Truebill Review: App That Can Save You Money by Lowering Your Bills ($1000 a Year?)

• Download the Truebill app for Android devices here.
• Download the Truebill app for iOS devices here.

How it Works?

Now you know basically what Truebill is, we’re going to go into a little more detail about what it is and what it can do for you.

Here’s how to get started:

• Step 1: The first step is your create your TB account and get the app, which we linked to above.
• Step 2: Next, connect your bank accounts. Don’t worry, it’s secure, but more on that later.
• Step 3: Once you’ve done that, you get access to a number of features that can help you financially.

You can see your cash, credit, and investment balances at-a-glance, keep track of upcoming bills, stay on target for your monthly spending goals and more!

Here’s what Truebill can do for you:

Cancels unwanted subscriptions

One of the most beneficial features of TB is that it can monitor and cancel unwanted subscriptions for you.

This could be very beneficial, because reports show that forgotten subscriptions can cost you up to $1,100 a year!

With so many subscription based services that we all pay for, it is so easy to forget about the ones that you don’t use anymore. Between Netflix, Hulu, Sling TV, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Audible, cable, gym memberships and so many other monthly subscriptions that take money automatically from your bank account, it is easy to forget about stuff you no longer use or need. Money comes out of your account automatically so you may not even notice it sometimes.

TB can find those forgotten subscriptions and even help you to cancel them.

By the way, there is a similar app called Paribus that you may also be interested in. Paribus gets you money back automatically from stores, like Amazon, that may owe you money. Read my review of Paribus to learn more.

Gives you reports

With reports, you can see exactly where your money is going. TB will categorize your expenses, so you’ll know where you’re spending your money. And, it will keep track of your largest and most frequent expenses.

Lowers your bills

It can also lower your bills, like your cell phone, cable, security, and other bills.

TB will negotiate the lowest possible rate for you. It can even get you refunds when your internet goes down. This is another really useful feature of TB, as it can really help you to lower your monthly expenses.

How Does Truebill Negotiate Bills?

TB will negotiate the best rate possible for you, like we said above.

But, how exactly does TB negotiate your bills for you?

Here’s a quick overview of how TB can lower your bills:

Step 1: Connect your bill

The first step is to connect your bill. You can do this either by logging in, or by taking a photo. Once you’ve done that, TB’s negotiators will work to find hidden discounts and promo rates that are available to you.

Step 2: TB negotiates your bill

TB’s team will work on negotiating your bill. It won’t downgrade or remove your services. Instead, it lowers your bill by negotiating a better rate, or by getting one-time credits applied to your account.

The app works with many of the country’s largest providers to negotiate bills, such as:

• AT&T
• Verizon Wireless
• DIRECTV
• Sprint Wireless
• Charter Communications/Spectrum

Step 3: Save money

Once TB completes the negotiation, you will get an email that tells you your bill has changed and how much money you’ll save.

Now, it’s important to note that you have to split the savings with TB. It takes 40% of your savings. So, if you save $100, for example, TB will take $40.

If the app can’t negotiate any savings for you, then you don’t have to pay anything.

Gives you Smart Savings Goals

With TB’s Smart Savings Goals, you can reach your savings goals.

It will automatically set aside funds for your savings goals, while ensuring that you still have access to the money you need.

Other Features

Above, we’ve listed some of TB’s main features, but that’s not all it has to offer.

The TB app also offers the following features:

• An automatic bill tracker that will monitor for new charges and price increases.
• It will detect account fees, and penalties and let you to request refunds directly from the app.
• Also, it monitors and alerts you about interest charges
• It will notify you of recurring transactions and changes.
• A Budget Tracker that will track your month to month recurring spending to help you save money and budget.
• Gets you credits for service outages that you may not know about.
• Get bank fees refunded automatically.

How Much Does Truebill Cost?

The app is free to use.

However, TB does offer several optional services through Truebill Premium that do cost money.

It charges at least $3 a month for Premium plans, which includes additional services, such as Cancellations Concierge, and Premium chat.

The bill negotiation service it offers also costs money. When it negotiates your bills for you, you have to pay 40% of your savings to TB.

Also, it can sometimes get you refunds for internet outages, which will show up as a credit on your statement. When TB successfully gets you an outage refund, it charges you 40% of the credit amount.

Is Truebill Legit?

