Time to Read: ~2 minWe first heard about billcutterz.com recently on NBC Nightly News. In short, they have a team of savings experts that call service providers and get you lower rates on your bills. I submitted a request for both my bill with AT&T (cell phones) and Time Warner (high-speed Internet). Sure, I could have called both companies myself, but that would have taken far longer than the ten minutes it took for me to upload my most recent bill for both companies, along with a few personal details they’d need to speak on my behalf.
The communication with Billcutterz was quick and professional. It turns out my corporate discount with AT&T is quite preferable, and they were unable to do anything more in reducing that bill. Time Warner (now Spectrum), however, was a different story. I received this delightful email just a few days later:
I have some great news for you today! I was able to save you $15.80 per month for the next 12 months on your Time Warner Cable bill, and you will now get 100mbps instead of the current 15mbps. When your discount is about to expire, I will be contacting you again to extend the savings.
Phenomenal! I wouldn’t have known that any of this was an option, and Netflix and Hulu have been flaking out lately. I wondered if that was due to the lower speeds. BillCutterz splits the savings with me 50/50 for a year, so that meant I’d need to pay them $15.80 x 6 months, or $94.80. I chose to pay this to them all at once and enjoyed an extra 10% off that price. Definitely worth it for me with the time savings, and worth it for them, since they’re pros at negotiating with these companies.
Lower Bill, New Hardware
Spectrum sent me a new cable modem, yet after plugging it in I wasn’t getting the advertised throughput. It took a few back-and-forth phone calls with Spectrum and a tech visit to adjust the power levels, and I was in business! I had an older router sitting between the modem and my computers. I turned to another of my favorite services, thewirecutter.com, to research what the latest recommendations were for wireless routers. I chose the TP-Link Archer C7 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (AC1750). After installing that, my speed test told the amazing story. For a monthly discount of 22%, I was getting 117 Mbps vs. 17 Mbps. No more stuttering on my streaming video consumption, either. I went from broadband slower than 62% of the US to broadband faster than 87% of the US (credit: speedtest.net).
If you have any utility bills you’d like to try to reduce, I highly recommend a service like billcutterz.com. Just the savings for the one bill that they were able to negotiate made the whole process worthwhile!