These are days where everyone is encouraging customers to go green - right from bus operators, IRCTC with their tickets through SMS and banks with their statements through email. It is said that switch to SMS/electronic tickets by IRCTC saves around 1.5 lakh pages everyday. This could be a conservative estimate. Apart from saving paper such e-initiatives save electricity, printing ink, dispatch charges borne by the source agency and above all time. Needless to say many people don’t even open all pages of their statements! One can also be assured that a document will never be missed/misplaced! So the shift to e-tickets/e-statements/e-bills is always a well appreciated move.
The latest company to go green is BSNL. BSNL has announced that customers will now be allowed to opt for phone and broadband bills by email. Such initiatives are already in place by private operators like Tata Docomo. What makes the scheme more attractive is, BSNL will reward such customers with additional 10 reward points every month. Our readers would be aware that BSNL introduced reward points after doing away with 1% discounts for paying bills online. From BSNL FAQs “One Loyalty reward points is equal to one metered call unit for calls made within BSNL Network”.
How to Avail the Facility?
BSNL provides four modes to opt for e-bills:
Through Selfcare Customer Care Portal
One needs to login to BSNL Selfcare portal (depending on your state/circle you will be taken to appropriate page once you make the choice in below link)
1.Go to http://portal.bsnl.in/bsnlcca/login.aspx
3.Once you login, click ‘Update to eBill only’ on the right pane
4.In the next screen that appears fill in relevant fields and click ‘Submit’. I got ‘undefined’ message but I believe the updation happened in the backend as I could see my email ID under ‘My Account’. Service ID is your phone number with STD code, this can be chosen once you click on the small box beside the field.
My efforts to check the update status through ‘Check Status of Profile Requests’ proved futile as I kept getting ‘undefined’ errors. Anyway the final check would happen once I receive next month’s bill by email!
By SMS
In Andhra Pradesh Circle, a BSNL customer can register his email ID by sending an SMS in the below format to 53334. We are not sure if this would work in other circles.
By SMS
EMS <Billing_Account_Number> <Email_Id>
e.g. EMS 9000876534 abc@test.com.
By calling Landline Customer Care
Customer can call BSNL customer care at 1500 and place a request.
By visiting Customer Service Centre
Visit BSNL CSC and provide a written request or fill a form
As people who care for trees, we welcome this move by BSNL. What do you think? Will you opt for e-bills only?
