Government Electric Credit Gone to SEE Airtricity Instead of Electric Ireland

Airticity would have to give you back the money - they cannot transfer it. Right now they are supplying your power, however.

You will almost certainly need to get the CRU involved here as that transfer was effectively fraudulent, albeit probably mistake rather than malice and you will want to be transferred back to EI; get the cancellation refunded and so on.

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities. They will want to know that you have exhausted SSEAs complaints procedure, but my experience is they will exhaust it themselves quite fast.

There is no method for SSE to transfer the money to EI. It will have to go to you, by EFT or cheque.

I'd be fishing for that transfer to include compensation for their mistake too; but don't try too hard.

Yes. Seriously.

the OP is having to go through a massive amount of faffery due to utter incompetence by SSE.

Would you do their admin work for free? It is absolutely not a minor inconvenience - it is going to require hours to sort and is entirely SSEs fault

They "ignored" an email sent due to someone elses complete and utter cockup; which was unexpected and phrased entirely in the manner of a scam - completely legitimate to ignore. If you acted on such an email send to your work email address you might find yourself doing some very boring IT security training afterwards.

SSE have a cavalier attitude to customer care and need to financially suffer for it.

The OP ignored an email that screamed of a scam. It was sent by SSEA in error, bordering on fraud.

This is SSEAs fault, 100%, and the OP now has piles of work to do to sort it out.

If you are willing to roll over and accept this sort of stuff, go ahead. But don't expect anyone else to. And your "comparative" examples are the ridiculous thing here.

The effective date for the credit is the 27/10/22 whomever you were on-supply with on that day owes you the credit, it is meaningless for the SSEA representative to talk about the 7th november, delayed payments, or 'having viewed your account' it's not there, the government aren't transferring the money to your account, they are taking a snapshot of which company you are with on that date and paying them, in order to pay you, regardless whether you close your account or move or move in somewhere new, you are entitled to the credit from them if you had an account on the 27/10.

These companies work with ESB market messaging, its a series of codes that are sent and received to each other via ESB networks that show things like request to take over supply, accepting it, coming on supply / rejecting coming on supply, even things like meter readings. Those codes are needed to tell which company has received the credit from the government for you.

The email on 6th october was the initial request from SSEA, you were certainly on supply with SSEA on the 13th, that's why you got the early exit fee, they wouldn't have charged you that until you were on supply with SSEA. The email says - I can see your sign up was fully cancelled on the 27/10/22 - That is probably where the confusion is if the takeover was rejected (EI sent a message for you to return to them) and that executed on the 27/10 who knows which company has been given the credit? The rep in the email certainly hasn't a notion.

I would be asking each company to look at esb messaging and tell you the times and dates you were on supply with each one. Normally with these sort of transfers the companies have processes to work out the billing amongst themselves (you dont get a bill if you sign up to a new company then cancel within 14 days, although you can be on supply with that new company) See what they say.

Can i just say this is absolutely not your fault, even partly, you should not be expected to police an unauthorised company taking over your supply, if you'd caught it, fair play, but it just isnt, i think it would be entirely reasonable for you to request compensation as suggested above, depending how much time it takes to resolve, although as was suggested don't push too hard, also the fact that SSEA can take over a customer who is not on supply with panda shows a glaring hole in the process, that should not be allowed to occur because of user error, it should be foolproof, they should be given a list of only customers on supply with panda, how many other people have they transferred incorrectly, DPA is certainly an issue. I think the CRU should be informed regardless of the outcome.

I have heard of 3rd party sales reps (door to door,or otherwise) working on behalf of these supplier companies going rogue and just signing up random MPRNs, collecting the commission and then buggering off before the supplier(s) and customers have realised what has happened. Not saying that's what happened here, but it is surprisingly easy to get transferred to a new supplier without your own input.

As for the IBAN; I don't see how SSEA would have gotten it from Panda. Anybody with half a brain knows that shouldn't happen.

Yep. There'd most likely a perfectly logical explanation as to how SSEA got the IBAN details. The OP most likely made a leap while omitting something important.

I’m going through an issue too regarding the government credit. What you need to do is ring ESB Networks and give them your MPRN. They will confirm who the credit was sent to.

Then ring the regulator (CRU) and explain the issue. If like me, they will tell you that it has to go through the official complaints procedure of the service provide first before it can be escalated to them. But they took my email and then sent me all the details of who I needed to contact along with a link to the service providers customer charter.

ESB Networks 1800 372757

CRU 01 400 0800

ESB Networks are not a utility provider but they do have the list of where every MPRN government credit went to. Give them a call, they’re lovely and they will have your answer in seconds. They have nothing to hide so won’t be fobbing you off

edit - you are confusing esb networks with electric Ireland