Solarplicity customers acquired by Toto Energy

The majority of Solarplicity’s customers have been acquired by fellow challenger supplier Toto Energy, the two companies have announced today (29 July).

Brighton-based Toto also said it will become the preferred grid energy provider of Solarplicity’s community energy scheme.

Meanwhile the rest of the Solarplicity Group will continue as normal.

A spokesperson for Toto Energy said: “We’re delighted to be welcoming Solarplicity’s customers to Toto. We want to assure the customers who are moving to Toto that their energy supply is secure and we are protecting their credit balances.

“Their current tariff and terms and conditions will not change as a result of the move. We will be contacting all the customers who are transferring to Toto to explain and answer any questions.”

A spokesperson for Solarplicity said: “While we’re sad to say goodbye to our retail customers, we know that Toto is an excellent fit. With the completion of this partnership, we can now restructure our business to focus on our core operations.

“First and foremost, we are a renewable technology business striving to fight fuel poverty and make renewable energy available to everyone. We look forward to offering a more focused and dedicated level of service across our renewable business.”

Last week Utility Week revealed that HMRC had filed several winding up petitions against Solarplicity.

The company confirmed six petitions were submitted in total, four were dismissed and the remaining two have been adjourned.

The company has been subject to a provisional order from Ofgem and earlier this month it was revealed that Solarplicity had again failed to pay money owed to feed-in-tariff (FIT) generators and is in danger of having the order confirmed.

In a statement on 10 July Ofgem said that while Solarplicity did meet the requirement to make outstanding payments by 16 May, it had recently failed to make other FIT payments.

Specifically it noted that the supplier wrote to “at least” nine FIT generators early this month stating that payments due on 28 June would be delayed. On 3 July it contacted Ofgem and advised it would not be making those payments.

As a result the regulator has “concerns” around the supplier’s ability to make future payments and is now consulting on confirming the provisional order.

If Solarplicity fails to comply with a confirmed provisional order it is within Ofgem’s power to revoke its licence.

In January Martyn James of complaints resolution company Resolver highlighted concerns about both Toto Energy and Solarplicity in regards to their complaints handling procedures.

James told Utility Week that the complaints regarding Toto were “of concern” and could be a sign the company is in trouble.

He said: “We have continued to see large numbers of complaints about Toto and in recent months we have seen refund credit issues grow to 60 per cent of their complaints.

“Satisfaction with complaint handling is very, very poor with just 9 per cent of consumers feeling that their complaint was handled satisfactorily.

“This is of concern to us because refund issues are often a sign of trouble at the company.

“When we saw this with some smaller energy firms last year, they subsequently went under. Now I don’t want to create a self-fulfiling prophecy here, but the cases about are not a good sign.”

Solarplicity came bottom of the annual Which? satisfaction survey published on 21 January and ranked second from bottom in a Citizens Advice table for customer service in December last year, ahead of One Select which ceased trading on 10 December.

Meanwhile Toto Energy ranked fifth from bottom in the Citizens Advice Table, which covered the period July to September last year. The supplier climbed from bottom place in the league table published in October 2018 for customer service between April and June 2018.

Toto was criticised in March last year for transferring thousands of customers to Utilita Energy without adequate communication.