Please can you advise if you would employ this service?

[makingitin2012]

Please could you advise if you would use this service, or at least view it as feasible that others may use?
I propose to set up a business aimed at helping to cut family household expenditure. Primarily, I will do this by offering to cut existing household utility bills, and insurance bills, grocery shopping etc.
I would pitch to each customer that I guarantee to be able to reduce their monthly bills, and if I don't, then there will be no fee to pay at all.
If however I do save the customer, say £50 per month, then my only fee would be the first months saving, i.e. if I saved them £50 a month then I would charge them £50, but they would still make an overall saving of £550 throughout the year.
The way I would do this would be to independantly use the price comparison web sites, and other independant sites.

I am well aware that any person may use such sites for free. However, I believe that there is a 'gap' of customer who may not have internet access, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, simply not have the time to regularly compare such bills.

So, if I offered to assess your bills for free, and if you knew that if I couldn't make a saving there would be no charge, or that if I did make a saving I would charge only the equivalent of the first monthly fee that I saved you, would you use it? If it helps, could you bear in mind that I am more than happy to sell to customers, and have no hesitation in selling a product to them.

I would also pitch that by using this service, as opposed to a national 'payperclick' site direct, then they would be supporting a local business, and that my business also donates 10% of all profits to a local Childrens Hospital.
I genuinely feel this is a fair deal, I hope you do too! The basis of this idea is that I am excellent at sourcing good deals on the net and have become rather known for it among friends, who all ask for my help when purchasing items / services etc on line.
I also feel that the service does do 'good' in that yes it charges, but only if it actually saves a customer (ie a family household) money in the first place, and then does plough 10% of the profit back into the family community.

Your thoughts are much appreciated!

Thank you.

Yes, I would use a service like this. Very short of time here and aware that we are probably overpaying on a lot of services - would probably be happy to have an annual review of them all.

One thing I'd say is that you'd need to have a straight forward way of presenting the options to people - quite often it won't just be the price that's different but the service, so people have to work out what suits them.

What I'd like is for someone to actually look at our usage patterns (e.g. on phone calls / electric / gas etc.) and see what offer would work best for us.

A couple of things you'd have to work out how to deal with

• trust. If I was sending you details of our utility accounts, insurance details etc. I'd need to feel very convinced about your trustworthiness and your processes (that information I sent you wouldn't be left in insecure locations, would all be held and deleted securely etc.)

• ease of use. If I had to spend too much time giving you information about my bills / usage etc., I'd start thinking I might as well do the whole thing myself. Got to be really easy. And ideally, you'd make the process of signing up for the new service and cancelling the old one really easy too - a bit like a financial advisor does - just sending me the forms with a stamped addressed envelope for me to sign and post.

Hope you do work all these things out, as I'd like something to make my life easier :)

Yes, agree with redridingwolf's points - a lot of people just haven't got the time/energy/inclination to search for better deals so I think using your expertise would be very helpful. However it would have to be quick and easy to give you the information you require.

Sorry, but I wouldn't use this service, for the following reasons:

1. I would have to give you all of my personal details.

2. when you use price comparision sites, I always find you never get the prices quoted. I was recently quoted £XX for my car insurance, but they added on no claims protection and other stuff, my actual final figure was higher.

3. the insurance companies won't actually talk to you about my insurance, so if all you are doing is going on a site to find the prices, but then I have to call myself and go through all the details (again), I might as well do it myself.

4. how you are going to ensure 'like for like' insurance. Although insurance X may be cheaper, insurance Y may have extra benefits which I could loose out. What would happen if I need to put in a claim and I'm not covered. Are you responsible? If I still have to do the donkey work myself, (e.g. read the small print) I might as well do it from the beginning.

5. in terms of grocery shopping, how would you work this out, as people buy different products each month and supermarkets have different offers each week. Also, some people like different brands which aren't comparable. For example, I like Lidl's own brand branflakes but not the Weetabix.

6. I would be mighty upset if you convinced me to switch my utilities and then within a couple of weeks, it went up in price. Obviously, I know that there are no gurantee's, but if you are bringing to people attention that you can save them money and don't, they are going to be really upset.

Sorry to sound like the bearer of bad news. I do like the idea in principal, but in reality, I'm not sure how viable it is. I thought that insurance brokers had to be registered?

Maybe you could start with doing some indepth reviews for friends and family (for free) and see how you get on, first of all initially and then maybe review in a couple of months time to check that the savings are 'real'. You could then get your clients to write you letters of recommendation and you could use these to promote your business.

