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The Clark Howard Podcast
11.07.25 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Screen Out Robocalls
00:41:19
Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Screen Out Robocalls
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- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Fiscally Responsible Financial Geniuses, Monetary Magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. This message is brought to you by Apple Card It's a great time to apply for an Apple Card you'll love earning up to 3% unlimited daily cash back on every purchase and no fees period through this special referral offer. When you get a new Apple Card, you can earn bonus daily cash. To qualify, you must apply at Apple Co getdailycash Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.99% to 28.24% based on creditworthiness rates as of October 1, 2025. Offer may not be available elsewhere. Terms and limitations apply.
- [01:01]
Clark Howard
It's my pleasure to welcome to the Clark Howard show where our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you so you make better financial decisions in your life. And by the way, I got some great news for you. There's new weapons that you and I have at our disposal against robocallers and gosh, how many of those come in a day. I want to make sure you have set your phone settings to help you with this. I'll tell you what you need to know, but before I get to that, I got to learn from you and your Clark stinks posts. I should have never encouraged you to speak. You must think I'm pretty stupid.
- [01:47]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
You should be ashamed of yourself.
- [01:48]
Clark Howard
Well, maybe I'm wrong.
- [01:49]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Maybe I'm wrong.
- [01:50]
Clark Howard
Maybe you're right, pal.
- [01:56]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
All right, we're starting out with this one from Warren in Oregon. Clark needs to get one of those super sized pack of deodorant sticks from Costco because when answering someone who wondered whether to dip into his retirement funds to pay some 24% debt for a rental house he fixed up, Clark suggested personal loans at 6%. Well, there's a better option that he overlooked and it's generally available to anyone who has a FICO score over 750. And that is balance transfers, 0% interest. Balance transfers in particular. Sure, they generally have a 3 to 4% upfront fee, but then it's 12, 18 or even 24 months of 0%. Mark your calendar and if you haven't paid it all off by the end of the term, you can do another balance transfer to another card and get another 12, 18 or 24 months. This is also a good way to keep relationships with multiple banks alive while focusing on your day to day expenses on a cash back rewards credit card. As long as you're paying the minimum and watching out for that end of term cliff you have flexibility to adjust your payments which is perfect for matching to the sometimes variable revenue from a rental property.
- [03:00]
Clark Howard
That is a absolutely great suggestion and we have a balanced transfer guide on clark.com with the latest offers that seem to be out there. I will say that if someone's ratios are too high they're not going to qualify for a lot of the balance transfer offers right now. I think you said their credit score over 750. You did say that. So that is the key number is depending on the lender it could be 740 to 760. Somewhere in that range will qualify you for the most generous balance transfer offers. One thing with any balance transfer card, never charge anything to it while you're in that payment holiday. If you charge anything to then takes the payments and puts them at the most unfavorable terms to you. Which I don't even want to get into how all that works. Just remember this rule. If you do balance transfer to a balance transfer card where you pay the 3 or 4% up front and then pay no interest for the one year 18 months in the best case is 24 months. You never charge another penny to it till you finish that interest holiday period.
- [04:26]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
This one from Susan in California I think is referring to the couple that was going to Hawaii for a long period of time and wanted to buy spices and all that kind of stuff for cooking. She says you really don't stink. But wondering why you didn't recommend placing food items in checked bags. You could fill it full of stuff. I know you don't check bags but sometimes it works to your advantage rather than paying shipping costs.
- [04:46]
Clark Howard
That is a very valid suggestion. I do have a dead spot in my brain for anything involving checking bags. And your point is completely on the money.
- [05:00]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Okay, and then Ron in Virginia says you recently said a heat pump costs more than a traditional H vac system. What the heck? I'll assume is what he means. Wth do you think H Vac stands for? Hint Heating, Ventilating Air Conditioning. A heat pump is an H Vac system. A base heat pump will have the lowest legal efficiency or seer and probably just a five year compressor warranty. But a higher seer unit is likely to have a 10 year compressor warranty. And is totally worth the extra cost. First get a price on the cheapest unit offered and then ask for a price on better units until you get to a price on a 10 year compressor. By the way, don't forget to change the air filter regularly every month on cheap filters or is recommended on higher efficiency filters.
