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The Clark Howard Podcast
05.20.26 Rules Of Travel: Rental Cars 101 & A Deal Destination
00:29:13
Clark’s 5 Timely Car Rental Rules & What Domestic Destination Is a Deal Right Now?
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- [00:01]
A
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B
To have you here on the Clark Howard show, where our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. All right, if you hate travel and when I talk about travel, answer questions about travel, etc. You might want to skip today's episode because with Memorial Day weekend upon us, I've got important info for you about traveling right now. And first, I'm going to give you my rental cars 101 and later, a domestic destination that's been crazy expensive. That's going to be potentially a deal this summer. I'll share it with you. And isn't that typical of somebody with a podcast or YouTube show to say, hey, if I'm talking about these topics, just go away. You're not going to want to hear or no. We have enormous interest in the travel stuff because a lot of what we talk about are the travel gotchas that can happen even to you if you don't travel frequently. And renting a rental car should not be rocket science. But that's what it's become with gotcha after gotcha after gotcha. And there are a lot of people the only time you rent a car is maybe for a summer trip. So if you are an infrequent renter, you need to hear this stuff that I'm going to share with you. So I've talked for years about the games rental car companies play holding you responsible for damage to a car, even if that damage happened way before you had the car. So if you never heard me say this, or if you've heard me and you ignored it, your phone is your friend when you rent a car. And when you get to that car before you ever leave the rental plaza or garage, you take your phone and you video the outside of that vehicle thoroughly. Because if there's a dent on there, even if they've already collected from four other people for that dent, they're going to collect from you too. If you haven't shot that video of that rental car when you Return the rental car, you shoot the same video again. Because what's going to matter later is before and after and what is later. So usually you're going to hear from the rental car agency in two, three weeks if they think you damage the vehicle. But it could be longer. Which is why I keep those videos for a couple of months. And then no hassle, no ugly demand for money from a rental car agency. At that point, I feel safe to erase it. You can't prevent every eventuality in life, but odds are it's coming within a month. But I keep them a couple of months. Very, very important. Second, before you ever get to the rental car counter, check with your own automobile insurer to see how and if they cover you for car rental damage. Most do. They may cap it at a certain dollar threshold, often $75,000 for damage to a vehicle. Because there are vehicles that cost more than that. Some will exclude what they consider to be luxury brands from being covered by your own automobile insurance. And then a credit card can be your real friend when you rent a car. If you rent cars frequently, I want you to have a credit card that provides primary coverage, which means for damage to the rental vehicle, you don't involve your own automobile insurance, you only involve the credit card. We have a simple list@clark.com of credit cards that provide primary coverage. You rent infrequently, you're not going to want to go get a new card you have to pay an annual fee for usually. But a lot of other cards without an annual fee will provide what's known as secondary coverage. The holes in your own automobile insurance that you would have to pay for are then covered by the credit card. So secondary coverage is inferior, but it is good to have that too for the out of pockets. Third thing, had a lot of questions about American Express. American Express provides either secondary or no depending on the card you have for rental cars. American Express has decided this is an add on you have to buy. And even the American Express platinum card that charges an annual fee of 900 bucks does not cover you. For temporary use of a rental car as primary coverage, you have to buy it at a cost of 20 to $25 per rental. If American Express is what you use, pay for the premium car rental coverage. I said it. I really said that. Okay. If you're traveling overseas, your own automobile insurance may not cover you, depending on the country you're going to. You want to know that before you go? Next thing, A lot of the credit cards that cover you here also cover you Outside the United States. Know. Before you go, one last thing to say about this, Krista, before we go on to questions. Interior damage, Something we never used to hear. Started hearing probably three years ago from people. Car rental companies are now charging renters for damage inside a vehicle. Got in a vehicle recently that was renting in Burbank, California, and there was a cigarette burn hole in the passenger seat, front passenger seat. I went right back to the counter and I said, do I need another car or will you provide documentation that I didn't cause the cigarette hole? And she said, we don't do documentation. I'm giving you another car. How about that?
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C
Wow.
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B
But who knows how many people in a row they had charged for that cigarette hole.
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C
Wow.
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B
In the fabric of the seat. So first of all, you're not even
- [07:26]
C
supposed to be smoking in the car, I'm sure.
