Negotiate retention discounts on bills by phone
Real-world thread: kudos assembled a voice agent that phones a service provider for Someone, works through IVR menus, waits on hold, and asks for a retention discount. By default it negotiates within the existing plan and only changes plans if Someone says they're open to it. The co-founder saved $840 a year on T-Mobile after allowing plan changes, and an Xfinity example cut $276 a year.
- Agent or tool
- Custom agent
- Topic
- Productivity
- Reported on
- Hacker News
- Added
- 2026-10-15
Why it matters
Small, repetitive tasks eat more of the week than anyone likes to admit. Cases like this show an agent taking a chore off someone's plate end to end, not just suggesting what to do. It is one of 196 sightings filed under Productivity on Agent Sightings (number 4 by interest), and one of 182 involving Custom agent.
How you could try it
Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into your own agent or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.
Help me negotiate retention discounts on bills by phone. Break it into steps, show your work, and wait for confirmation before anything irreversible, paid, or outbound.
Tip: Start small: run it once on a low-stakes example, read what the agent did, and only then let it run on real work.
Source
Read the original first-hand account on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131955. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.