- [05:46]
Clark Howard
So my wife's obsessed with changing our filters herself and you know, she buys them in bulk and changes the filters and that is such a smart suggestion. So I love what you said about H Vac. People think of heat pumps as like their own category. But yeah, they fit under the umbrella of H Vac. But heat pumps are a fantastic way for you to save money in most climates in the United States. Not 100% of climates, but most of the time. Even though they will often have a higher upfront cost, the cycle of ownership makes them cheaper over time.
- [06:31]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I assume it's Vienne. Could be Vian in Florida says a listener submitted a question about why their credit score would have dropped to 769. And I think the most logical answer is something that I experienced. I'm surprised Clark did not mention it. I was carrying a credit card given to me by my son in law which was the Citibank Premium card which allows Admirals Club airport lounge access. I never charged on the card and I don't remember giving my Social Security number when he gave me my card in my own name. But when he started carrying a balance which was similar in size to my yearly income, my credit took a large hit. This was totally unexpected and I gave him his card back so he canceled it. His income obviously is quite different than mine, but I like my 816 credit score and I don't like to see it down in the seven hundreds. I'm also surprised Clark did mention that since credit card companies sometimes lower your available credit amount that this could have also happened to the listener.
- [07:25]
Clark Howard
Yeah, thank you for that. And I did not think about being an authorized user on a family member's card. If it was reflecting in your credit score, then at some point, probably upon application, your Social Security number was given for you to be an authorized user. So the, the compression of credit limits. We are in a cycle for that right now. And the reason is the banks are terrified that people who've been great payers over the years are suddenly going to default out. So people that are using tiny amounts of their available credit. You may have a bullseye target on you from some of the credit card issuers that they'll say, well you're only charging $800 a month and you have this $10,000 limit. We're going to drop that limit to 2,500 or something like that. And that can be devastating to your score. And that is actually happening right now to scattered people. It's not, it's not like a tidal wave, but it is happening now.
- [08:37]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Pete Mass just says, hey Clark, this isn't so much a Clark stinks as a Clark omission.
- [08:42]
Clark Howard
Oh, a sin of omission here.
- [08:44]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
On a recent podcast you talked about the Venture X card, but you failed to mention that there's often a bonus for this card, either a referral or just a bonus directly from Capital One. If someone's opening any card, they should be checking for a bonus before doing so, as these can often be hundreds of dollars.
- [09:01]
Clark Howard
Thank you for that. And gosh, the Capital One Venture X card has been so in the news lately because with the fee increases on the other premium travel cards, this one to this point has stayed at the same annual fee by reducing some of the benefits, but they've kept the same fee. That done right very easily nets out to being basically a 0 annual fee for a really useful card to carry.
- [09:35]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Ralph in Oregon says, oh boy, Clark, you went overboard this time. Oh, in a recent newsletter you discussed your well known dislike of Medicare Advantage plans and once plans. I know in one sentence you compared people who like their Medicare Advantage plans to winning the lottery. This is nowhere close to true and is insulting to thousands of people who trust your advice. People who like their Medicare Advantage plans like them because we have carefully considered the options, done the math and had in depth discussions with providers and other people in similar situations. And as we are and have decided that the Medicare Advantage plan works best for us, it's not that we're lucky.
- [10:14]
Clark Howard
Thank you for that. And I say with with Advantage plans, I won't even call them disadvantaged plans. I just did. Anyway, with Advantage plans, the problem is the lack of mobility. If the Advantage plan deteriorates on you, if the doctors and facilities you so carefully checked before you join that Advantage plan are removed from that plan and a dispute between the Advantage insurer and the hospital system or the doctor system or whatever and those people you were counting on to go to, you can't go to them anymore and it happens to at the same time that one of you has a major illness, then that could be life threatening, health threatening. And so what I don't like is the lack of mobility that you have once you go into an Advantage plan that could uncareful consideration have been fantastic for you. It's the fact that that can change so much over the years. But then your mobility is almost non existent to go back to traditional Medicare in full.