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B
And then, oh, they're all non smoking. But oh my God. I've gotten in a lot of rental cars that, that definitely have that smell that somebody smoked in them. I know there are times when you hear me talk about something like this that you think, is everybody out to rip everybody else off? No.
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C
Yes.
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B
Oh, no, I don't think everybody's out. Just kidding. I don't think everybody's up to no good.
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C
I know. And make this job will make you paranoid though.
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B
And the car rental industry has been one that has been difficult to deal with. It's now the whole industry is basically controlled by three owners, even though there are a lot of different names of car rental companies. And it's become a bit of a misadventure for renters. So I just want you to know up front how to protect yourself.
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C
Okay. Rachel in Oklahoma says Clark, you don't stink, but you certainly haven't bragged on your dog's namesake enough when it comes to rental vehicles. My daughter and I are traveling to Kentucky for a national archery tournament and I of course shopped around for a rental car, checking multiple sites. Turo, Costco Travel. And Costco Travel was the best economic, most economical by far for this trip. It even beat Turo, which is my favorite way to book a vehicle for vacation. Another thing I've not heard you share is how you can spend less by adjusting your pickup and drop off times whenever possible. My travel plans changed and I was able to cancel my rental reservation. They can't be modified on Costco Travel and rebooked, saving $55 by returning the vehicle a few hours earlier. So just a reminder about Costco Travel as a membership perk you must log in to see the prices and a shout out to play around with the P pickup and drop off times since it could be triggering an extra day's fee. Thanks for all you do.
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B
Okay I love this and I do rent now. I'd say probably three out of every four car rentals I do. I find by far the best deal on Costco Travel. It's fantastic. Your existing Costco membership sign in@costco.com also works@costco travel.com and shop the cars. The other thing with Costco Travel rental car companies usually charge a junk fee for a second driver. Costco Travel gets that waived almost always so that second driver in the vehicle can drive the car at no additional cost.
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C
Tom in Texas says this is an anti Clark stinks from listening to Clark for the past few years I've been booking hotel rooms as fully refundable non prepay as Clark instructs. Usually there was no big difference when I checked closer to my stay, but not this time. I had reserved a room at a downtown Chicago hotel for a one night layover stay. The cheapest I could find six months out was $333. I just checked the area again one month before my stay and found a similar hotel for 197. Clark saved me $136 on a one night stay. I watch your YouTube videos every week and the time spent doing so pays off. Thanks so much.
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B
Thank you for that and that's so nice to hear that feedback. And yes, I always reshop my hotels, my flights and my car rentals and you'd be amazed how often closer to travel airline flights are gone up in price so I'm not rebooking them. But car rentals and hotels have dropped significantly in price.
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C
You know what just happened to me? I have a big trip coming up and I was rechecking just the other day again my hotel prices and stuff and actually the prices have gone way up. So I'm feeling great about the fact that I booked when I did. Myra in New Jersey Sometimes it happens though that way where you're like woo, I got a good deal. Myra in New Jersey says Clark. What do you think about travel house sitting as well as platforms to find these opportunities and how as I as a traveler should or shouldn't trust a stranger to stay in my home plus care for my pet. It sounds like a great way to cut costs. Yet I'm leery about the unknowns.
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B
And you should be so my wife and I had a vacation home that we put on A service where it meant we could stay free at other people's homes and they could stay free at ours. And we had some very good experiences. And then we had two different incidents where people left our house a mess and we left the platform at that point. It is hard because do you think
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C
honestly though, you have two dogs. Lane loves those dogs so much. I know you do too, but she would.
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B
House sitting. Yeah.
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C
Can you imagine if.
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B
No, she wouldn't do that.
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C
No way.
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B
But. But the house exchange, right? Yeah, kind of thing. And so there are people who have been on these platforms for years and years and say why don't you talk about blah, blah, blah platform And I'm not comfortable talking about the platforms for this because people's experiences are so variable. So if you have a friend who's been doing it, really loves it, this is one Myra. I think you need to take word of mouth rather than have a recommendation from me because I don't have a recommendation I feel comfortable giving. At one time on clark.com we had some house exchange services listed and we pulled that down because of the complaints we were hearing from people who use those. So if we don't feel we can with confidence recommend something and we may have thought we could, we will pull it down or not put it up in the first place if we're not really sure. So thank you for that and I appreciate the questions about travel and. All right, here's the.
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C
Oh, there are more.
