We got a vendor to cut our bill in half. It took me 10 minutes.

Why I never used to bother

One of the things about dealing with vendors who charge you lots of money and like to try and upcharge you is that arguing with them on price — or pointing out where they've overcharged you — is something I used to just not do. It was simply a very tedious exercise of navigating their bureaucracy and pouring a lot of time and effort into collecting documents, crafting emails, and going back and forth.

Most small business owners are in the same boat. You know you're being overcharged, but the time it would take to fight it isn't worth the savings. So you just pay it.

What I do now

Claude loves tedium. It'll make arguments all day long and try to reduce prices for me without me needing to spend a lot of time and effort doing all the data gathering, crafting the email, or negotiations myself.

I can literally have Claude scan TextForge for receipts, attach them to invoices, build the case, and manage the entire reply chain. I just review the emails it produces, edit them to match the tone, facts, and desired outcomes of the situation, and it takes care of the rest.

The $800 dispute

We got a vendor to cut our bill in half — about $800 a year — on a single dispute. My total time investment was about 10 minutes, spread over the course of a week. Claude handled the back-and-forth.

Before TextForge, that same dispute would have taken hours: gathering receipts, writing emails, tracking the reply chain, escalating to a manager. I just wouldn't have bothered.

That's the real change. It's not about one $800 savings. Before, most billing disputes weren't worth the effort. Now they all are, because Claude does the tedious parts and I just review what it sends.

How it works