BillShrink helps you save money on cell phones, and now your credit card too

September 18, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

BillShrink, a company that seeks to help people save money on everyday services, now offers information on one of the biggest money drains around — your credit card.

The Menlo Park, Calif. startup began by providing advice about which cell phone plan best fits your needs (less useful for a schmuck like me who’s locked into an AT&T iPhone deal). Adding advice about which credit card to use is an obvious next step.

It’s hard to judge the accuracy of BillShrink’s advice after a quick test run, but I can say that the process is fast and easy, and could potentially save me hundreds of dollars. I was also more willing to use BillShrink’s service because it only asked me for basic data — the closest thing to sensitive information that I had to provide was a rough estimate of my credit score.

Basically, you just answer a few questions like what card you use, how much money you normally spend a month and what kinds of expenses you use your card for. Then BillShrink provides you with a list of cards that you should consider switching to. In my case, BillShrink says an American Express card could earn me an additional $624 over three years and, of course, provides a handy link to apply for the card. The list is fairly customizable, too — you can change the time period that you’re interested in (i.e., whether you want to save the most money over one year or five years), or the kinds of rewards that you’re interested in. The company says there are more than 200 major credit cards in its database now, and it can also notify users when particularly suitable cards are added.

The Bessemer Venture Partners-backed company launched in April, and it’s moving in the right direction. It will be interesting to see what other information it adds in the coming months — saving hundreds of dollars on a credit card is pretty nice, but saving hundreds of dollars added up over several spending areas could be insanely useful.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Is it a slow news today? Very surprised to see how much coverage this is getting --- doesn't seem much different than IndexCreditCards.com and other similar card comparison sites, except maybe with a slicker interface.
  • I agree that this isn't the biggest news ever, but I think it's a smart addition to Billshrink, which is an interesting startup that we hadn't covered until now.
  • Amazing Site I like it. It Was Quite Interesting NiceWork I appreciate the information you provided Excellent post. Keep it up!
    Good day!
  • It's a great new concept and a useful one since I don't go anywhere without my cellphones.
  • dbb10001
    Anthony, BillShrink makes its money from commissions earned and paid out by cell phone companies for having switched consumers onto other wireless plans. How are we supposed to trust a company that works for the cell providers rather than for the customer? Additionally, BillShrink requires the login and password information for the customer's online wireless account which is a flagrant violation of many of the cell providers' terms of use, particularly Verizon.

    In contrast, the online cell bill reduction company that I work for, Validas, offers a far more comprehensive and effective way to save through our website at http://www.fixmycellbill.com. Our modifications to your plan are uniquely structured around your individual usage patterns; Validas works for you rather than the cell companies. Additionally, Validas tells you exactly how much money our changes to your plan would save you before you are committed to paying a cent. Compare your projected savings to the cost of the Validas service, and then only pay if Validas can save you more than our fees cost. Our cell bill audits start at five bucks, and the average consumer saves $450 annually with our bill modifications. Check out Validas on Good Morning America at http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6887412&....

    Good luck to everyone reading as we all try to save some extra cash to make it through the recession.

    Dylan
  • Frank Lee
    I call BS on BillShrink!

    They do not include prepaid phone plans!

    Prepaid is the only way to fly, with no bills or overages or other funky stuff.

    I use Straight Talk. It’s unlimited for $45 a month, prepaid (so no bills) and on Verizon’s network… the best.

    Unlimited talk and texts, plus 30MB of data, which is about 350 web pages. Fantastic deal.

    It's available at http://www.StraightTalk.com