Now you know what Truebill is and how it works, you’re probably wondering, is it actually legit?

First of all, you are having to hand over some of your data. For example, you have to link your bank accounts, and in the case of bill negotiations, link your bills as well.

So, it’s understandable to be concerned about safety.

Fortunately, TB takes steps to keep your important data secure.

It follows the most up-to-date industry protocols for storing your data, including bank-level 256-bit encryption.

It also uses a company called Plaid to securely connect to more than 15,000 financial institutions across the U.S.

So, although you need to enter your online banking credentials during the registration process, these credentials don’t touch TB’s servers, and they are not stored by TB in anyway.

Instead, your credentials are sent through Plaid to your bank or credit card provider. Then, Plaid sends back an encrypted token to TB, which provides read-only access to your transaction data.

Also, it cannot move money or make any changes to your account.

If you want to revoke TB’s read-only access token, you can, at any time, by unlinking your account.

TB hosts its servers securely using Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is a secure online data storage and hosting service that’s used by the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Your data on its services isn’t accessed or used by any other party, and it’s not sold either. Basically, TB only uses your data for the purposes of providing its services to you.

Now that you know how it uses, stores, and protects your information, let’s take a look at what customers have to say about the app.

Trustpilot

On Trustpilot, Truebill has 4.5 stars, which means that it’s rated “Excellent.”

There are only currently 12 reviews of the app on there though.

One reviewer says:

• “Great service! App is awesome and helps me stay on track financially.”

So, it’s well-reviewed on Trustpilot.

Google Play Store

On the Google Play Store, the app has more than 2,000 reviews. And, it’s well-reviewed too, with a rating of just over 4 stars.

Here’s what people have to say about Truebill on the Google Play Store:

• “Love this app! It provides so much different yet useful information that helps you save money and keep track of what you spend your money on. It has helped me out immensely, I am really glad I found it.”
• “Great app. Really showed me what I’m spending money on and how to save money where I can.”
• “This app is phenomenal!. I have so many little Subscriptions that i forgot about. Truebill uncovered them and makes it so easy to cancel. I have already saved a $1000!”

The App Store

On the App Store, Truebill has more than 9,000 reviews. It’s well-reviewed on there, with a rating of 4.6 stars.

Here’s what one user had to say about the app:

• “I am so impressed with this company and look forward to them saving me additional money in the future!”

Better Business Bureau

While Truebill is well-reviewed by 1000s of customers on the Google Play Store, and the App Store, and has a small number of good reviews on Trustpilot, on the BBB, it’s another story.

The site is not BBB accredited.

It has an F rating with the BBB, which isn’t good.

And, customers on the BBB have rated it 1 star – albeit there are only four customer reviews on there.

Again, that’s not great.

Finally, there have been 20 complaints closed in the last 3 years, and 19 complaints closed in the last 12 months.

So, it seems like the company is getting a lot of complaints.

The Negative

Like we said above, TB is pretty well-reviewed on app stores and on Trustpilot, but on BBB, it’s definitely not.

Let’s take a look at some of the negative things that customers have to say about the app and some of the cons that I noticed during my own research.

Some people have had TB increase their bills

During my research, I saw a few people complain that TB didn’t actually lower their bills. Instead, they were charged a higher rate, and TB still charged them for saving money anyway:

One user says in a review on the BBB:

• “Truebill said they would negotiate my bill and make it cheaper. After they told me it was a success of $300 a year saved, they charged me 40% of that, which is $120. I called AT&T and Truebill had switched me to a plan that was actually $30 more. Had I not caught that I would have been paying $300 more to AT&T, and would have been out another $120 from Truebill. Please do not trust this company.”

Another user on the Google Play Store says something similar happened to them when they allowed Truebill to negotiate their internet bill.

TB told them that they were able to lower their bill, and would charge for 40% of the savings. But, according to the reviewer, this did not happen:

• “Well, I just checked my statements for my internet bills and in fact did not receive a lower rate, but an increase! Truebill did not alert me of this and took my money! Their customer support is not quick and I am expected to wait at least a day to receive an initial response to the issue. Beware, just because the app says it monitors your bills for you does not mean you should “set it and forget it”. So far, this app has become another bill I have to monitor.”