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B
Well, that's what I was going to say. Here's the truth. You know, this is a holiday oriented kickoff to summer travel related hour. We could do travel questions for the next four hours. We get so many. And so again, if you're somebody you like, I don't get this travel thing. Yeah, everybody's got to do what they enjoy, right? Coming up ahead, I'm going to talk about a destination that has not been enjoyable for people's wallets. That may be an opportunity to save money this summer.
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D
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- [15:47]
B
a bit of a tough time. Bookings are soft on mid price and lower end hotels. Bookings are strong as they've ever been on really high end properties and I talked about that months ago about what was going on in the hotel business. But there's a market that used to be the bargain destination and it got ahead of itself and as they say, got over its skis, which I was talking with somebody the other day, I don't know if that expression got over their skis is a snow ski term or a water ski term, but it just means they got ahead of themselves. And this is Las Vegas. Las Vegas Casino Hotels. Las Vegas as an entertainment destination really got into thinking they could charge every possible fee and raise prices on every last thing and that people would keep coming. Well now Las Vegas tourism is in a world of hurt and we're moving into summer, which is the really soft season for Las Vegas because it's hot. I remember when many years ago when we would go out west for trips, we would fly into and out of Vegas in the summer because it was so much cheaper than other places we could fly to out west. And that hadn't been true recently, but is more so now. Even as airfares have escalated a lot this year over last year there have been more bargains for Vegas and now the hotels at various price points, especially when there's not a convention in town, the hotels are really looking for customers. So this could Be a time that if you went to Vegas last time, you were like, I'm never going there again. That was the most expensive trip I've ever taken this year could have a different story. I mean, you gotta, you gotta shop it and look for those soft dates. So with Vegas properties, again, because of the convention pattern, you can pull up a calendar at various properties and they'll show you the nightly rate for that property. So you can look at a calendar over, if you've got flexibility, you look over multiple months and you see, oh man, they're giving away the rooms for that time period. Now, I will caution something that I talked about a year ago, when the travel writer for the Wall Street Journal went to Vegas and stayed at a different property each night. And one of the properties she stayed at was $9 and it wasn't a dump. But by the time she paid all the junk fees that were added on, if my memory serves me right, the $9 rate went to 71. But today, $71 all in for a night at a hotel that's decent is not a bad rate anymore because the average hotel room rate around the country now averages. I think it's 161 a night with all the junk fees added. So just to give you an idea what we're talking about here, so use the calendar as your friend, use the softness of the travel market to Las Vegas to your advantage, and then be careful about all the extras. But you know, the most important thing, what do I not know anything about? That's part of going to Las Vegas gambling. I don't gamble. It's not my thing. So for me, that's, that's not something that could lead to a bottomless pit. And by the way, that's one other potential factor affecting Vegas is online gambling on phone gambling. And the Native American casinos that are available so, so widespread around the United States has taken away some of the specialness of going to Vegas. If you are into that gambling thing again, something I don't understand, I'm still upset about you making me gamble with
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C
that machine 20 years ago.
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B
least it was called the Tabasco machine. I will remember that probably till my dying breath that I lost 20 of your dollars in that machine. And I was in such a bad MO after playing that machine for you. How was that fun for you to have me do it for you when I was on it?
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C
I don't know, I just thought it'd be fun. I just had a feeling because I. It's a long story of why I wanted that machine. Okay, I'm sorry, Clark. I'm sorry that you lost my money.
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B
You know, the casino that I used to go gamble the $1 so I could have the free parking has been torn down.
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C
Oh, I wonder why people like you.
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B
No, just kidding. I would literally go into the casino and lose a dollar as fast as I could in a slot machine. Get the ticket out of the machine that then allowed me free parking.
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C
Oh, brilliant.
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B
Yeah. But one day I kept winning.
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C
Oh.
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B
And so I finally did something where I put in is, you know, it was electronic. I put his maximum bets till I could lose everything in my.
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C
Why don't you just cash out?
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B
No.
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C
Well, and then you get it back and you have free parking. You get your winnings.
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B
I don't remember why I always had to lose a dollar.
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C
Oh, okay.
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B
At least that's what I thought I had to do to get the free parking.