- [11:33]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Stephen, Wisconsin says to the person who flew from London to the USA and passed over Greenland, who was yelled at by somebody for intermittently peeking out the window. The problem likely wasn't that the window shade was open instead of closed, but may have been an issue with opening and closing the shade. This causes all the other people's eyes to have to adjust unexpectedly over and over again. Had the window simply been left open, I suspect there would have been no issue. None of that excuses the person who called you out. But as a frequent flyer, I can relate. When others have lightened a dark cabin over and over again. It's annoying, but not to the point I could ever imagine saying anything to another flyer in that way. By your window seat, leave the shade up and enjoy the view. And I will take the crummy center seat to share the view. Just don't open and close the shade every few minutes.
- [12:21]
Clark Howard
So there was on one of the big frequent flyer blogs there was this article with all these people talking about how somebody had their window shade open on a day flight. It was interfering with other people's ability to sleep and all these people were piling on like, how could they be that rude to have their window shade open? So this is one that people have become so accustomed to. As soon as a plane takes off, everybody puts down their window shade and the cabin gets dark. On a daytime flight. And to me, like, if I'm flying across the Rockies or I'm going by, you know, the Grand Canyon or whatever, I want to look out and see it.
- [13:09]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
If I want to sleep, I just bring an eye mask. Isn't that an easy solution?
- [13:14]
Clark Howard
That is. That is a Rodney King kind of thing. Can't we all just get along?
- [13:18]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I mean, come on. Especially during the day, I understand. An overnight flight, that's different, right? Okay. Jen in California says, okay Clark, you don't stink. But Costco has started rotting from the inside. I've been a loyal customer, stockholder and proponent for over 25 years. For the last 15 to 20, I've purchased my prescription glasses from them. Between everyday glasses, a backup pair, sunglasses and computer glasses, costs can really add up. Further, it can be a real challenge to find frames that I like. As a result, I often wear the same frames for six plus years. So imagine my surprise when I went into my local Costco today with my new Costco Optical Prescription. And I was informed that the lab Costco contracts with will no longer put new lenses in frames that are more than two years old. Apparently the lab instituted this policy during COVID and it worked so well they decided to stick with it. I'm sure they did. What a surprise that mandating everyone get new frames every two years would work well for the lab. This comes at a considerable cost to Costco members, some of whom may not have vision insurance and pay out of pocket for this burdensome expense. She goes on to talk about how this is against basically Costco's philosophy and policies of putting the customers first.
- [14:28]
Clark Howard
So what I would do is I don't know if it still works because we're two CEOs from the CEO Jim Senegal, who answered his own phone. If you called Costco headquarters in Issaquah, Washington and you asked for the CEO by name, they would put you right through to him. He answered every member call. And I don't know if, if the new guy does that, what's his name for Caris or something like that, but I would try that and, and let him know that you're not happy with this. I would bet with the size of the company, he doesn't know the companies implemented such a member unfriendly policy. It is really not right to say that if these frames I have, my eyes get worse and I have to put in new lenses, that I shouldn't be able to put new lenses in these existing frames as long as they're in good shape.
- [15:30]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
All right. And then Perry in California says, I'm not sure if Clarkson stinks until after I get a response to my question. I am absolutely ticked off by the cost of watching all available NFL football games on television. NFL network, Amazon Prime, ESPN, Peacock, Netflix, etc. I served this country to protect freedom, not things such as elitist controlled media. What is a poor retired American to do? How does Clark watch all these football games? Maybe I missed his viewing plans as a clarkey. I am curious. And Clark's stinkiness is pending.
- [16:03]
Clark Howard
So you're going to be stunned what I've been doing this year because there'll be games that, that I can't see because, you know, we switched to sling because YouTube TV went up. But Sling keeps having these disputes with local network affiliates. And so I don't get a lot of the games now. So what I've been doing is I'm going for a quarter of a loaf. What's a quarter of a loaf? I will. After a game ends, I go on YouTube and I watch the official summary of the game where you see every key play of the game and it takes about 17 to 20 minutes to see the whole game that way. And I found it to be absolutely fine for me to not pay more money to see games I'm not seeing otherwise and watch the summary after the game has ended. Now, key rule. I cannot know who won a game, so I can't look at anything. Any updates on my phone, anything like that.
- [17:12]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I ruined it for you one week. I remember I was like, can you believe I don't remember who it was? I was like, so and so won. And you were like, oh, my gosh, I haven't watched it yet.