Sorry, forgot to add, good luck.

Just because I do think I would use this service, it doesn't mean that others wont!!!!

What chanie and rrw wrote. We were looking for a new electricity provider recently and we didn't want the absolute cheapest offer because it didn't fulfil our needs. It was important to us that the electricity was renewable, that it was run by a reputable company, and that it had a pretty short cancellation notice. The cheapest power on offer was from some nasty Russian nuclear power station or similar and bound to a 2-year contract, so would have been very unsuitable for us. Could you factor conditions like that into your searches? And TBH, we didn't save a huge deal of money by changing - we simply had a better 'quality' of electricity. I think the kind of people who are going to be attracted by your offers will have very few environmental or social scruples if money is the only criterion.

No. I wouldn't.

For all the reasons that Channie gave and also because I would assume that it would take me almost as long to give you all this information as it would to do the searching myself.

I would also suspect that you might be getting kickbacks.

I am not sure that many people would be happy to give you loads of their personal details, AND their address, at the same time as telling you that they are too busy to do this themselves (which is pretty much the same as saying "here's my address, we are both out at work all day")

I always see articles at this time of year 'save £2000 in 2012' then see its all about switching credit cards to ones with lower rates (I always pay them off so no use to me ) or changing your phone/electricity provider (which I would nt be happy to do). What happens of you give advice that will save money, but they don't take your advice?

I would think you might get a lot of ultra - keen money savers who know they are probably already getting the best deal but will use you just to double check, for free. And you won't get paid, or will only get 10 or something cos they have already found the best deals.

Thank you all for the feedback, a lot of very good points and lot to digest! I will come back and address the points, thank you.
I am determined to finally get back into the workplace but am determined to set up on my own and am growing increasingly frustrated at my seemingly inability to identify exactly what I can offer to clients / a business. My core skills are that I am an excellent organiser, administator, communicator and seller. I have a couple of English degrees and the time and motivation to set up a business from scratch, but cannot believe my inability to identify what to do! I previously had the opinion that an intelligent person with a laptop, capital and determination should be able to build for themselves a feasible project on line - how presumptious I was!
I would be grateful if anyone has suggestions for me - and I can take criticism too!!
Thank you.

Good luck! I admire your drive.

Why not look on us and Australian sites offering similar services? They are generaly way ahead of us here in the uk and you may see some good ideas to 'borrow'.

Why not start a blog? I wanted to set a site to give advice to women switching from full time work to full time mummery or vice versa. Never got off my fat bum to do it though!

I love the idea of starting my own business, but I just don't know what to do.

You sound a bit like me in that your best assest is your ability is your 'people' skills so I think you need to look at selling a service rather than a product.

As someone who has barely started doing anything, all I can suggest is that you try and do something. Anything. Although I don't think your original idea would work (but then you never know....), I do think there could be some merit in it, just not in the way you suggested it. However, I do think you should give a few free 'finance reviews' to friends and family as you may find it works really well, or it may lead onto something that does.

Why not offer your services as a personal organiser? Someone who helps another person run their life. Pays bills (or suggests changes), organises family appointments, can look after home while the client is away, be in for the washing machine repairman, book routine vet/doctor appointments, do ad-hoc emergency school pick-ups, make sure window cleaner gets paid etc. If I was rich - I'd pay an organiser to run my life!

Hi
I agree that I would be better selling a service, rather than a product. That said, if I was given a product to sell, I'm confident that I could do it but because of the people skills (I spent most of my working life in sales / marketing). And I absolutely agree, the original idea is obviously flawed, but really, I do feel that there is something there - beneath all the flaws!
With all respect, whilst I like the idea of offering a service as a personal organiser, I just don't 'feel' that the service as a business is what I would be looking to do. I suspect a personal organiser would be a glorified au pair, which I wouldn't be looking to do!
Ideally I would like to offer a service online, and am not afraid to put into it 24/7 to make it work - I'm just cringing at obviously coming across as a feeble individual whom lacks direction!

How about high end freelance pa? Freelance property management for people with 2nd homes? Relocation management? (arranging people's property searches / moving plans?)

chanie44 has covered everything I was about to write.

A wider scope i.e. ad hoc PA that you can hire for a half day or so - now that's something I might use if I was made aware of someone who's reliable/trustworthy! Someone to run around and do errands for me that don't require much faff on my part. I'm sure these services already exist, I think I've heard of them before. Google is your friend.

Anyway, good luck!

Life coach?