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It’s no secret that the best way to improve your finances is by spending less and saving more. While there are countless ways to save money, today I am writing about the single easiest money tool I have ever discovered. I am talking about a bill negotiation app called Truebill, and today, I am sharing with you my comprehensive Truebill review.
Truebill is a bill negotiation service that helps you save money all from the comfort of your couch. It is truly the laziest way I have ever saved money, and I am super excited to share it with you.
What are Bill Negotiation Services?
Bill negotiation services are a new type of service as a result of the internet age. In a nutshell, you provide any number of bills (I’ll dive into the kinds of bills a bit later) to a service via an app on your phone.
Then, the service will reach out to your service provider on your behalf and negotiate a better rate than you are currently paying.
If the bill negotiation service can save you money, they get paid a slice of the savings. If they aren’t able to save you any money, they get paid nothing.
Truebill is one of many bill negotiation services. I will cover some Truebill alternatives a bit later.
I get it. This sounds too good to be true. I agree; it seems too good to be true. And frankly, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t tried Truebill myself. But I did try it, and the results were astounding. I am excited to share with you in this Truebill review how I saved my family and me $885, but first, I want to explain what Truebill is and how it works.
Truebill Review: What is Truebill?
Truebill is one of the most popular bill negotiation services out there. However, they offer more than just bill negotiation. Truebill is an app that provides an extensive suite of financial data and services. Here’s a quick overview of what Truebill offers in their app.
When you get set up on the Truebill app, a financial dashboard will appear that shows your account balances, upcoming bills, and more.
I do not link all of my accounts because I use Truebill almost exclusively for their bill negotiation services. For a comprehensive financial dashboard, stick with Personal Capital instead of Truebill. It’s more detailed and offers more data at your fingertips.
Truebill’s dashboard can also provide a free credit score. Again, I don’t use this particular functionality of the app, as I use Credit Karma to track my credit. Finally, Truebill does show some budgeting data (i.e., spending, etc.), but I use YNAB for budgeting.
What I am getting at is that Truebill can offer a significant amount of free financial data if you choose, but I think you’re better off using specialized services for those pieces of your financial life. I use Truebill for their core competency (bill savings), and I would recommend that’s how you use the service, too.
Truebill Review: How Can Truebill Save You Money?
Jumping into how Truebill can save you money, Truebill has a variety of services that are continually working to save you money.
1. Bill Negotiation
First and foremost, Truebill is a bill negotiation app. The way this works is that you upload your bills to the Truebill app (i.e., a picture of your bill) and provide some necessary account details. Over the next two or so weeks, Truebill will negotiate with your provider to save you money on your bills.
Sometimes savings are one-time, but typically they occur over a more extended period (like 6-12 months). You can give Truebill guidance on if you are willing to lock into a contract for better savings (you don’t have to), but it can help you save more money.
People always ask if their service will be changed when Truebill negotiates with their provider. My answer is a resounding no. Truebill should not alter your service unless you ask them to. I have had zero issues on this front. There are a handful of stories floating around the internet of people who have had their service changed. However, this has not been my experience.
You may also be wondering what bills Truebill can negotiate. While there is a wide variety of bills, here are the most common types that Truebill negotiates:
- Cable Bills
- Internet Bills
- Phone Bills (Cell & Landline)
- Security Services (like ADT)
- Streaming Radio (like SiriusXM)
I have successfully used Truebill for nearly all of these categories (I haven’t yet tried a cell phone bill, but I plan to do so).
2. Outage Monitoring
Truebill also tracks service outages for things like your cable and internet. If there is a service outage, Truebill will negotiate a credit with your provider on your behalf.
Yes, that means if your service goes out and you don’t know about it, you can save money.
3. Subscription Monitoring
How many subscriptions do you pay for that you’re no longer using? I am guessing at least one. Companies have made it super easy to sign up for subscription services that you will never remember a few months down the road.
Truebill will track your subscription charges on any linked accounts and notify you of those subscriptions. Subscription monitoring can be a good little reminder of what you’re paying for so that you can cancel unused subscriptions (or let Truebill cancel them, which I’ll get to later).
I have not personally used their subscription monitoring, as I keep pretty close tabs on my subscriptions using my budgeting app, YNAB.
