Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited [BESCOM] — Complaint on Inflated Electricity Billing by Bescom for March, April and May 2020 over Lockdown Period

RR No: [protected], Account ID: [protected]

This is with respect to the electricity billing for above-mentioned account for the months of April, May and June 2020 of our property, Svenska Design Hotel, Electronic City, Bangalore, owned and operated under the legal entity of Kumaon Entertainment & Hospitalities Pvt. Ltd.

Over the course of the last two months, we have been repeatedly complaining to Bescom and also escalating to their management on the issue of highly inflated bills that have been received by our organisation from them. In fact, initially we received a bill of Rs.1, 01, 75, 648/- (i.e. over Rupees One Crore) from Bescom for the month of April 2020, while our regular billing has been historically in the range of Rs.4-5 lacs per month!

Upon our complaint, we received a revised bill of Rs.3, 70, 481 for the month of April 2020, and simultaneously, our March 2020 bill was abruptly and arbitrarily revised UPWARDS by an amount of Rs.46, 102/-, showing an increase of almost 5, 500 units! Once again we were shocked with such inflated billing, not only for the month of April 2020, but with even the bill for the month of March 2020 being increased.

We have been repeatedly complaining about this to the Bescom office and even escalated the matter to their General Manager, but till date, haven’t received any positive response. In fact, they are insisting on us clearing these bills, saying that the bills are correct. Our hotel was only operational for merely 24 days in March till lockdown was announced, and that too for a significantly lower load as an average of only 10-15 rooms out of 56 were occupied during March and billing should’ve been much lower.

Furthermore, in April as well as May, the hotel was almost entirely shut down, with barely 2-4 rooms operational, being less than 10% occupancy owing to the nationwide lockdown. It is impossible for us to have consumed 30, 172 units of power during April as being claimed by Bescom under the revised billing. The billing is 10x higher than actual number o[censored]nits consumed by us during the month and despite repeated complaints, we have still not been issued with a corrected bill.

We request you to kindly intervene into this matter and direct Bescom to issue us the corrected bills, including reversal of the excess units and amounts charged with retrospective effect in the April bill for the month of March. We would also be grateful if you could also kindly direct them to ensure that no delayed payment charges are levied on us since we couldn’t clear the April bill on the due date of May 15, 2020 as the matter of the inflated bill of over Rs.1 crore was still under investigation at that time.

We are not even sure how we can clear the May bill (due date being June 15, 2020) as Bescom have added all the previous inflated bill amounts along with DPC in the latest bill issued in June and with our business shutdown we are unable to clear such huge and exaggerated billing.

Looking forward to your prompt action on this matter,

Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
For Kumaon Entertainment & Hospitalities Pvt. Ltd.


Authorised Signatory

Encl: March, April & May 2020 bill copies, Complaint copy with acknowledgement and MSME Udyog Aadhar

Please note my email address is:fc.[protected]@svenskahotels.com