- [17:21]
Clark Howard
Yeah, our mutual friend Pete did that to me.
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Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh.
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Clark Howard
On a night game. Because I watch night games at least the second half of a night game the next day because I get too keyed up if I watch a night game and have trouble sleeping. So I, I watch him the next morning and I wake up to a text from him telling me who won the game. And I was like, oh, Pete, I was not happy with.
- [17:46]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
You can't do that to Clark. You also use your antenna.
- [17:50]
Clark Howard
Antenna. So I have.
- [17:51]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Yeah, you have prime, right. So you can watch the Thursday night.
- [17:54]
Clark Howard
Yeah, Thursday night games generally are empty calorie games because the players didn't have enough rest. They haven't learned enough of the playbook for playing the opponent. I'm not a super fan of Thursday night. A lot of times I forget even that it's even on on Thursday night. And yep, we did. After I said I was trying to figure out if we were going to renew Prime. We did renew prime for one more year.
- [18:25]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Okay.
- [18:26]
Clark Howard
Don't know if it's going to be after this year, so I just don't know that it's worth it because we have Walmart plus and Walmart so often is significantly cheaper than Amazon in my experience. So that's 129I threw away or 139.
- [18:47]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Well, you get to see the football games. I'm gonna try Amazon Music to see if I can give up my other subscription for that.
- [18:53]
Clark Howard
Because you're on Spotify.
- [18:54]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Yeah, Family. So my kids are on it and stuff. But like, I just, I want to try it and see because then I would save that money. We'll see.
- [19:02]
Clark Howard
Spend money over here to save money over there. It's the math all of us do now in the subscription era, isn't it? Well, thank you so much for your post today. I love the variety of things that come up every Clark stinks because I'm just one guy and so, you know, I can't remember everything about everything. It's just not going to be. That's why I know nothing about real life, because I don't have room for it in my head. So I really appreciate it when you take the time to go to clark.com clarksthinx and post away because it's important for me to know where you feel like I left holes in something or my opinions are wrong and why. I mean I I love that because that's how we all grow together. We're all in this together and we all help each other. And isn't that what it's supposed to be like? That we all guide each other and help each other. And so I love the rugby scrum of how we all do that together on the stuff we do here. And so thank you for doing that. And coming up in just a few minutes, I want to talk about you trying to get phone calls on your phone that you actually want instead of those you don't want.
- [20:32]
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- [21:05]
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- [21:42]
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- [22:13]
Clark Howard
Sean Bean and Connie Nielsen star in Robin Hood From Sherwood Forest to the Norman Court, a classic tale reborn for today. The story continues to unfold. New episodes Sundays on mgm. There's something that I've talked about with Androids for a good long time that is so great that if you carry an iPhone, you're like, why is Clark bragging about this Android thing again? It's where it screens your calls for you. Well, now, the latest software from Apple on the iPhone has done their own version of what Android has where it will automatically screen a call for you not from one of your contacts that comes in and it will either take that call for you and take a. You know, Apple's had Junior feature this where you could hear a voicemail live from whoever it is and then you could decide to pick up the call right then. But this is where it screens out unknown callers and it's a very simple setting on the iPhone with the newest version of iOS, and it just screens out those callers and it can even ask specifically what's the reason for the call. Now, I have this on my phone, my Android, and it doesn't always work. There's this company that calls me with a robo day after day after day after day. And I can't just block the number because they use a different number over and over again that they're calling in with and they're trying to lend me money or supposedly they're trying to lend me money. And I don't answer. As you know, I don't answer any phone call. I mean, my call screening is if I don't know the person calling or who's supposedly popping up on caller id. I don't answer if it's coming in from any business, government, agency, whatever. I do not answer because I don't know if the caller IDs been spoofed and that it's something pretending to be from a credit union or financial institution, whatever. I do not answer that. I wait, listen to the voicemail and then I make a decision what I'm going to do. But if you are one of those people who the phone rings and you're tempted, you're normally just going to answer it. You're setting yourself up. And that's why doing the settings on your iPhone or Android that screen calls out from unknown contacts is a great thing for you to do to protect yourself. I have a relative who always has his calls come in as private number. That's what pops up? I never answer his calls. And he's like, why do you never answer my calls? I said, because it says private number, and I don't know what it is, who it is, friend or foe. And that's why I call you back when I hear the voicemail. And so I want you to become tougher, particularly with how rife the scamsters are once you become tougher about when you answer your phone. And best is to make those calls coming in essentially invisible to you.
