Peoples Energy Transfer To BG Failed...

[Deleted User]

At the end of August, I moved from my house into a rented one while the house we purchased went through. The house we're renting is owned by a company and we deal with the estate agents.

Three weeks later People's Energy who I'd transferred to the new rented accommodation went into administration.

I was told not to do anything, don't cancel the direct debit etc. as we'd be transferred to BG automatically.

Anyway, my wife gave birth in November, then Christmas, then the little boy got sick so we were in the hospital... We got distracted. But, with all the talk about the rates rising etc. I figured it was time to dig into my transfer to British Gas, after all, I'd still been paying Peoples Energy and didn't think the direct debit I had set up would be enough to cover everything with the new rates.

So, I tried getting set up with BG but it kept failing.
Tried live chat - don't go there.
Finally, I ended up ringing them yesterday.

They told me the gas had been transferred to them but the electricity hadn't, which had been transferred to SSE. 

They told me to cancel the DD to Peoples Energy asap, and file an indemnity claim for the money back from previous payments with my bank.

So, I went ahead and did that but the bank declined basically going through the whole process of how Ofgem transfers you etc. despite me trying to explain who they'd transferred me to told me to do this.

Today I rang SSE to try and get that side of things sorted except SSE wouldn't speak to me because the account for the house wasn't in my name and instead it was in the name of the company that owns the rental. So I rang the estate agent to explain but they said they'd shut the account down.

So, I rang back SSE and they decided they'd just set me up with a moving home package - I was really hoping maybe the money had been sent to them from Peoples Energy instead of British Gas but it turns out that wasn't the case as they went ahead and backdated my electricity to September and told me I owe over £500. 

They pretty much said that I had to pay that and then set up a payment plan with them to pay for my electricity moving forward. The guy was mansplaining a lot, I tried saying I couldn't pay and could they send me a bill in writing so I could look through it and check the metres from when I moved in to now but he told me paying now is in good faith with the company etc so I just went with it (pretty worn down at this point).

So basically, I'm trying to get back the money I've been paying to People's Energy. I've no idea if I was in-credit with them when they went bust but obviously, the payments between September and now add up to a hefty sum and are nowhere to be found. Does anyone have any ideas on where to go with this next?

Roxburgh_rose

BG are absolutely hopeless.  I really feel for you.  Trying to speak to anyone, even just on the Live Chat can take the best part of a morning. 
I don't have any useful advice for what to do but on the People's Energy side... Have you tried logging in to your account to see if there is any information on your account balance? If you can, it might give you a start point.  I can still get into my account. When I went to the PE site I had to click the three line menu bar top right to get the log-in button to appear. I could then log-in with my old details. Then went back to the three line menu bar to navigate to My Bills. That showed me what my account credit was at 12/01/22 (which in my case has transferred to BG).

Good luck!

MWT

Deleted_User said:

At the end of August, I moved from my house into a rented one while the house we purchased went through. The house we're renting is owned by a company and we deal with the estate agents.

Three weeks later People's Energy who I'd transferred to the new rented accommodation went into administration.

Did you register with the existing supplier at the rented property before switching to PE?

... I'm guessing you didn't which is where this all went wrong.

Regardless of that though, any money you paid to PE is going to have to come back to you via British Gas, so do persist in chasing them for that.