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C
All right, now I can hear that ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding in my head. Scott in Florida says we drive cross country from Florida to California each year. Our destination each night depends on the weather, our progress and impromptu stops of interest. So we don't book ahead. We can't book ahead each day. We estimate in the late afternoon where we'll be that night. We don't need a fancy place since we only want a reasonable motel that is clean, safe and near our highway. We usually look@hoteltonight.com or search for a chain motel that's usually okay and give them a call asking for the lowest rate room. Is there a better way to find and reserve a room only a couple of hours in advance?
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B
Yes, Scott, you're doing everything exactly right. It's what I do on a long road trip. And the only annex I'd add in addition to hotel tonight look at Priceline because a lot of times Priceline will have non refundable rooms available for that night at a price cheaper than you're going to get calling the hotel front desk and what you're doing works just fine.
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C
Christian in South Carolina says I'm planning on a 20 year anniversary trip for us to Costa Rica. I have the itinerary planned for December and I'm just wondering when the best time is to purchase the flights. Thank you in advance and I enjoy the show and your advice very much.
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B
Thank you very much. And Christian, I wish I knew when in December this trip was because if it's early December, right after Thanksgiving, but before like the 16th or 17th of December, you're going to get great deals on airfare. Because that is a soft, soft, soft travel time. In fact, the softest travel time of the year is roughly the two week period after the Thanksgiving holiday ends. But before Christmas, New Year's, which is peak, peak, peak season, takes off. As far as buying, if it's during the Christmas New Year's period, you're going to want to look, gosh, I mean now, maybe even earlier you would have wanted to book because the seats are hard to find. If it is going in that dead zone for travel after Thanksgiving but before Christmas, you want to wait till about August, right, In August. September would be when you'd want to book it. And congratulations to you on your 20th anniversary. So wonderful you get to go celebrate that anniversary in such a great destination.
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C
For sure. Deb in Maryland says, my friend and I are planning a trip to New Zealand in April of 2027.
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B
Jealous, I know.
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C
Do you have any tips to plan a safe, fun, but somewhat economical trip? What do you think about using the train during the trip and how soon should we book the flights again? The flight we get a lot of.
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B
You're too far out. Well, actually you're just now coming into the zone where you could book a lot of airlines 330 days out. You can book flights, but that doesn't mean you should yet. I'm going to go in reverse order. The trains in New Zealand are phenomenally great for sightseeing. You see a lot of things from the train, considered to be some of the most scenic train rides worldwide. To ride the trains in New Zealand, it's a little limiting versus having a car rental where you see something you love, you just pull off the road. But there's a lot you don't see on the road system that you see from the trains. So I love that. Now on flights there are continuing sales to Australia, New Zealand and what you do is go on Google flights and set up an alert. You live on the east coast, living in Maryland, the fares to Australia, New Zealand tend to be so much higher from the east coast on a normal basis that you want to set up a fare alert from. Let's say you set up one from BWI or Philadelphia or something like that. But you also want to set up an alert from the biggest market perhaps to fly from the United States to New Zealand and Australia, which is la. And you want to monitor those affair to New Zealand. That's a great fare. Will be 700 something round trip if you're going in coach. And that's kind of the price point when an alert pops up with A fair in the 700s. That's when you buy it. And I would say you set up the alert now. And at any point over the months, you see a fare that's low enough that you're like, that's my fare. And you buy that. Now, if you do end up with your best fare, if you go from the East Coast, I would say you break a thousand, you buy the ticket. If you do end up having to buy a ticket to LA or San Francisco to get a good fare to New Zealand, you want to allow a day on the way out for a buffer day if there were flight problems that you don't miss the flight on to New Zealand because it's a separate ticket, you need to have that buffer day in, but you are going to have just the best time. I love, love New Zealand. And we took our two younger kids there and it was a mistake because they were too young at the time we took them. They were bored by the, the scenery. And I'm looking around, I'm like, this is so fantastic. And they couldn't have cared less. So it's got to be the right traveler at the right stage of life. And you will be amazed how great New Zealand is. And if you can take the time, Deb, you're going so far, a lot of times you'll get a cheaper fare to New Zealand if you buy a ticket to Australia with a free stop in New Zealand and you pick up a whole nother country. Just think about it. And thank you so much for joining us today. Coming up Friday, our Memorial Day weekend kickoff edition of the Clark Howard Podcast and YouTube show with Clark Stinks coming your way two days from now and see you then, where you get more empowerment by learning ways to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off.