Forget phone and SMS, now book LPG cylinders through Facebook, Twitter

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push towards Digitisation, Indian Oil kicked off its new digital booking service.

Representational image (File photo)

NEW DELHI: The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has come up with a facility wherein the consumers can book their gas cylinders through social media platforms - Facebook and Twitter.

Earlier, consumers used telephone or messaging services to book gas cylinders.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push towards Digitisation, the IOC kicked off its new digital booking service.

Indian Oil is the first among the oil marketing companies who introduced refill booking through social media platforms, providing the customers an additional option for booking, said a report.

Indane refill booking can be done through Facebook by the following steps:

- Login to Facebook

- Go to IOCL's official Facebook page, @indianoilcorplimited

- Click on 'Book Now'

Indane refill booking can be done through Twitter by the following steps:

- Tweet refill @indanerefill

- For first-time registration tweet register LPGID

Last month, marketing director of IOC Gurmeet Singh had emphasised the need to leverage technology and the growing social media to provide simpler and effective options to customers to avail IOCL products.

The state-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) has been raising the price of LPG on 1st of every month since July 2017, with a view to eliminate government subsidies on the fuel by 2018.

The price of subsidised LPG was last raised by Rs 4.50 per cylinder on November 1 to Rs 495.69, according to a price notification issued by state-owned firms.

The government last year had asked state-run oil firms to raise prices every month to eliminate all the subsidies by March 2018. Since the implementation of the policy of monthly increases from July last year, subsidised LPG rates have gone up by Rs 76.51 per cylinder. A 14.2-kg LPG cylinder was priced at Rs 419.18 in June 2016.

Every household is entitled to 12 cylinders of 14.2-kg each at subsidised rates in a year. Any requirement beyond that is to be purchased at market price.

Initially, the hike in LPG rate was Rs 2 per month which was raised to Rs 3 from May this year. The November 1 hike in the LPG price was the sixth since the May 30 order of the oil ministry to raise rates by Rs 4 per cylinder every month.