It’s no secret that if you are a cable and internet user, you have large cable companies, *cough* Comcast *cough* that charge you fees and costs that may appear to be complete ripoffs and unseen charges. However, Automatic Negotiation is a newer trend, and businesses like AskTrim are a legit way to helping you fight off unwarranted price changes through your utility and insurance.
In one case, our cable bill was raised to nearly double the price because the individual rate was no longer in effect. If you notice your cable bill is too high, you should try this Trim App as soon as you can.
The best part of Trim is that it’s hands off. No need to have a Comcast Customer Service Call or Chat. You know the typical call where you have to speak to 20 robots yourself. Think of it this way, you’ll have your own robot doing the battle now.
How to Start Using the Trim App!
You’ll need to head over to Trim and Sign Up, and then, just link up your account information from the AskTrim Dashboard along with payment info like your credit card or debit card. They’ll start working right away, and yes Trim works with most, if not all, the domestic cable carriers. Once they settle into your account, they’ll look to add credit if there was an outage in your area.
Next step, if you succesfully linked, is waiting to hear from Trim for any price changes they’ve fought for. Typically they’ll send an email or send you a Facebook Message.
Yes, this a real message from Trim to our Facebook Messenger account!!
Give it a few weeks for the service to find any outages or cable bill fluctuations that are unwarranted. You’ll be notified not only through Facebook but with a summary of Savings that they’ve successfully negotiated for you!
You’ll see changes within your cable bill’s account page or paper statement within a few weeks after Trim has successfully negotiated some credit!
How Does Trim Make Money?
You may ask, what is their business model? Trim tends to make money for every credit or change you do receive they take a nominal amount of the modification itself. Approximately 25% of your savings (not the whole bill itself) will be what the company makes. So if your cable bill has cut in half, they won’t charge the bill but rather a percentage of the change, typically only a couple of dollars. In case you were curious: our cable/internet bill at 100 Megabytes per Second is $55, but since we’ve been using Trim it’s typically been around $35-$40 every month!!
Sure you can factor in the cost of Trim which is, from our experience, is around $3-$5. Hello, McFly this is FREE MONEY BACK INTO YOUR WALLET!
Soon Trim includes other services like:
- Cancel Unwanted Subscriptions
- Auto Insurance Negotiation
- Automated Savings (similar to Digit and Qapital)
Is AskTrim Safe? Yes!
People tend to be wary of new technology and how they “link” with their personal account information. Of course, it wasn’t so long ago the Equifax credit report leak caused panic in the thousands, but in general, your personal account information is safe. Plus, the apps we publish are typically backed by better encryption and also insured themselves so they are liable. AskTrim uses one of our favorite Fintech security systems, Plaid. Plaid works with companies like Capital One, Robinhood, and…well AskTrim.
Alternative Bill Negotiators to Trim
Once something is made popular online it’s only a matter of moments when competition will arise. Trim has competitors in the cable negotiation business and all of them offer pretty similar saving opportunities.
Truebill
Probably the one that looks very similar to AskTrim, Truebill is a decent option also. Actually, if you haven’t had success with Trim, your best bet is this one.
BillShark
BillShark will look not only at your cable bill but other utility bills and decide if there are saving opportunities. They charge a tad more for the efforts, but the fact that you can save a bit more, in the long run, makes things more interesting. Also, Mark Cuban is a stakeholder in the company, you know, the Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank host. Makes sense it’s got “Shark” in the name!
BillSlasher
This one is actually pretty cool and a direct competitor to all the others. You can snap a picture of your latest cable bill and have the company take a look at your bill. Like AskTrim, they’ll only charge you if you actually get a refund or credit into your account.
Side Note: Manual Ways to Find an Outage
Some people may misconstrue an internet outage with a disconnected modem, or other in-house fixable issues. If you think you have issues with your cable company, you can report an outage through Comcast’s smartphone app (with your 4G LTE connection). There are also several websites that have scanned the internet to find outages reported.
DownDetector will scan cable companies, websites, and even gaming sites that have had server issues. You can also go directly to Comcast’s Xfinity server status page as well to find any reported issues.
Our Verdict…
Check out some other amazing apps that can help you save through our Best Money Apps post!
