An AI that calls to negotiate your bills
call4me is an AI that calls to negotiate your bills. ask your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude or Codex) to call your hospital, internet, TV or phone company, and call4me gets through the phone tree and the hold, asks for the discounts, promotions and payment plans they offer, and rings your phone when they want the account holder on the line. calls cost $0.25/min from pickup and half that on hold, and unanswered calls are free.
on our recorded calls, the savings came from asking for specific things, not from haggling. Spectrum's retention team cut a call4me user's internet from $85 to $55 a month for a year. Advocate Health quoted a 50% discount for uninsured patients. and two of the three hospital billing offices we called said they don't settle balances.
How the call works
give it what the company will ask for: the account or guarantor number and the name on the account, and for a hospital bill, your household size and income if you want it to ask about financial assistance. then say what it may accept: a promotion under a price you set, an interest-free payment plan, or nothing until you decide.
most companies only change a bill for the account holder. Verizon, DIRECTV and Spectrum all said so on our calls. when they ask for you, ask your assistant to connect you "as soon as a person picks up": your phone rings from your call4me number, you press 1 to join, and the AI caller goes quiet. press * or hang up to hand the call back to it.
name the reason instead of asking for a person. "a billing question. My bill is too high." got AT&T's voice system to a representative in 1 minute 59 seconds, and asking for a "representative" with no reason got us hung up on.
Real calls call4me made
recorded calls, each with what was asked, what happened and a transcript:
- call spectrum retention to lower an internet bill (Spectrum): saying 'cancel' and then 'disconnect' reached a customer solutions rep after about 5 minutes on hold. he wouldn't change the account for an assistant, so the caller patched in the user, who got $55 a month for a year instead of $85. that part of the call is not published.
How long the billing lines took to reach a person
Time is minutes:seconds from the start of the published recording to the first live person, so it includes the phone menu and the queue.
| Company | Time to a person | What got us through |
|---|---|---|
| Cleveland Clinic | 4:57 | Staying on the line after the billing menu |
| Advocate Health | 5:18 | The billing menus, then hold |
| HCA Florida Northside Hospital | 2:41 | Asking the AI assistant to speak with someone about billing and financial assistance |
| AT&T | 1:59 | "A billing question. My bill is too high.", then "I don't have it" |
| Xfinity | 6:29 | Saying "billing" when the voice assistant asked what the call was about |
| Spectrum | 7:49 | "Cancel my account", then "disconnect" |
every company we timed, with the transcript line behind each time, is on customer service hold times by company.
The recordings behind this page
- How to negotiate a hospital bill: we called Cleveland Clinic, Advocate Health and HCA Florida Northside. Advocate quoted 50% off for uninsured patients and HCA a 20% prompt-pay discount offered by email in the first 72 hours. asked about settling a balance after insurance, Cleveland Clinic said "that's going to be the payment plan" and Advocate said "we don't do any settlement options."
- How to lower a Spectrum bill: saying "cancel my account," then "disconnect," reached Spectrum's retention team, and the call took a call4me user's internet bill from $85 a month to $55 a month for a year, with no contract.
- How to lower a Verizon bill: on our own family account, a live agent said switching 3 lines to Unlimited Welcome would take the bill from $219.08 to $170.58 a month, surcharges and taxes included.
- How to lower an AT&T bill: "a billing question. My bill is too high." reached a representative 1 minute 59 seconds in, who described the "converged discount" for bundling internet and wireless and $5 off per line on four lines.
- How to lower an Xfinity bill: a billing representative said new promotions come from the billing department, gave 500 Mbps promotions of $65, $70 and $75 as examples depending on area and term, and a $10 AutoPay and paperless discount.
- How to lower a DIRECTV bill: a representative said there is no retention option in the phone menu: ask customer service or billing to speak with retention, and the account holder has to make the call.
everything else the AI call assistant does on a call, from voices to the free US number, is on its own page. if you keep putting calls off because they make you anxious, our guide to phone anxiety covers which calls are worth practicing and which are fine to hand off.
How to start
- load credits, from $10.00. no account needed first; sign in afterwards with the email you paid with.
- paste the setup prompt below into your assistant. the install page has the steps for Claude Code, Codex, Claude Desktop, claude.ai, ChatGPT and other apps.
- ask for the call in plain words, and it asks you for anything missing before it dials.