Where to pay CFE with Smart Card

All kinds of rumors but the CFE office is the only place I know works. CFE is a 1/2 hour away here and poor people would be forced to take a bus and wait in line. There's a rumor of OXXO but they charge 7-8 pesos

I am in San Cristobal de las casas and since I am not always here tomorrow I have a meeting with CFE to ask them how to handle the problem. Now the bill gets read and sent to CFE and if it looks out of line I check it but I never go to CFE. Here they are telling the people to have the card read the meter once a month and then go to CFE to pay the bill.. They are also saying that everyone down here will be on the meter by January 2015. They may be bluffing, not sure , we will see.
Also my neighbor told me she usually pays 125 pesos a month but this month she paid 250 pesos...a deposit of some type..
It seems that it is more inconvenient for the consumer to start with but I will see what they say after they speak to me.

They installed some here this weekend .... and some of my neighbors think it's super cool ... almost like having Internet. But they haven't read the meter and taken it to CFE each month yet.

One of the installers told me no Gringos but that is a lie. Half the places on the beach have absentee landlords or are only occupied in winter.

I'm gonna put a locking window on my recessed meters

Stay away!!! Its pay ahead.  Someone put a card on our smart meter and than our power was turned off with no way to fix for days.  Folks downtown on plaza have been hit twice with scam.
I am still waiting to put meter back as CFE just jumped my meter as no one can fix smart meters on weekends other than paying off the card.  We never saw card. I suggest staying away from digital meter until CFE gets a handle on this scam.  DON"T DO THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS and yes I am shouting.  Good way to lose fridge full of food.  Four weeks later still have jumped meter. CAll them up weekly to cover my butt so they don't think I jumped the meter.  Wish I never saw a smart meter.  

Keep your old two month billing and avoid this smart card and the smart meter.  This has to do with CFE inability to stop people from changing meters over from two month billing to pay ahead basically without a signed contract. You are suppose to get a contract.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

If they set this system up so you can pay at all the places that currently accept conventional payments I would have no problem with it. I don't receive my paper bill half the time anyways.

Pete do not be surprised if they try. They are pretty clueless.
I have a probem with that suystem as I am not there more than half of the time. RIght now the bank pays the bill and that is it..now what I have to pay someone to read the card and go and pay, which cost me money. I am going down to the office this morning to talk to them and se what they say. I have a bunch of notices under my door that they have been by..My neighbors got the new meter because they were told they had too so we will see.

How are places going to read smart card to bill you???? Oxxo uses BCR to read bottom of bill. Doubt BCR can read smart card. Maybe payment system can read smart card???? Too much not known about this system. Spent 6 hours on phone so far with no sign of resolution and frankly I and others are sick of this.

I imagine they would have to install card readers at all the places that currently accept payment (OXXO, 7-11, banks, etc.). I have no doubt that this is what they intend to do..........eventually.

But as previously stated, for now it is best to avoid it if you can.

Good luck, in Chiapas they told me everyone is o be on it by January 2015 or have no electicity, we will see what happen but I think fighting it is fighting a losing battle.
I will wait unti the last minute and there was a long line of people copaining this morning but I do not thik they care one way or the other..

I am wondering how long it will be before some savvy young hacker comes along who can load these cards with "false" lower usage information. He would have quite the nice business driving around loading cards for say 100 pesos each.

Unless they are stupid (hey who knows) the data on card is probably encrypted. You can be sure its not standard ASCII data format like a simple computer file. To make it work you would also need the meter number or account number. I hope they are smarter than this C.B.

Z

Oh come on....they can clone bank cards and credit cards so this would be a walk in the park.

Where on CFE did you find that .... I can't find anything about the new meters

CanuckBob wrote:Oh come on....they can clone bank cards and credit cards so this would be a walk in the park.

Easy to clone US cards. Cloning chipped cards is much harder which is why the US banking system is trying to changeover as fast as possible. Copying a proper encrypted chip like a Canadian bank card is not easy. Anything can be done by someone somewhere but encrypted info on smart card would be much more difficult than strip card to copy. Things inside these chips that I know about and you (and others) don't know. Yes the Russian mafia can do it but the local low lifes can't. The US banking system did not save any money by delaying smart cards in fact they have lost a huge amount of money to fraud. Far more than they would have spent going to a modern system like Canada did.
Z

My solution.  Door didn't fit perfectly so silicon and paint tomorrow