Photo by NORTHFOLK on Unsplash

“I hope I get to wait on hold for two hours in an attempt to speak to one of my service providers tonight,” said no one ever.

If only there were a quick and easy way to lower your bills… There is!

Trim is an online bill negotiation tool for telephone, wireless, cable, satellite radio, and internet bills. Simply go to asktrim.com, upload your bill, and they’ll negotiate it on your behalf. If your bill is successfully lowered, you’ll be charged 15% of the total first year of savings. If they do not lower the bill, there is no charge.

In my own experience with Trim, they have been able to lower my internet bill numerous times (as the provider tries to raise it every year). Most recently, they reduced the bill from $74.00/month to $54.00/month. With this, I owed Trim $36.00 (i.e. 15% of $240 [12 months of savings]), so had an overall savings of $204 for the year.

While I haven’t tried Trim for the other utilities they’re able to negotiate, based on my use of them for the internet bill, they have been a productive and efficient force against money-sucking service providers.

For more information on Trim, you can read their FAQ page here.

Should you wish to negotiate your bills yourself (and try to avoid paying any fee[s] for a company to do so on your behalf), remember to see if there are any discounts available for being a loyal customer, having a history of timely bill payments, or if the provider might be able to match a competitor’s deal.

For those who live in a multi-person household, you can also check if switching the account holder might make you eligible for cheaper introductory “new customer” deals (something I can say has worked in my own history of evading high internet costs). If you go this route, make sure there are no account transfer fee(s) that might cancel out the savings.

Whatever you choose to do, best of luck in the battle against high bills!