Autopay app finds, tracks, cancels unwanted subscriptions
PHOENIX (KSAZ) - Set it and forget -- that's the way a lot of us buy our favorite products or pay our bills these days.
Just sign up online for autopay. The money comes right out of your account -- you don't have to do a thing. Turns out that modern convenience could be costing you lots of extra money.
Chocolate, vanilla.. Sandy Giacalone has a counter full of fitness shakes.
"I love this product!" she said.
But it's too much of a good thing.
"There it sits. Bag after bag," said Giacalone.
The shakes just show up at her home once a month.
"I just can't use it as soon as I need it." she said.
She's spending money on stuff she doesn't need because cancelling is a hassle.
"It's too much trouble. And I don't want to talk to people. This is why I do everything online," she said.
So instead of making that uncomfortable call, she logged on to Truebill, an app that finds, tracks and cancels your unwanted subscriptions.
"I've saved $250-some dollars a month. Almost $3,000 a year. And there's probably more to come," said Giacalone.
Yahya Mokhtarzada thinks a lot of us could save money, so he created Truebill. He says his average user has 11 products on auto payment.
"Immediately, the feedback we got that really struck us was just how many people had subscriptions they were paying for, but either didn't know about, had forgotten about, or simply didn't want anymore and weren't ready to go through the headache of actually getting on the phone and cancelling."
Putting off the task means you're losing money.
Steve McKean is the CEO of a company that partners with Truebill, called BillShark.
"We negotiate with your providers to get you savings," he said.
McKean says autopay makes it easy for companies to get rate hikes past you.
"Probably their favorite method is to slowly creep up their price. A dollar here, a dollar there, $2 here and suddenly you've gone from a $70 a month bill to a $90 a month bill."
By his calculations, that allows the companies to make billions of extra dollars.
"They do about $400 billion a year in revenue and we estimate that of that revenue, $50 to $60 billion is generated from that pricing."
With some online help, Giacalone is cancelling some auto-payments, but that doesn't mean she's giving up on shakes.
"I love the product. I'll still buy it."
A study by BillShark found that 20 percent of us will negotiate with autopay companies to get a lower rate. 20 percent will switch to another provider and a whopping 60 percent of us will do nothing.