- [26:07]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I like the thing my phone does now, too, where I can interrupt someone leaving a voicemail.
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Clark Howard
Yeah, that's.
- [26:12]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I couldn't do that before.
- [26:13]
Clark Howard
Oh.
- [26:14]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I never could interrupt the actual voicemail being left.
- [26:16]
Clark Howard
Really? I've been able to do that for a while.
- [26:18]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
No, mine just started doing that. And I like it. Although it shocks people. They're always like, what? They're so confused.
- [26:24]
Clark Howard
Yeah. So. So the new software from Apple does that.
- [26:28]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Okay. And we're on. On Android.
- [26:31]
Clark Howard
Yeah. But, you know, we're superior Android people. We had it first. Oh, man. Okay, so I got to tell a story about my oldest daughter. She had a protective case on her phone, and she gets stung by a wasp.
- [26:47]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh, gosh.
- [26:48]
Clark Howard
And she drops her phone, and as luck would have it, in a protective case, it hits the concrete just at the right angle and breaks apart. So I had a spare phone, of course, was an Android. And she has been through misery for three weeks waiting because she's iPhone waiting for the new iPhone. 17, I think, is the number. I think that's what they're on to come in. And today is the day her new phone comes. And she's been very, very quiet about how much she hates using the Android because at least she's had a phone.
- [27:34]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Sure.
- [27:35]
Clark Howard
But the protective case thing, that happened, Elaine, too, she dropped her phone, iPhone on an escalator in a protective case.
- [27:43]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh, wow.
- [27:44]
Clark Howard
Dropped a foot and a half and boom, it was done. Yeah. So planned obsolescence. Right. And then a friend told the story about happened to him. He's a stunt pilot. His phone fell out of the plane.
- [28:01]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh, my gosh.
- [28:03]
Clark Howard
This is a crazy story. You're not going to believe this. The phone got caught in the air currents and essentially floated down to earth and landed in the woods and was fine.
- [28:17]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
He found it.
- [28:18]
Clark Howard
Well, you know, the ping thing. Fine. My iPhone. But not only was he should do.
- [28:24]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
A commercial for whatever protective case he had on that phone.
- [28:27]
Clark Howard
Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is great. Not only was he there, you know, he landed the plane, drove to where the phone was. Not only was he there, who else was there? The police were there because the phone had sent out a distress thing that had been in a wreck.
- [28:45]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh, wow.
- [28:46]
Clark Howard
You know how there's that setting that will call for 911 if it thinks you've been in an accident. So they were like, so this is yours.
- [28:56]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Wow, that's crazy.
- [28:58]
Clark Howard
The sheriff holds the phone up to him.
- [29:00]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Yeah, it fell out of a plane. It wasn't distressed.
- [29:05]
Clark Howard
What do you call that? An aerobatic plane? Not acrobatic. A plane that does loop de loops and all that kind of stuff.
- [29:13]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
That is crazy. All right, we'll go to some questions now. Jim in Oregon sent this one in. Back in 2018, I purchased a 4K Fire TV device that is now no longer made. It's like a fire stick, only it's a small square. Recently, the folks at Amazon sent out an update to everyone who owns a Fire TV or stick. This update did not bode well for my Fire TV and rendered my device unable to start up. I did a little searching on my problem and found out there are a lot of people with my device who have encountered the same problem. I called Amazon and basically they are saying that that's too bad, we'll give you 5% off on another one. Seriously, I'm thinking I might want to switch to Roku. If this is how they're going to treat their customers. Is there any I can do that you know of to hold their feet to the fire and make them fix what they broke?
- [30:03]
Clark Howard
Make Amazon fix something? I mean, they're a hugely, monstrously large company and this is ridiculous. This happens with hardware a lot now. You buy hardware, the company goes bust and, and you pay for this hardware that's dependent on software and it's becomes just e waste.
- [30:27]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
We just talked about Microsoft. We've had issues with Chromebooks, right? Yeah.
