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Snowbirds CFE question


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When you leave Lakeside to return NOB after your Snowbird season

How do you get to pay your CFE bills if they are sent to your Lakeside home or condo every 2 months after your gone ?

Is it possible to check-it and pay it over the net ?

Or any other bills ?

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I live here year round so I can't exactly answer your question but one of the cashiers at Telemex in Ajijic told me that I could pay my telephone bill on line so I am guessing that it is also possible to pay CFE on-line as well.

When I have been on extended visits NOB I left money with friends and neighbors who paid the bills in my absence.

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Sioux4 has the answer..We pay our CFE, Telecable, Telmex in advance..6 months+ in advance, Telecable we pay for the year and get 14 months ..The CFE bills still arrives every other month and shows the amount of elec. used and the amount billed, with $0.00 due, it does not show what your credit balance is so you will have to keep up with that and replenish the account as needed. CFE can be paid at the ATM machine outside the CFE office or at one of the teller windows..Never a problem in many years of doing it this way..Plus you can view your CFE bill on line if you want while out of Mexico..We typically do all this in Jan. when you have to pay your taxes and water bill for the year..Make copies of everything..

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You can prepay at the CFE office or machine, called an anticipo. Just (over)estimate how much it will be.

We tried this once, they didn't credit our over payment and it took three trips there with a native Spanish speaker to straighten it out. Be careful of this approach.

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When making the over payment make sure you use the "ANTICIPO" selection on CFE's ATM type machine...you will need your CFE bill for the bar code scan..Many years of using this for all our bills, without a single hitch...I do understand that there is a segment here that should not try to do this annual time saving bill paying.

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At the time we did it, you couldn't do it through any machine. You did it in person through the cashier.

I'm not sure what to make of the "segment" remark but I'm glad you had better luck than we and our bilingual neighbor did (same thing happened to her so she knew where to go to get it straightened out.

We pay Telecable in advance no problem. Haven't had to do that with TelMex but I'm glad to hear they handle it well also.

Maybe the machine is more reliable?

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I pay my CFE almost by the year using the machine in the Chapala CFE office. I've done this for at least the past two years. I may be wrong but I think that the machine gives me a receipt for the amount that I pre-pay. I do see the amount remaining listed on my bill each month. I do use the bar code strip at the bottom of my CFE bill when I use the machine though you can put in your number if you know it. I never do that. Maybe that makes a difference--or maybe not. So far no problems--fingers crossed. If I had a problem I'd take the receipt and the monthly bill showing what money I still had remaining in my account to the office.

An aside; a friend received a CFE bill in the mail and took the bus to Chapala to pay it. Later her electricity was turned off. It turns out that she paid a neighbor's CFE bill that was misdelivered. It took her three tries with non-refunded money to get her electric turned on again and when she told her gringo neighbor what had happened the neighbor commiserated with her--and never repaid her for the original CFE bill that was really the neighbor's! Now I always make sure that I look at the name when I see the CFE bill come (even though it states I pay nothing because I prepaid). A word to the wise...

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