Hiatus - Subscriptions & Bills

I am not one to give reviews of apps (good or bad) but today I am giving a one star review because this company will not refund my money. In late January I downloaded Hiatus to check it out and once I found that in order to benefit from it, I had to sign up for the service. I decided not to do it right away but left the app installed just in case I wanted to in the future. The next morning I found that I had been charged $10 for Hiatus Premium even though I never signed up for it. When I looked in the FAQs I found that apparently this is an issue but all I had to do was request for the money to be refunded to me. I sent an email to have my money refunded and to ensure that I was not signed up for the premium service. The first reply I received was a link to fill out a form to request a refund and another email address to cancel the subscription I did not sign up for. I promptly filled out the form and sent that email. That was on January 28. After claiming they did not receive an email from me, my premium service was “cancelled” on February 13. I have gone back and forth with the customer service members over and over again and the only response I have gotten is to fill out the refund request form I have already filled out twice. It is February 19 and after sending an email stating that I have already filled out the needed form, I was sent the link to the form AGAIN. This is horrible customer service. At this point I am not even worried about the money but it is the principle of the matter. This whole thing has me very frustrated and even if Hiatus is able to help me save money I definitely won’t be using this app in the future.

After downloading Hiatus I didn’t hear anything for a while. Then I got a message that they saved me $30 a month on my AT&T bill - $360 a year. And they were taking half of it now ($180). That was cool - but I didn’t realize they took it immediately. I went to look at my phone bill when it updated and it was $20 more than it had been. After messaging them they said that sometimes the companies aren’t honest and they end up charging more. After waiting several days I was informed that they made my Apple Watch a separate line which is what caused the rate increase. One of the people from Hiatus told me this was being taken care of. I asked, and there is no $30 a month savings now and I’m not eligible for any other savings at this time. Oh, and my $180 would take 7-10 days to be refunded. So, I’m down $180 for 7-10 more days, my cell phone bill won’t be fixed until April, so I’m down $20 for another month, and, the icing on the cake was that when I contacted AT&T to verify that they’d corrected my account they actually hadn’t and I had to wait on hold for several minutes to correct their mistake. I immediately deleted my account. I wouldn’t trust this app, but if you do, make sure to keep an eye on everything. My accounts will eventually even put but to have something like this happen, and only be fixed because I was watching like a hawk is unforgivable. They get a free $180 loan from me for about a month. Can I charge interest?

First, yes, negotiating your various bills and subscription rates down is something really anyone can/could do for oneself & all the personal financial advice people will tell you to do so. But it is somewhat easier said than done and I really hate trying to navigate customer service phone bank hell. I also work long hours, at night, and am unable to make personal calls at work so finding time to do this for myself is also a pain. So anyhow, I downloaded the app right before I went to sleep and within a few hours I woke up to 3 notifications that they’d found savings of just under $1000 for me over the course of a year. So, yeah, super!! Ummm, yes, they make money by charging you 50% of the amount saved - it’s disclosed right there in black & white, plain English, so I don’t know how people are surprised or somehow don’t understand how it works. Of course I do wish it were a smaller percentage cut but I’m still saving a decent amount over time. Also, I’ve verified savings with all 3 accounts (AT&T UVerse, Verizon, SiriusXM). Thanks y’all!