Missing payments between step change and British Gas

Nellie87

Hi everyone,

I am not sure if I am posting in the right place here but I am just looking to see if anyone has experienced anything similar to this.

i recently entered a debt management plan and one of my creditors were British Gas.  The plan had been open since the beginning of 2025.  I was checking my credit report back in October and noticed that British Gas had been logging me a missed payment every month since September 2024, whilst I wasn’t sure if this was just because I was making part payments I decided to call them and to my surprise they informed me that they have not received any payments from step change. 

I contacted step change who sent me what they use for proof of payment and sent that on to British Gas on the 31st of October.  To cut a long story short British Gas have made no attempt to look for the payments and have basically said it is step change’s issue after speaking to them today.  I called step change again today who said the statement they sent me is the final thing they can give me to help. 

There is now £250 worth of payments just missing and nobody is giving me a straight answer as to how I get that back.  I have exited the debt management now as I am in a better financial position.  I did want to clear the balance with British Gas but they obviously have a different balance to me and I don’t want them to end up owing me money as I know I will never get it back.  

It would be good to know if anyone else has had this problem.

thanks 

Brie

StepChange should be able to give you a payment reference number for every payment made to BG.  Chances are the payments are in a BG suspense account waiting to be assigned somewhere, preferably your account.  Once BG has the payment reference numbers they should be able to sort things out.  But they can be a bit hit and miss with their accounting so it will take some time.  

Meanwhile - I'll move this to the debt free wannabee board.  Someone might then decide it's better in energy but we'll take things one step at a time.

born_again

Might help BG if StepChange could provide them with the date, amount & reference used to make the payments.

Nellie87

Thank you, I have sent British Gas a statement from step change with all the payments they have made with the reference numbers but they still refuse to accept the payments have been made 

sourcrates

Have you escalated this to a complaint with British Gas?

They can`t just refuse to accept payments have been made, they should be actively looking for them in whatever holding account they must have ended up in.

That`s an utterly unacceptable response to give you.