a refund of the Rs. 1 Lakh since the authorities have no way to figure out how much we actually consumed.
2) To just give him Rs. 10,000 in cash so that he can ask his "friend" to break the seal of the meter, disable the screen and put the seal back on. This way, we won't have to pay the Rs. 1 Lakh monthly bill, just Rs. 10,000 for his (illegal) services.
Even after 5-6 hours of discussions, we could not figure out a clean way out and ended up paying this person Rs. 6000 and he promptly called his friend who disabled the screen. The meter was subsequently replaced sometime within the next week.
I feel like there needs to be a system in which I can make a complaint about a malfunctioning meter and get a refund for the extra amount. Or if the amount displayed is obscene, then the meter should be replaced immediately without people having to bribe bill collection people. I'm not sure about what is the best way to avoid such a situation, but something really needs to be done.
Thanks for reading,
Concerned *******