Veco to 416K customers: Pay electric bills at TPAs

To address the long queues and waiting times at their service centers, distribution utility firm, Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) will no longer allow customers to pay their bills in its service centers starting next week. Instead, its 416,000 clients will have to pay their bills through third party agents (TPAs).

This is Veco’s way to improve ease of doing business with customers.

“Some, unfortunately, pay more for the fare going to our service centers than their electricity bill. Instead of having to travel 30 minutes to one hour to these establishments, they can just walk to the nearest pawnshop or convenience store to pay,” said Anton Mari Perdices, chief operating officer of Veco, during the opening of Veco’s newest service center at JCentre Mall in Mandaue City on Monday.

At present, around 95 percent of the utility’s customers are already transacting with TPAs with the service center at SM City Cebu still accepting bills payments.

As of July 2017, the utility already has 416,000 clients and receives an average of 1,000 new customer applications every month.

Veco’s franchise area includes the city of Cebu, Mandaue, Talisay and Naga as well as the municipalities in the greater part of Metro Cebu such as Liloan, Consolacion, Minglanilla and San Fernando.

The country’s second largest power distributor targets to have 100 percent of its customers transact with partner establishments this year and is poised to achieve that as it closes its service center in SM City Cebu by Sep. 25. Customers can still pay their bills until Sep. 24.

After the utility closes its establishment in SM, what will be left are service centers in JCentre, Banawa, Talisay and Consolacion.

These facilities will be focused on services such as new applications, reconnections, bill deposit updating, and complaints, among others.

The company is also set to open new service centers in Talamban this month and Liloan next year.

The TPA partners of Veco include Bayad Center, Cebuana Lhuillier, M Lhuillier, 2GO, ECPay, SM Hypermarket, SM Department Store, Savemore Market and SM Business Services.