What is Bill Negotiation?
by Mark Chen | Updated 12/8/23
Bill negotiation is the act of lowering the amount owed for a product or service by getting the creditor/service provider to reduce the outstanding balance or lower the monthly rate.
Some of the most commonly negotiated bills are phone, cable, internet, credit cards and medical debt.
Since 2017, there’s been a huge trend of consumers signing up for bill negotiation services. These companies will negotiate your bills for you on your behalf. Most of these companies charge a fee that is a percentage of savings they get you.
What is BillSmart?
BillSmart is a negotiation service for phone and cable bills. We save you money by lowering your monthly bill and getting you one-time credits on your next statement.
Our fee is 25% of the savings of the first year. If we don’t save you money, the negotiation is free.
The average client saves $325 and our success rate is 83%. If you’d like us to negotiate your bill and save you money, click the button below.
Bill Negotiation Services Comparison
There’s a lot of lower your bill websites but we’re going to focus on bill negotiation companies that lower your phone and cable bills.
We think these are the most important things to focus on:
- Average Savings
- Fees
- Customer Reviews
Bill Negotiation Average Savings
BillSmart saves its customers $354 on average. Our success rate is 83%.
The savings we get you depends on your bill. We’ve included a chart below of the average savings we’re able to get clients by monthly bill amount.
Monthly Bill Amount | Average Savings |
$0-$50 | $86 |
$51-$100 | $190 |
$101-$150 | $317 |
$151-$200 | $425 |
$200+ | $671 |
BillShark claims to save customers $300-$500 on average. They claim to have a 90% success rate.
Billfixers claims to save customers an average of $300 per year on your monthly bills. They claim to lower 95% of the bills they get.
One reason that BillSmart’s success rate is lower is because they help clients who are past due with their bills which other companies don’t.
We believe that if even if you’ve been struggling lately due to an illness or a job loss, you need more, not less help.
A special thing about BillSmart is that they use their AI to decide when to renegotiate your bill.
Because they negotiate thousands of bills a week, they know when there’s a promotion that’s available for you to take advantage of and they lock in those savings for you automatically.
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Bill Negotiation Service Fees
BillSmart’s fee is 25% of the savings of the first year. They’re more than happy to move or split the fee for the savings.
Billfixer’s fee is 50% of the first year of savings. They split the savings on a monthly basis although you can pay upfront.
Billshark’s fee is 40% of the savings, capped at 24 months. To create a payment plan, you need to pay a $9 convenience fee.
Here’s how much you’ll pay if your bill with the different companies if your bill gets lowered $20 permanently
Company | Fee |
Billfixers | $120 |
BillShark | $192 |
BillSmart | $60 |
We didn’t think it was fair for us to get savings that happen a year after the negotiation.
With Billshark it actually takes over 9 months for you to actually start saving money if they’re able to lower your bill for over a year.
We also thought that taking 50% of the savings was too high.
As a small business, we need to charge a fee for our service but our philosophy is that it’s just good business for the customer, not the negotiation company to get the lion’s share of the savings.
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Billshark Reviews
BillShark is likely the biggest company in the bill negotiation space and was featured on Shark Tank and is backed by Mark Cuban.
Unfortunately, if you look at their reviews on the Better Business Bureau, there are some troubling comments from customers.
One client in November 2019 said “I hired Billshark to reduce my bills and they did so successfully. They then sent me an invoice, which I paid. They even sent me an email confirming payment. However, I just checked my credit report and they have dinged my credit every month since June 2017.”
While BillShark acknowledged the error and tried to fix the situation, getting a lower credit score for a couple years while trying to save money really sucks.
We’ve found that for Billshark, if you don’t pay what they claim you owe, your bill will be sent to a 3rd party collections agency. They’ll also report your delinquency to the credit bureaus which will negatively impact your credit score.
They’ll give you multiple notifications before they take these severe actions but if you don’t agree with the savings they claim to have gotten you, you could be in for a serious headache.
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Billfixers Reviews
Billfixers has some negative reviews but we’ve found on a whole that they’ve been more customer-centric compared to BillShark.
We found one instance of a customer dispute with Billfixers where the customer was unhappy with the delay in the negotiation and the savings.
Billfixers response was “We genuinely never want to charge for something that didn’t actually happen or wasn’t actually our doing, so we were hopeful we would still get the opportunity to resolve this properly. In the meantime, we do not send late bills to collections, and unpaid invoices with Billfixers will never affect a customer’s credit score. We try to be better than the service providers that we help our customers fight.”
BillSmart Reviews
At BillSmart, we strive every day to serve our customers well and to get them the most savings on their bills. We’re good now and we’ll continue to get better and better.
Here’s some quotes of what our customers have said about us
“BillSmart literally cut my AT&T bill in half. Instead of paying $150, I’m paying $75 a month now.”
- Kelsie, St. Paul
“Signup took less than 2 minutes. After uploading my Wave bill, I saved $691 a day later.”
- Christina, Sacramento
“BillSmart did a great job on my Centurylink bill. They’re going to lower my DirecTV bill next!”
- Randy, Orlando
Summary
BillSmart is the best negotiation service in America.
BillSmart gets the highest savings for its customers and its fees are 50% lower than its competitors.
Unlike other bill negotiation companies, BillSmart uses AI to make sure you’re always getting the lowest rate. Join our thousands of happy customers by clicking the button below.