

Ask HN: Service that negotiates and switches between companies on your behalf. - 1ts

My phone contract period has expired. I have a feeling that if I ring my phone provider up and let slip that I'm thinking of moving to another provider they'll offer me a deal. I don't want to do this myself. Is there a service which would do this for me, or could it viably be created? If not, why?<p>Critique the viability of this idea.
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answerly
It seems like a valuable service and has a built in revenue model in that
users could pay a fee based on the actual savings that they realize. There are
two questions/issues that come to mind:

1) How wold the negotiations be facilitated? My guess is that this would have
to be actual human-to-human contact, which seems expensive. One way to keep
the costs down may be to develop a filtering system that only accepts users
with bills that have a high likelihood of being eligible for some discount.
That way your resources would only be spent on the users most likely to
generate revenue for you.

2) Do service providers like cell phone companies discuss account details with
a third party who is not the account holder? It seems like the type of thing
that a big company wouldn't want to allow for any number of reasons (i.e.
privacy concerns, preventing an "agent" from negotiating on behalf of the
user).

Some aspects of your idea are topically similar to BillShrink.com although
they aren't doing any negotiating on behalf of individual users. They are
doing quite well.

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1ts
Users would have to share their authentication details with the negotiator,
which would be a security risk but would mean the negotiator would be
indistinguishable from the user.

The service providers certainly wouldn't like it but I'm not sure there's much
they can do.

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ScottWhigham
Totally - and not just little details like passwords but big details like
multiple security question answers and social security numbers (when
negotiating bigger ticket items).

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tonystubblebine
I like the idea. It's a non-stop negotiating service. It could be outsourced.
And, unlike some outsourced personal assistants, it could be done passively by
monitoring your credit card statements.

I think the basic economics for a specialized negotiating call center work out
easily with people making $10/hour. One of the big costs of negotiating with
providers is waiting on hold. But your call center software can recognize when
an operator comes on the line and automatically route the call to a currently
available negotiating specialist.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I like the idea as well but I can imagine that $10/hr employees are not
trained/educated/{whatever adjective you pick} enough to do the negotiations.
The proof is there: they are working for $10/hr. If they had quality skills
like that, they wouldn't be making $10/hr in a call center. This means they
would require extensive training (which would up the overall cost,
particularly the upfront cost to get started).

Now as to the idea, I think it falls into the, "I'd use that" category from a
user perspective and would have a B2C model; in my view of it, you would sell
directly to consumers or partner with companies to sell at a discount to their
members/userbase.

* How do you bill? Do you bill differently for monthly bills (i.e. utilities, car loans) vs. one-time expenses (i.e. jewelry purchase)?

* Is this an unbiased service or will your company step in at "just the right time" and say, "You can save $100 on car insurance right now with our preferred provider!"

* What is the average amount to be negotiated? If it is $100/month bill, then you should be able to negotiate down to $85-$89.99/month. That means you save the customer, on average, $12/month in that scenario. How do you convince me, the customer, that your price is worth my saving $12 a month?

* How much did it cost you, the entrepreneur, to save your customer that money? I'd assume it cost a minimum of $7 in raw time on the phone/logging the call and then another $10-$100 in training/software/"misc" costs depending on what they were negotiating.

Anyway, just random thoughts. This is one of those, "Cool idea but I can't
figure out how to actually make money with it" ideas to me.

~~~
tonystubblebine
My experience negotiating repeating bills is that it's not rocket science. I
renegotiated with Server Beach by sending a single email ("Hey, can you lower
my server prices to match what you're advertising on your website?"). I
renegotiated with my credit card by calling and saying ("Hey, can you lower my
interest rate?"). The advanced credit card negotiation skill is to say "That's
it? I need you to do more."

These are all things that can be done for $10/hour. The trickier negotiations
are things like what you would do with Comcast, where there are deals to be
had, but they often involve slight changes to your service. That either
requires some judgment or someone who can take notes and get confirmation from
you.

~~~
devicenull
I think most people would be amazed at what you can get by paying the
slightest attention to what a company offers, and asking nicely.

It shouldn't take that much time... every few months just make a list of what
you pay per month to each service, and go and check their websites for any
cheaper prices or deals. If there are any, call up and ask NICELY to have them
lower your rate. I'd bet most are going to be willing to do that.

