negotiating a lower internet bill can be a big hassle today's video is about a service that
does all that work for you it saved me nearly 500 over a few years time but then i stopped using it
and today i'll explain why that service i used is called trim and it's one of a handful of companies
that will negotiate lower bills on your behalf a similar service you may have heard about is called
rocket money and that used to be called true bill before i get into why i stopped using trim
there are a few things you need to know about how the service actually operates trim's bill
negotiation service works for various types of bills cable postpaid wireless and internet now
i only have experience with trim negotiating my internet bill probably no surprise because after
all i've got an entire youtube channel dedicated to streaming services and prepaid phone plans
those aren't able to be negotiated by trim the way it works is pretty simple for the bill negotiation
you upload a copy of your bill to trim's website and then you give them permission to negotiate on
your behalf there is no charge up front but there is a success fee when i first tested trim all the
way back in 2017 it was 25 of the first year of savings then it increased to 33 percent and now
as of this recording it's dropped to only 15 so here's an example let's say trim negotiates a
lower internet bill on your behalf and saves you a hundred dollars over the course of 12 months in
that case you'll have to pay trim a one-time fee of 15 for their work 15 most of my savings from
trim came from these bill negotiations but that's actually not why i signed up in the first place
i was interested in something else they offer take a look here even if trim is unable to get
you a lower monthly rate the service says it'll negotiate one-time credits for outages and service
interruptions and this worked for me at least when i first signed up during my first year with them
trim negotiated five one-time credits including the 30 credit in this screenshot from back in
2018. over time it became clear to me that trim was a lot more focused on negotiating a lower
bill for 12 or maybe 24 months not the one-time credits and that brings me to the reason why i
eventually stopped using the service this is a blog post from my website in it i describe how
trim renegotiated my internet bill in february 2020. five months before my promo rate was set
to expire in july 2020 trim was able to extend the promotional rate saving me over
400 trim calculated the savings based on the price my internet bill would have gone up to
after the promo rate not what i was actually paying for my service my plan was to call up my
internet provider a month or two before that promo rate expired and negotiate on my own but by doing
it so far in advance five months trim beat me to it and to be clear i agreed to all of this trim
will ask you if it can accept a contract on your behalf make changes to your plan and renegotiate
automatically i did have the renegotiate on an ongoing basis option turned on and that
was mostly because i thought trim was going to be actively working to secure more of those one-time
credits that i got during my first year with the service since this experience i've gone back to
negotiating my internet bill on my own here's what works when you call your internet provider
ask for the retention department right away and present the representative with a competing offer
and thanks to new 5g home internet options this is easier than ever before for example t-mobile
home internet offers an unlimited internet plan 50 a month no contract and no equipment fees in
some cases your existing provider may offer a lower rate if you sign a contract but before you
agree to that just consider whether you may be moving during the contract period so you don't
get stuck with an early termination fee later on and aside from the bill negotiation trim and its
competitors will cancel unwanted subscriptions for you and in the case of trim this is actually free
it does require that you link your bank or credit card account trim says on its website that it uses
plaid to connect to financial institutions and never sells user data but despite the convenience
i can also live without this feature instead i recommend that you put all of your monthly
subscriptions on the same credit or debit card then review your statement every month and cancel
any unwanted services directly thanks for watching today's video and i hope to see you back here soon