4. Electric Bill Savings
Truebill has partnered with Arcadia to help you save on your electric bill. Arcadia’s mission is twofold. First, they connect you to clean energy so that your electricity comes from clean energy sources (using renewable energy certificates). Second, Arcadia tracks your energy supplier options to see if there is a cheaper rate available for your electricity. Yes, Arcadia can switch you to a cheaper energy supplier with no interruption in service.
I have been using Arcadia for several years and am a big fan. I feel that I am doing some good for the environment by purchasing clean energy, and Arcadia has helped me save money with their Smart Rate service. You can check out my Arcadia Review to learn more.
While Truebill does partner with Arcadia, I find it easier to sign up with Arcadia directly (and you can get $10 off your next electric bill when you sign up)!
5. Overdraft & Late Fee Refund (Truebill Premium)
Finally, if you have found yourself in the unfortunate position of incurring an overdraft or late fee on your bank accounts, Truebill can submit a letter on your behalf to request a refund of these fees.
While I have not personally used this part of Truebill’s service, I would think you can likely do this part on your own by calling your bank directly.
Truebill Review: How Does Truebill Make Money?
I’ve now covered the five different ways Truebill can save you money. Naturally, the follow-up question is how much Truebill’s services cost to use.
The way Truebill makes money is that they get paid a 40% slice of what they save you. So, if they save you $100 over the next 12 months, for example, you will pay them $40 today.
If, however, Truebill is not successful in negotiating a bill, you will pay them nothing.
Also, Truebill only charges 40% of the first year of savings. So, for example, if they save you $10/month for two years ($240 in total), you’d only pay 40% on the first $120 saved.
Truebill also offers a premium service that provides some additional features. You can set your price for Truebill Premium, with the minimum being $3/month.
Truebill Review: Is Truebill Premium Worth it?
As part of this Truebill review, I also want to cover Truebill’s subscription service, Truebill Premium, briefly. Truebill Premium offers a few additional features, including:
- Automated Cancellation of Subscription Services and Bills
- Unlimited Budgeting & Budget Categories
- Full Credit Report & Monitoring
- Automatic Saving (i.e., sets aside a fixed amount of money)
- Overdraft and Late Fee Refunds
- Premium Support
- On-Demand Account Sync
Truebill Premium Alternatives
I do not think Truebill Premium is worth it. I believe each of these services has better alternatives. Here is what I would use instead of Truebill Premium:
- An Alternative to Cancelation Services: Cancel unused services yourself.
- An Alternative to the Budgeting Tools: Use a dedicated budgeting app like YNAB.
- An Alternative to Credit Report/Monitoring: Use Credit Karma – it’s free.
- An Alternative to Automated Saving – Set up automatic bank account transfers or use an app like Acorns.
- An Alternative to Overdraft & Late Fee Refunds – Try not to incur these fees at all, and if you do, call your bank on your own to get them waived.
- An Alternative to Premium Support – I have found the email support with Truebill to be pretty responsive even though I am not a premium member.
- An Alternative to On-Demand Account Sync – Unless you are using Truebill’s full suite of financial tools (budgeting, account overview, etc.), you don’t need this. Use Personal Capital instead – it’s free.
In my view, Truebill Premium offers services for which there are better alternatives (which are either free or better quality). For this reason, I don’t think you should bother paying for Truebill Premium.
Does Truebill Really Work? My Personal Experience with Truebill
Perhaps the most powerful thing I can share in this Truebill review is my own experience. In the span of a few weeks, Truebill had saved my family and me $885. This sounds ridiculous, I know. Let me share the details behind that number.
First, I started by submitting just one bill to Truebill, and it was for ADT. Within a couple of weeks, Truebill informed me that they had saved me $10/month for six months, or a total of $60. Awesome!
I had recently lowered my cable bill and cell phone bill on my own, so that was just about the only bill I had to submit.
But I thought that maybe if Truebill worked for me, it would work for others in my family too. So, I asked my parents to send me a few of their bills. Here’s how things worked out for them.
Outage Refund (Comcast) – $20 Savings (happened within 24 hours of signing up)
Satellite Radio Negotiation (SiriusXM) – $114 Savings ($9/month for 12 months)
Cable Negotiation (Comcast) – $399 Savings ($33/month for 12 months)
Cable Negotiation at 2nd Home (Mediacom) – $252 Savings ($21/month for 12 months)
Phone Service at 2nd Home (CenturyLink) – $40 Savings (one-time)
Now, of course, I had to pay Truebill for their slice of the pie, $354 in total. All said and done, though, after paying Truebill, my family and I were still ahead by $531.
