Good morning everyone. A few weeks ago, I friend told me about a service called Trim, where they will monitor your cable / phone / TV / Internet bills and negotiate a lower rate for you. In exchange for negotiating a lower rate, Trim takes a cut of the savings. The service sounded like a cool idea and I decided to try it out on my home Comcast cable / TV / Internet bill. Trim works with several cable / phone / TV / Internet providers, so most TWG readers should check it out.
To get started, create a free Trim account, and sign up with Facebook or your email address. Trim uses your credit card transactions to track your cable / phone / TV / Internet bills, so I linked my Chase account since I use my Chase Ink Business Cash Credit Card to pay my Comcast bill.
After creating my Trim account and linking my Chase account, I went to the Lower Your Bills section. I selected Comcast from the service provider drop down menu, adjusted my preferences, and clicked the Save button. Trim will contact the service provider on your behalf, negotiate a lower price for you, and then charge you 33% of the annualize savings. So if Trim saves you $10 / month, that is $120 / year in savings. Trim will charge you 33% of $120, which equals $40.
Roughly 2-3 days later, I got an email from Comcast Xfinity alerting me to a $25 service adjustment credit to my bill. Sweet!
I then logged into my Comcast account to see the $25 service adjustment credit.
Later in the evening, I received an email from Trim with the details of the savings. Apparently, Trim was able to get a $25 service adjustment credit due to “outage refunds”. I don’t remember having any outages, but I am sure there were times when I was not home that the service was not available. Trim also showed their “Trim Success Fee” of $8.25, which represents 33% of $25.
I then logged into my Trim account to see an updated tile in my account showing the $25 Comcast savings.
A few days later, I received my Trim receipt for $8.25.
I wasn’t sure how the Trim transaction would code, so I used my American Express Blue Business Plus Credit Card. According to the transaction details, the Trim charge is coded as “Merchandise & Supplies – Internet Purchase” which sounds like it might work as a 3x transaction on my Citi AT&T Access More Credit Card.
I am not sure how often Trim will contact Comcast on my behalf, but I hope they continue to save me money. Sign up for Trim and start saving money. If you have any questions about Trim, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
The thing that would make me skeptical of these types of services is that there’s nothing to stop the negotiating company from creating extra money for themselves. For example, assume your internet bill right now is $50/month. Let’s say the negotiating company goes in and asks for $40/month for the first year ($10/month savings in the first year) in exchange for paying $70/month in a year. Next year, they call up your internet provider and instead “negotiate” you back down to a $55/month bill, creating $15/month in “savings”. In reality, they might not have saved you anything in year 2.
I’m not saying Trim would do this but I can easily see companies come in and perform this type of “service” for individuals who are not paying attention and believe they are saving money. Just keep close track of your bills.
That is an interesting idea. I’m also curious to see how often Trim is successful at negotiating my bill down. Only time will tell.
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