Anyone have any experience with them? Trying to find out how much they charge, and how long you have to keep paying. I get that they supposedly reduce your bills, but I just wonder how much it costs. I mean, once my bills are reduced, why would I keep paying you? Searched for a thread on this but couldn't find one.
My personal opinion, on any of these companies, based on a couple of folks I know that have used these types of companies, is that they simply do the same thing one could do on their own. They may be better at it due to experience. What I would do, would be to pick one of these places I owe and try to negotiate with them myself and see what I could accomplish before paying someone to do it to see how successful I could be.
I agree. I would read some of Ramit Sethi's books about negotiating bills and general personal finance. He gives out actual scripts you can use to lower all sorts of credit card, bank, insurance and utility bills. Here are some examples: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/tip-5-optimize-your-cellphone-bill/ http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/how-to-negotiate/ http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/lower-credit-card-apr/ http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/tip-13-negotiate-your-car-insurance/
You could wait until stuff gets written off and resold for pennies on the dollar, then settle at 25%. But start out offering 15% then raise it a percentage point each time they call, then get nervous near the end of the month. Prior to that you might just try to get a HELOC or cheap installment loan, pay it all off in one fell swoop then just pare down your monthly living expenses to handle that one payment. None of these are optimal, but based on the premise that debt negotiators' only real value is consolidating debts into one payment, with negligible cost savings.
The problem with this method is that it could more negatively impact one's credit rating. Not sure how/if the self negotiating would get reported, but if on simply doesn't pay off debt, it will be reported.
You recommend all that to get a DIRECTV bill lowered? My interest was in not having to haggle with people to get your bills reduced, which I hate doing. It's more an issue of laziness and not wanting to deal with people I suppose.
This is my experience with haggling. I don't remember when it was but a while back i told my wife i wanted to leave t-mobile. So i told her no matter what they say when you call and cancel do not accept it. So our contract was coming up and she called them to make sure nothing needed to be done when the contract ended. They transferred her to the "loyalty department" and they ended up giving us 2 brand new G2 phones and lowered our bill. I told my friend who was with Sprint. He tried to talk to the loyalty department over there and they wouldn't let him. I once called comcast to ask what they could do to keep my service because I was thinking about letting them go and they upgraded my tier and lowered my bill. I think that a company like bill advisor knows how to negotiate with different companies and all levels management and such. From what I understand they charge an upfront fee and then a monthly fee like $15/month. I am interested to see what they could do for me I think my cell phone bill and cable bills could both be reworked but things like that create anxiety and i think that's part of what you pay for.
It's also a pain in the ass/time to get to the right department... So they might be worth it, I'm not familiar w/ them so I would think once they lower dtv/phone etc, you wouldn't need them till next year The only thing that sucks is having more of your private information out there, but it's everywhere as it is. On a side note, I do use energy ogre, they've been great at $10 a month switching my electricity when the contract is up. Where I'm at in RR it's deregulated so they switch your provider every 6 months for you, been worth it so far, paying ridiculously low for the last year. I've saved time and money, I mean they've kept my bill at 5-6.9 KW. Went from paying crazy amount in summers to more than 1/2 off. I was handling the switching myself but it becomes a pain and it's easier not dealing with it. Being they keep up w/ the switching there's no overpaying for a one month lapse when you don't have a contract and they have saved me enough in one summer month to pay them the whole year.