In total, I spent maybe 30 minutes (maximum) submitting these bills. By my math, that means I earned over $1,000 an hour with Truebill. My family has some other bills to submit, and I am excited to submit those soon and see how the results turn out.
Truebill Review: What Don’t I Like about Truebill?
This Truebill review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t tell you what I don’t like about Truebill. I have two primary complaints about Truebill.
1. Truebill’s Fee
Naturally, it’s great to see the savings that Truebill can get from your providers, but Truebill does take a pretty big cut of those savings. While, of course, you could call these services on their own, it’s the price of using a bill negotiation service.
There are other bill negotiation services out there that take a lower % of the savings, but they aren’t as comprehensive as Truebill (I’ll get to that in a minute).
Lastly, you have to pay Truebill upfront while you realize savings over time. For example, on my ADT bill, they saved me $60 over six months. So, while I will save $10/month, I had to pay Truebill $24 today (40% of the savings). If you’re tight on cash, this may mean Truebill is not right for you, but the service pays for itself more than two times over if you’re willing to take the hit upfront.
2. You Could Do Better on Your Own
The second thing I don’t like about Truebill is that you may be able to save more money on your own. What I mean by this is I could have called ADT, Comcast, Mediacom, and SiriusXM on my own and tried to negotiate savings.
In this case, I would keep 100% of the savings for myself. The caveat, however, is that I would need to spend the time to call, and I don’t necessarily know the formula for getting savings. I am willing to bet it would have taken several hours of my time to call and try to negotiate these bills. To me, I am taking the easy path by having Truebill do it for me. In my view, the time I would have spent on the phone with the providers is worth more than the $354 I paid Truebill.
Additionally, Truebill may find you savings that you would never have gotten on your own. In particular, the outage credit I got is something I would never have received but for Truebill. If my internet goes out at 3 a.m., I am not going to know about it. But Truebill will, and they get me a credit for it. That alone makes the service worthwhile, in my opinion.
Finally, check out some other tips to cut your spending.
Truebill Review: Is the Truebill App Safe?
One of the most common questions is whether Truebill is safe.
From the standpoint of keeping your data safe, Truebill uses bank-grade 256-bit encryption to protect your data. Truebill also says they do not sell any of your data to 3rd parties, and they host all of their data on Amazon Web Services, which is used by the Department of Defense, among others.
Check out Truebill’s detailed security policy if you’re interested in learning more. I use Truebill myself, and I trust them with my financial data.
Some may also wonder if the accounts at the service providers Truebill is negotiating with are safe. I have had no problems with Truebill negotiating my bills. They have kept my accounts secure and not caused any service issues with my service providers.
Truebill Alternatives
As part of this Truebill review, I want to share a couple of alternatives to consider. Truebill is not the only game in town when it comes to bill negotiation services. Two popular options are Trim and Billshark.
Trim
Trim is the largest competitor to Truebill. This service can also help you negotiate lower bills, manage your subscriptions, etc.
While Trim does have a slightly lower fee (33% of savings), I have found that Truebill can cancel a wider variety of bills and offers a better overall interface.
You can read our full Trim review if you want to learn more.
Billshark
Billshark is another popular alternative to Truebill. They also charge a 40% fee on savings, so there are not many reasons to pick it over Truebill.
However, if you want to spread out payments to the bill negotiator, Billshark does let you do that at a slightly higher fee, so that’s something to consider. Supposedly, Truebill does have options to pay over an extended period, but I have not tried this option myself.
How Do I Signup with Truebill?
Signing up with Truebill is super easy. Download the app, connect your accounts, and then submit the bills you want them to negotiate. Truebill takes care of the rest.
Sometimes, Truebill may request additional information they need to negotiate a bill, but usually, all this takes is a quick email reply, and then they can get to work.
Truebill Review: Should You Give It a Try?
Wrapping up this Truebill review, I think you can tell that I am a big believer in this service. It is the single easiest way I have ever saved money, as Truebill has helped me save on services I am already paying for anyway.
I am happy to pay Truebill for saving me money, as it’s money I wouldn’t have otherwise saved. Additionally, I find there are zero downsides to trying the service. If Truebill doesn’t save you money, they don’t get paid. That said, the company touts an 85% success rate, so chances are they can save you at least something.
It takes mere minutes to get started with Truebill. Download Truebill today and see just how much you can save.
