I just come across Nodebt.com as it claims it will pay you for paying your bills on time. Sound too good to be true?
The fact is the firm is a debt consolidation service, so you need to be its debt consolidation customer to be eligible for the rebate, and you need to be in pretty bad financial shape to need a debt consolidation service in the first place. So, for most people like you and me who never miss a bill, we cannot count on the first to send us free checks just for paying bills on time.
Anyway, this offer still interests me because I want to know how the service can afford to pay for customers' paying habits. I found the following statement at the web site:
"Some creditors give back anywhere from 5% to 10% of the money we send them. It’s called a "Fair Share contribution" and creditors voluntarily give it for the services we provide their clients. We place the money they send back to us into a client trust account, and you may become eligible to receive half of it by simply making your payments on time and in full."
Ok, fair share contribution is the holy grail! With a few googling, I come across this BankRate article. Fair share contribution seems to be a fairly common practice for many creditors, but creditors are trying to reduce the percentages now. Nodebt.com is apparently offering a free lunch, but it may not be a big deal after some time: after all, customers only get half of the fair share contribution, and if the prevailing percentage goes to 3%, customers can only get a paltry 1.5% anyway.