BEV insolvency

Can I also offset them against a payment claim so that I at least don't have to make an additional payment?

Probably not.

Registered office, including managing director, VAT ID number and tax number are the same.

Then I would set off. You can also reverse the last debit - what you have, you have. Legally, however, it is a bit complicated to offset claims from A against B before the insolvency with claims from B against A after the insolvency. Insolvency law is unfortunately the area where the proportion of shady corner lawyers is higher than in others (criminal defense of mafiosi explicitly included). At the same time, it is complicated and often constructed against common sense - so if you need legal assistance yourself, a traffic or family law attorney by your side is almost as valuable as an empty magazine ;-)

So, I just checked the documents, and I couldn’t find anything about subsidiaries. The company headquarters, including the managing director, VAT ID number, and tax number, are the same. The bank details are the same as well.

Now, I’m wondering whether I should have the last direct debit reversed or not.
What’s the worst-case scenario for me? Can I do that citing the reason of the service not being provided in January on BEV’s part, or will I get into trouble?

For gas, we’ll probably face a hefty additional payment demand, since we received gas for 2 months but only made one installment payment, and we’re in the middle of the heating season.
Calculating roughly, we’ll probably have to pay an additional 150-200€.

For electricity, we should get about 40€ back.

Not yet included here are the bonuses via Check24:
- Gas 150€
- Electricity 225€

Both should actually be paid out in the next few days (beginning of February).
Can I offset these against any payment demand so that I don’t have to make an additional payment at least?

Pretty stupid, the whole thing. :|
I always deliberately chose sufficiently high installment payments so that I’d normally get a refund, because to be honest, I didn’t expect something like this to happen.

I won’t make that mistake again.
In the future, the installment payment will be chosen as low as possible. Then I’ll stash the excess money in my account and live with a hefty additional payment.

I also went to BEV and your idea about low installment payments—I had that too... but in practice, you can argue with them all you want, they set your installment! Mine was 93 euros even though I paid 70 before, how on earth do you want to get the supplier to accept paying less in practice?

Hey, and add up all your bonuses you surely won’t get from them anymore and offset everything—then you might even end up in the negative?

I would immediately add everything up, send them a letter, and if there’s a negative balance in the whole bill, have the payment reversed immediately, what are you worried about?

They surely have other problems right now than your 200 euros...

They surely have other problems right now than your 200 euros ...

They have no problems at all anymore once the insolvency administrator has taken over the helm. Put simply, his course of action is as follows: where the company is a creditor, collect what you can; and where the company is a debtor, contest everything first – including legitimate counterclaims.

Example: the company owes the customer 300 euros, the customer owes the company 200 euros, then it is like this:

The customer thinks: 200 minus 300, so I don’t have to pay them anything and still get 100 from them;

The insolvency administrator demands the 200, which he wants in full. He first takes care of himself – let’s say his fee for the insolvency administration is allocated to this income as 40, the remaining 160 goes into the insolvency estate. Let’s assume the insolvency estate totals four million, and the sum of creditor claims is twenty million. And let’s also assume that the customer’s counterclaim would be recognized in full.

Then the calculation looks as follows: the customer pays the company 200, of which the administrator takes 40, only the remaining 160 are available at all for the counterclaim; he settles the counterclaim with 300 x 4:20 = 60. Net, the customer has therefore paid 200-60=140 instead of, according to his calculation, 200-300=100 received.

The right-of-way rule is unfortunately clear: law before reason, and therefore a simple subtraction calculation "they owe me more than I owe them, so I get something" turns into a point calculation "they have less than they owe everyone, so I still pay up" :-(

Can I also offset these in the case of a payment demand so that I at least don't have to make an additional payment?

As long as the claim existed before the opening of the insolvency proceedings, you are allowed to offset. Basically, you can't really do anything wrong. Reverse the last direct debit(s) and wait first. If they get in touch, explain the offset and pay any possible difference. If the insolvency administrator actually sues for the remaining amount, you can still acknowledge it at that moment and you haven't lost anything.

As long as the claim existed before the opening of the insolvency proceedings, you are allowed to offset. [...] If they respond, you declare the set-off

I would declare the set-off immediately, in a way as effectively declaring my time of payment.