I have Dominion Energy which does not take credit card payments. I signed up for Arcadia back when they were offering $20 through a link on facebook. I’ve been paying power bill with my Citi Double Cash card for about a year and get 2% back like clockwork. I’ve never had an issue. It was easy to sign up and has been “set it and forget it.” If you have ever once thought that you wished you could maximize your credit card rewards a little more by paying more bills with a points/cash earning card, there is ZERO reason not to sign up for Arcadia.
If you’ve found my post here useful (or any of my other posts) and want to use my Arcadia referral link, it’s $5 for you and me. Let me know and I will PM you my link. Or, better yet, click my avatar - I added my referral link there.
If you find a link that is worth more, by all means use that one over my referral. But keep an eye out for “Sign up and save up to $25” links. The up to part of that matters. You only get the higher sign up bonus if you sign up for one of their plans that costs money monthly. The $5 signup referral bonus is for the 100% free plan and you can pay with your credit card with the free plan.
It’s not a “fee” per se. It just costs more to go 100% wind power:
The 100% Wind Energy program is an additional 1.5c per kWh (with a $5 minimum).
On my last electric bill, if I had chosen 100% wind power, it would have been $5.43 additional.
I’m with an alternate supplier now and their price for 100% wind power is identical to Arcadia’s – the only difference is I can’t pay by credit card.
They don’t change the APS plan at all, They get the bill, charge you the exact amount of the bill (unless you opted for 100% windpower), and then pay APS.
You might want to call them to verify everything. I called and they haven’t signed me up yet because they said they wanted me to be sure it would be a good fit so they sent me an explanatory email.
It isn’t exactly the same thing as just using a reward card. I’m paying a third party and they’re paying a very necessary utility. Any issue with that and I have to deal with the issue. For $1 in rewards a month I don’t see it.
I live in southern California, $50 is a monthly average between are high months when we use the AC ($90) and low months when we don’t. ($35)
Unless you know of an experience where someone’s bill didn’t get paid by Arcadia, your reason for not wanting to use it is paranoia. There is indeed some level of trust required that your bill is going to be paid, but that can be said on some level with any form of bill payment short of handing a check to the owner of the company. Sometimes paranoia pays off. I get it. I was skeptical for the first couple months too. But now that there are so many people that use it, there isn’t much need to be skeptical anymore. I’ve had no issues for the ~year I’ve been using it.
I just want to reiterate that in my experience, Arcadia’s simplicity, consistency, and free reward capability make it well worth signing up (and getting a few sign-up bucks through a referral too).
I’m not in it for the renewable power part of it. But for for the folks that care about that and get their power from a non-renewable source, I would bet that this is the cheapest way to “get your power” from a renewable source. That’s either just an added bonus, or a reason to sign up in and of itself.
I’ve been using Arcadia since August 2017. They’ve always paid my bill. At some point I switched from credit card to auto-draft from bank. I wish I remembered why. Are you sure they don’t charge a fee for CC usage?
I’m still using Arcadia. Allegedly I need 3 more referrals to earn the free $1,000. My recollection is that they charged a fee for credit card, but it was less than 3%, so I used Alliant’s 3% card, but once that expired I switched to using bank draft. Maybe they stopped charging a fee for CC?
As far as I know, they “work” with any utility, but you have to give them your utility’s username and password.
I’m not using Arcadia. I signed up for Neighborhood Sun, a solar farm operation. I still get the regular utility bill but it shows credits from N. Sun for electricity only, Rate is guaranteed 5% lower than utility rate. I can pay the N. Sun bill with a credit card (no fee- I use Alliant 2.5%). Utility bill is autopay from checking, N. Sun bill is autopay from credit card.
I got the first bill this month which shows $40 from BGE and a $40 credit (which I’ll have to pay, i.e. $80 total bill) from NSun. This is considerably less than expected. I’ll see how it goes.