Now, that might not be a common occurrence, but it does show that you shouldn’t necessarily depend on an app to sort out your bills for you. You still need to double check your accounts to ensure that you’ve saved money.

It charges you when it saves you money on your bills

One of the biggest issues with TB is that it takes money from you, in order to save you money. Which is understandable. After all. the company has to make money somehow.

When it lowers your bill, it charges you 40% of the savings.

So, you get 60% of those savings.

This is sort of counterproductive.

If you want to save money, having to spend it is not ideal.

However, it could be argued that since TB is saving you money, it is providing you with a service and it needs to be paid for that service.

And, technically, you wouldn’t have those savings in the first place, if it wasn’t for TB.

Saying that there’s no reason why you can’t negotiate bills yourself with your service providers, and keep all of the profits.

The other issue with this 40% charge is that TB doesn’t just charge you for a months’ saving at a time. If it’s a yearly subscription or contract, you will have to pay for 40% of the full year’s saving upfront.

That can financially strain some people, especially those who spend a similar amount to what they earn, people who live paycheck to paycheck, and those who don’t have much in the way of savings.

One user on the BBB says that they wanted TB to help them negotiate their AT&T bill.

TB told this reviewer that they were able to negotiate with AT&T and save the person $180 for 12 months, on a monthly contract.

TB said this person’s previous bill amount was $99, and their new bill amount would be $84. It also said their bill would be $15 a month, over 12 months, and during the next year, they’d save $180.

Now, the problem is that TB then billed the person 40% of the full 12 months savings, so $72, rather than billing the person for what they saved per month.

The reviewer says this wasn’t ideal for their financial situation:

• “Mind you, I have all of a couple of dollars in my account after my rent is withdrawn, they take their 72$ and my alternator just went bad in my car. I was livid. I replied back to them, how in the world can you charge me 72$ for services I haven’t even benefited from yet??”

They said that TB told them that they were able to get a savings deal negotiated for them that is good for 12 months, hence having to pay for a year’s worth of savings.

This is definitely something to be aware of.

To be fair, TB is very upfront about the fact that it does take 40% of the savings.

But, people may not realize that TB can take their cut of a whole year’s or more’s worth of savings at once.

We’d say that only agree to bill negotiation services from TB if you have the means to pay TB’s fee upfront.

It takes money even when it doesn’t provide a service

Another common complaint I saw about TB was that they took money, regardless of whether or not they actually got a bill lower.

One customer on BBB said in a complaint:

“I contacted Truebill and TOLD them that I wanted to CANCEL my service with them. I AM the one that contacted AT&T/DirectTV and asked for the promotions to lower my monthly bill which at the time was over $275.00 a month for the past 4 months. I CANCELLED ALL of my premium channels, I ASKED them what promotions did they have and now the bill is $112.00 for the month of August. Truebill had NOTHING to do with that I had called AT&T BEFORE I signed up, not afterwards.”

According to this reviewer, TB still charged them for its services.

I saw other complaints like this on the BBB, and in reviews on the Google Play Store.

One customer, who complained to the BBB, says:

• “I canceled services with the company and they still went though and negotiated my bill and charged me even though I canceled weeks before the negotiation took place”

A customer on the Google Play Store says:

• “Cancelled the app. Upon cancellation they called my phone company without my authorization and then charged me & took my money for something I didn’t ask them to do.”

Now, if TB is taking money when it isn’t providing a service, as these reviewers claim, then this isn’t great.

Overall Verdict

Overall, TB is very well-reviewed online. That isn’t to say, however, that it’s not without its problems. Above, we discussed these, and for the most part, the issues with TB seem to be with its bill negotiation service.

Charging 40% isn’t ideal for everyone. Of course, if you think of it in a long-term sense, then it is saving you money, so that upfront fee is worth it.

For others though, it’s costly, and when you could negotiate your bills yourself for free, is it actually worth it?

For the most part, TB is highly praised by customers.

And, it could definitely save you lots of money, and make it easier to handle your finances.

The fact that it tracks subscriptions is awesome too.

Overall, we’d say that TB is a good app, just make sure to double check your accounts if TB negotiates a bill to make sure that you are actually saving money.

If you do that, then the app could work great for you.

So, keep what we said in mind and give the app a try!

Have you ever used Truebill? If you have, how would you review TruBill? Did it help you save money? Let us know in the comments section!