In September 2007, my ISP, Tata Indicom, introduced online bill payment. (Yeah! There are that technically advanced! )

This is what the bill I needed to pay back then looked like:

So I logged into their website and went through the whole process of payment using a credit card only to get a timeout error in the end. So I restarted the process, choosing to pay using my bank account. The same error resurfaced. I got a little worried now so I checked my bank account’s statement immediately only to find out that Rs. 1908 had been debited from it. So I called up Tata Indicom customer care (cc) and I was informed that they had in fact received the payment both the times but it was alright because that just meant that I wouldn’t have to pay the bill the following month. Phew! So I had payed double the amount I was supposed to, right? Wrong!

The bill I got in October looked like this:

So instead of Rs. 3816 that I had actually paid, they somehow received Rs. 22896! Could it be that they are trying to make up for the hell I had to go through because of them? I don’t think so. I still called up cc and asked the guy about it. He told me it was a system fault which would be rectified and that I didn’t need to worry. Since I had already paid for one extra month, I didn’t care much and forgot about it.

Funnily enough, if I look at my transaction history on their website, it gives the correct details:

But this month I again got a weird bill:

The due date has already passed and I did not receive any warning. My connection is also working perfectly. I still thought I would pay the Rs. 1123 that I should but their bill pay screen scared me. They want me to transfer a negative amount. Take a look!

I called the cc again today but I was told to call later because their systems were down. Lets see what happens now!