- [30:31]
Clark Howard
I mean, this is just, this is just so uncool and Amazon has so many relationships with people. If you're a prime member, you can always say when your renewal comes, well, you're going to cancel it and then maybe then they'll offer you something for free, like a new fire stick or something. As for Roku, we have a Fire TV and then we have Roku TVs and it's what you're used to. I've. I've found the Fire to be a lot harder to use. I don't find it as intuitive as Roku, but if you've been used to using Fire and you switch to Roku you'll scratch your head a little bit at first, too. It's like the thing we were just talking about with iPhone and Android, that the software you have to adapt to, but it's just not right for one of the world's largest companies to just say, ah, well, your money doesn't matter and we made your device obsolete.
- [31:36]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
All right. Scott in Wisconsin says, hi, Clark. Something happened to me that I thought you and the viewers should be aware of. My wife recently purchased some shampoo and conditioner from Amazon.
- [31:46]
Clark Howard
I figured we're Amazon, Amazon.
- [31:49]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I mean, when the package was delivered, the post office said that we had to pay an additional 17, 25, $17.25 for the shipping because the shipping label used by the seller was fraudulent. When I went to Amazon, I realized that the third party seller was from China and that not paying for shipping was likely due to the seller trying to offset the cost of the tariffs. Amazon makes it incredibly difficult to resolve these types of issues because you have to contact the seller first. I luckily was refunded my shipping cost, but I'm betting that these sellers are counting on people not going through the hassle of getting refunded.
- [32:23]
Clark Howard
Right. So thank you for your story. And you know, I've been, I've been busy picking on Amazon for the decline in customer no service there. And what Amazon has done is they put up just as you described. They put up extra hoops for you to jump through, figuring most people just give up, don't give up when the.
- [32:42]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Seller in this, I mean, third party, which you've always said is the problem. Right. They used a fake label.
- [32:48]
Clark Howard
Right. Okay, so the fake labels. Do you know about all the fake postage stamps? Yeah, yeah. So people bought in good faith very heavily on Amazon, bought US postage that was counterfeit postage and didn't have any idea they were buying counterfeit postage. And it's cost. The. If the Postal service needed more financial trouble, it's cost the postal service big money from all these items with counterfeit postage on them. So now obviously with a bigger item, they're hitting you up for the money. But it is right that Amazon, when you go to Amazon.com and you go to buy something you're buying based on Amazon's reputation, you're not buying based on the fact that it's who knows who third party. Now Amazon has this gray area in between that's different than this. It's where it's fulfilled by Amazon. There are not as many problems, in my opinion, people have when they buy from a third party. Seller on Amazon, where inventorying and fulfillment is handled by Amazon. But when they're just using Amazon is like a listing service and it's being inventoried by that third party seller, shipped by that third party seller. That's where more often than not, in my opinion, the problems occur.
- [34:22]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
I haven't had a big issue myself, but because of everyone we've heard from, all the clarkies I have started, I will only buy if it's Amazon's or fulfilled by Amazon because I just don't want to get into this kind of thing. But I'm glad that in this case Scott stayed on it and got the shipping costs right.
- [34:39]
Clark Howard
And you will find with Amazon that if you keep pushing, you get what you're looking for. But what they count on is that most people give up too easily.
- [34:51]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Yeah, okay. Sean in Hawaii says, I run a small service business in Maui and all of my customers pay by check through the mail. You say that no one should ever mail a check, but it would be a significant cost to my business if I took credit cards. Do you know of a low or no cost payment option that I could offer my customers?
- [35:11]
Clark Howard
So, Sean, that's a great question. So what would that alternative be? It would be something I say consumers should not do, but people do every day. And that's pay by Venmo or cash app or pay through PayPal, something like that. That would have minimal cost to you, in many cases, no cost to you. But let's talk about this situation. The risk in this case is not to you, it's to your customer. So if they want to pay by check and they're comfortable sending that check through the US Mail, which they should not be comfortable doing, but they're doing that and that eliminates costs for you and that's how they prefer to pay, then they can keep doing that and pay you. Because the alternatives, you're right, you take credit cards, it's going to be a huge cost for you. Most often somewhere effectively around 3% for taking that credit card.
