By Jennifer Jolly| Special for USA TODAY
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ManyAmericansare struggling to save money for emergencies and retirement— and technology promises an answer via apps that get you cash back on your purchases.
But these come with questions about privacy and security, since they often entail giving a new company access to your emails and bank information.
I tried four of the most popular ones. Here's what I discovered and my advice for staying safe.
Paribus
The Paribus app helps you get money back on online purchases when prices drop at one of nearly 30 popular merchants including Nordstrom, Walmart, and Costco.
Download the free app (iOS, Desktop), connect it to your email, and Paribus scans your inbox for shopping receipts from the retailers it monitors. If it finds one, it files a digital claim on your behalf.
If itcan get money back, it refunds the money back to your credit card.It's free and requires zero effort beyond the initial sign-up and connecting your credit cardaccounts.
Paribus says it has more than 2.5 million users and has identified more than $10 million in potential savings for shoppers that otherwise could go unclaimed.
I’ve been using Paribus for six months. It’s found a total of just over $35 in refunds out of nearly two hundred items I’ve bought online. The main reason that number is so low for me is that I do most of my online shopping via Amazon, which Paribus no longer scans for price drops.
While $35 isn’t a tremendous amount, it’s still money I would not have otherwise, so I’m happy to keep Paribus connected to my email, scanning away in the background in the hope that one of these days it will hit a refund jackpot.
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Earny
Earny works similarly to Paribus, scanning your email for online shopping receipts. Italso tracks price protection from several credit cards, too. With price protection, your card issuer credits you with the difference in price if a purchase you bought on your card shows up at a lower price within a certain time frame, usually between 90 and 120 days.
If Earnyfinds a refund, ittakes 25% of that amount. For instance, if you pay $100 for a vacuum at Target, and Earny finds the same model for $80 at Costco, it sends an email on your behalf asking Target for a refund. If Target gives the refund, you get $15 back on your credit card and Earny takes $5 as a “success fee.”
I’ve used Earny for about two months, and so far it’s uncovered nearly $20 in refunds.
The biggest criticisms I’ve seen,as well as mentioned in a CNBCstory,is that some users don’t like that it sends emails as “you.”
Earny says it works "as your agent solely for the limited purpose of claiming on your behalf" and says it only receives a "copy of the emailed receipt from retailers, and does not delete or manage your inbox.”
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Slicing subscription costs
While Earny and Paribus get your refunds, the apps Billshark (free, iOS, Android, Desktop) and Trim (free, Desktop) promise to cut back on your subscription costs.
I signed up for both Billshark and Trim via desktop, where they let you log in with an email or social media account, and then connect to your email, credit cardsorbank accounts.
Trim opens to a dashboard page. To access your subscriptions,click the three little menu bars at the upper right-hand corner of the screen, tap “Subscriptions,” and they should all appear in a neat row.
I want to ditch Ancestry ($99 a year), eFax ($10 a year), and ZipRecruiter ($249 a year). Itap the option to “cancel this subscription,” then wait for it to send me a confirmation email that the job’s done.
Trims’ subscription-canceling service is free — and saves quite a bit of time versus having to do it all myself — not to mention that it only took a few seconds to root out subscriptions I didn’t even realize I had (when did I sign up for an eFax service?!).
When I head back to the dashboard, Trim also notifies me that it can save $50 on my monthly Comcast bill — which would be great since we just switched to Comcast last month and thought we had a great deal.
I gave Trim my Comcast information and received an email a few days later that it was not able to find a lower price. Trims’ Co-Founder and CEO Thomas Smyth told me that the company uses a combination of bots and people to snag a better price on common household services and that they take 25% of the annualized savings.
Billshark also negotiatesfor you,but uses a team of humans rather than bots.
“Our negotiations are 100% human-based,” says Billshark COO Brian Keaney.
His staff negotiates thousands of bills each and "as a result, they are hyper-aware of the products offered, as well as the competitive products," he says. When people do it themselves, "they sometimes can get frustrated/angry and have a counter-effect on the savings.”
When Billshark calls a company, they say they are calling on your behalf.Before making calls for me, they've contactedme to make sure that’s okay.
The company takes 40%of the savings for up to two years after they negotiate for you. If you continue to use the lower price service, they don’t continue to take a cut.
That sounds like a lot, but it’s my new favorite service, and money I’m glad to pay for an overall lower bill.
I put Billshark to work on my Comcast bill (mostly out of curiosity after Trim teased me with a better price) and AT&T wireless bill.
Within a few hours, Kristen Hipolito, one of Billshark’s negotiators, texted me with a few questions while she was on the phone with AT&T, to make sure she didn’t accidentally cancel any part of the services that I might need. Shespotted something listed as “TECH,” which is a monthly charge just in case you need to call tech support. I had no idea we were even signed up for that.
When she finished sniffing out a bunch of little fees that we don’t need, she had cut our family wireless bill by $62 a month, or $745 a year. Take out Billshark’s 40% fee ($298), and we still have an annual savings of $447! That’s nothing short of amazing given that my husband has spent no fewer than about ten hours on the phone with AT&T over the past few years — with results nowhere near Billshark’s.
Hipolito was not able to find a lower price deal on our Comcast bill, and she explained in detail why (because we just signed up). When she called to follow up with me about it, she told me they’re happy to negotiate just about any bill, including monthly gym membership.
Are these appssafe?
Giving companies access to your personal information always comes with some risk.
“I’m of two minds on this because some of these products are really good at finding what some folks would call ‘gray’ charges,” says Bob Sullivan, a privacy expert and author of books such asGotcha Capitalism and Stop Getting Ripped Off.
He says some refund apps have found crazy charges for people, like that they’re still paying for old AOL accounts.
On the other hand, Sullivan says not every company with access to your data might have your best interest in mind.
“There's a risk of what might any of these companies turn around and do with your data in the future," he says. "Maybe today they promise they’ll do ‘X.’ but tomorrow they do ‘Y.’”
I’m always nervous linking credit cards and bank info to apps. All four companies did a good job reassuring me that they have several layers of bank-level security, encryption, and keep tight control of how each app uses that information.
Handing over bank and credit card data to any company means there’s now one more place that hackers could potentially strike and skim your private information.
But given the security measures in place, you’re no more likely to regret using these services than you would be entering your credit card number to order a pizza online. Still, breaches happen, so be sure to read through the privacy and security FAQ’s on each site to make sure you know what you’re getting into.
If you’re particularly concerned about handing over access to your email account, set up a different account strictly for shopping sites and receipts. That way, the apps are only linked to your "shopping" email account, and everything else is kept separate.
Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY's digital video show TECH NOW. E-mail her at jj@techish.com. Follow her on Twitter @JenniferJolly.
