Telecom bills all love to resemble the appearance of accounting within the company’s ‘language’.
People that wont care to have this will honestly be the type that dont keep an eye on their bills. Sometimes all of us just dont care to put in the effort to see if we we ripped off for $5 or so. That doesn’t mean we don’t completely loathe the company intentionally neglecting us.

I look forward to buying this service simply for the peace of mind it offers. I can see the sense of security, which can allow european-like benefits on our cells. I wouldnt mind being able to buy a soda with my cell, as long as I could look at my bill without frustration.
I think Pepe is on to something fascinating.

Sit tight! Plans for a US launch very soon!
And we will be adding new features for many of those non telecom services you mentioned.

Stay tuned.

Hugo Meana / CEO / doctorSIM.com

They only operate in Spain, which is luckily where I’ve been living for a couple of years, and I can only say it is amazing, and works like a charm. Tells you where your operator is screwing up, how you can automatically save a bunch of euros, and let you know how to make those changes.

This is the type of service that the Vodafone’s and Orange’s SHOULD offer AUTOMATICALLY. The reason a company like this exists is because people have assumed and accepted they are getting ripped off by operators and have little or nothing to do to solve the situation.

Europe is a purely GSM market, so not all of the US features that myvalidas has would apply here, but the quality of the site and especially the recommendations has surely gotten me to signup for their payment module.

I think of it as having a buttler for my telecom bill, knowing I will only pay for what i use, and it will always be adjusted to my spending pattern. Pity this isn’t available yet for cable, internet access, gas and electricity!

Talk about a revenue model that pumps back savings obtained by the abussive billing methods the operators impose on most customers.

Are you the president of Validas?

Mr. Pepe wants a retraction of my quip above before he will consider using my analyst services. Do you think he might misunderstand the ways of the social media sphere? What are the odds that an apology posted to this thread will close the deal?

One thing that some people may be overlooking is the suggestions it provides on the analysis. These are probably the most helpful aspect, but I imagine Tad’s comment may be true – after one adjustment, do you really nmeed to go through the service?

Sine the site’s still in beta, there’s no terms of service available. If they can keep and aggregate the call and billing detail of a statistically significant portion of the market (large number but not impossible), they have a lot of opportunities in the data syndication and analysis space, as well as the ability to make recommendations on “who has the best plan for X”.

If I were doing something like this, I’d be pushing the “fix you pl;an to save money” while amassing all the data I could. Detailed data like that is gold in these opaque industries.

If they can integrate straight into my provider’s site, that’d be great, though I doubt T-Mobile has a billing web service/API.

But this certainly ranks on my list of “services I would look at once, think ‘oh, that’s almost useful,’ and then proceed to never pay for.”

“Keywords: patented process”

Actually, it says “patent pending” which only means they have submitted something to the PTO. This could be something as simple as a design patent or provisional patent all the way up to a full blown patent application. But just submitting a patent doesn’t mean you will get the patent or that the patent will stay in its current form (especially if it’s a business methods patent).

A common marketing technique though is to submit a design patent and then put patent pending on your product, design patents are easy to get but because they are based on the exact look and feel of your product they are also easy to get around. A quick search of the Public Pair system (USPTO) reveals no published applications so the patent application is less than a year and a half old, I think we probably have a while till they have anything in their patent portfolio.

Now, about the story, does anyone think it’s sad that phone bills are so complicated people can’t even understand them? That is a sad state of affairs right there…-Metagg

The recent SCOTUS decisions in May/June changed the scape of patents, making it far easier to challenge patents and more difficult to earn patents.

Long story short: if it’s something obvious, like everything in that video, than it’s not “innovative” and the court is required by SCOTUS precedent to strike down the patent (assuming Validas does indeed have a patent).

Not to mention that the two decisions were fairly biased against patents on tangible “processes”.

Setting up a “new math way” to view old math … won’t work unless it’s integrated automatically into the billing process. I have doubts that cell companies who are reluctant to remove fraudulent ringtone billings are about to help us find cheaper services.

Tad – very perceptive.

I can’t wait to test this product. I wanted one like this for a long time.

There are a couple of challenges with analytics tools like this. As others have mentioned, the potential or actual savings will need to justify the time investment to set up and use the system.

Additionally, the majority of any potential savings will be identified on the first analysis. Once changes are made–a different service plan for better rates, or whatever else the system is capable of recommending–the remaining potential savings discovered through ongoing use are much less significant.

I see a bunch of people pretending like it is only stupid people that would benefit from this service, but you are wrong. If this works as it should (assuming it is free), then it will help you recognize where your money is going.

Maybe you are paying for a plan far above what you need. You could save a lot of money right there. Maybe by paying an extra $10 a month to change your nights and weekends to one hour earlier, you can then drop your monthly bill by 20%. This is the kind of stuff that could be easy to see and save a lot of money.

Of course I don’t know if this service is smart enough to do all that, but it should, otherwise it truly is a waste of time. I think it will though.

What is sad is that cell phone companies have been screwing with their own customers for so long that a service like this even needs to exist, but I believe it does.

Great idea – I hope it works!