- [36:15]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Couldn't you offer both like, but tell them it's you have to offset the credit card fee if you choose.
- [36:20]
Clark Howard
What you do is you offer people a cash discount, right?
- [36:23]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Yeah.
- [36:24]
Clark Howard
And that way you say, or depending on the laws in Hawaii, you may be able to do a credit card surcharge. You see it more and more and more because the marketplace eventually comes up with accommodation. You know, we have this Visa MasterCard Cartel in the United States that gives us the highest merchant processing fees worldwide. I mean, so many times Other countries, it's like mind blowing. And so merchants are like, this is eating meat alive, paying all these fees to Visa, MasterCard and American Express, Discover, whatever. And so having a pressure release valve, which is relief valve, which is, yeah, if a customer wants to pay with a credit card, they're paying an extra whatever percentage to me, is the marketplace solution to a political problem where the Congress has not been willing to do anything about the price fixing going on with credit cards in the United States. Now, what's the alternative? Who benefits from all these merchant fees? I do. Anybody who pays their cards in full and has all these rewardy cards, cash back points, whatever, we're being subsidized by the massive fees that merchants are paying in the United States. And so you bring up a really valid point now. What could be an alternative? The debit card. Because you may have merchant clearing on debit cards that is such a small amount that effectively it would be almost no cost to you as a business.
- [38:23]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
It's no risk either.
- [38:24]
Clark Howard
It's no debit card risk, not to the business.
- [38:30]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
You're gonna have to wash your mouth out with soap now.
- [38:32]
Clark Howard
I said, well, okay, I'll call it piece of trash, fake fees or fake MasterCard. The debit card. Taking a debit card. I'm hopeful that the Capital One purchase of Discover will lead to a competitive channel for merchant processing of debits and credits, debit cards and credit cards. If it does, then we'll have a real fight on our hands to the benefit of merchants and ultimately consumers. But it's early innings and don't know if Capital One has the. The umph. Has the guts to take on the visa. MasterCard Cartel will see over time because Discover that they bought already has a payment processing network and could provide meaningful competition to clearing in the United States like people have in other countries. But I haven't talked about this in like a year and a half or so. Australia. When you go to a store to buy something, there's a tablet, could be an iPad or, you know, a Samsung tablet or whatever. And it shows up to the minute what fee you pay for every method of paying. It shows you. I mean, you're sitting there at the register and it says, okay, you use Visa, it's going to be this much. You use MasterCard that much. Use American Express, it's this much. You use their version of a debit card, a payment card, it's this little. And you know what? They don't show on any of those. I've never seen anywhere in Australia Discover Cash.
- [40:14]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh, cash.
- [40:16]
Clark Howard
I don't know that anybody in Australia even carries cash anymore.
- [40:21]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Does Diners Club still exist?
- [40:23]
Clark Howard
Yes, and we have diners called brand in the United States, but it clears as MasterCard. Okay, but in some other countries in the world, while we're moving into low level trivia here, in some other countries, Diners Club is like an independent charging mechanism.
- [40:41]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
You had a Diners Club card when I first met you.
- [40:44]
Clark Howard
Yeah, and then it was sold to. It bounced around from owner to owner, ended up with a Canadian owner for the card in the United States, and they really never knew what to do with it. There used to be another one called Carte Blanche too. You ever heard of that one?
- [41:01]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
No. Yeah, I may have heard that expression. Carte blanche. You have carte blanche to do whatever you want.
- [41:07]
Clark Howard
It was. It was. It may have been possibly the first.
- [41:11]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Oh, wow.
- [41:11]
Clark Howard
Charge card ever. I don't remember. Okay, so there's. So now we're going to hear from some banking historian who's going to say, clark, you got this all wrong. Blah, blah, blah. That's what Clark stinks is for.
- [41:23]
Clark Howard Show Listener/Caller
Yeah.
- [41:23]
Clark Howard
Anyway, thank you so much for joining us today and I hope we haven't put your weekend into oblivion with this last 90 seconds. I want to thank you so much for spending your time with us. I hope that something you heard here today is useful in your own life. Remember what we're all about. You learning ways to save more, spend less, and never, never, not ever get ripped off. See you Monday.
- [42:00]
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