Ghosts of Subscriptions Past: Trim Cleans Up Your Charges Via Text

Ghosts of Subscriptions Past: Trim Cleans Up Your Charges Via Text

In 2016, we are reticent to put a ring it. Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO commitments all come

with a caveat — we can leave at the end of the month. The problem is it’s easy to lose track of the commitments we make, and the monthly fees we incur to as serial subscriber to all sorts of platforms.

The subscriptions quietly snowball, unbenounced to the subscriber. Trim performs an audit of your credit card, texts you a list of your subscriptions, and lets you cancel whichever you choose via text. There’s no app. There are no downloads. There’s only a text.

Daniel Petkevich, co-founder of Trim, remembers showing Trim to his Dad. More accurately, he remembers his Dad saying he wouldn’t use Trim because he didn’t have any unnecessary subscriptions. Minutes later, Daniel’s Dad was on the phone trying to dig up details on an Experian membership he didn’t know he had. That’s a microcosm of what Trim aims to do – watch out for the consumer.

“We’re moving to a world where more companies have a subscription based model, we want to be customers’ watchdog for that.” says Trim co-founder Daniel Petkevich. If I may abuse that watchdog analogy, watchdogs are easy to command. When you send a text to Trim, it responds by executing your command. The Trim team chose SMS as a medium for their platform because of its simplicity.

“We asked ‘Hey, what would be the easiest way for our customers to interact with our software to cancel their subscriptions?’ I think text is the easiest way to do it. You don’t have to download an app, you don’t have to create an account on the app, you don’t have to use the app. You just get a text and reply ‘cancel this, cancel that,’”said Daniel.

Trim’s on-board process is pretty quick. You enter your name, email, and phone number, and then check for a text (sent via Twilio) with a code you’ll use to authenticate your identity. After that, select your bank and login using your online banking platform’s credentials and you’re done.

Daniel wants to make Trim smarter. It should stay dead simple to use, but continue getting more contextually intelligent. For example, instead of waiting for you to do an audit of your subscriptions and execute cancellations, Trim might proactively look at your car loan and recommend a more competitive rate.

Consider Trim a Sheriff in the Wild West of on-demand, subscription-based businesses. That market is only growing, so Trim plans on getting more intelligent, artificially intelligent that is.
Learn more about Trim right here.