Krista (3:15)

To the Grinch.

Clark Howard (3:16)

To the Grinch working overtime to separate you from your money this holiday. I mean, they never take a day off. They're trying to Grinch your wallet all year long. I'm going to warn you about a scam that's hitting people all over the country. And later, do I have some good news for you about gas prices. Irrelevant to you and me, Krista, both driving electric vehicles, but actually we figure in the equation why gas prices have gotten so much better. That's a riddle. All right, talk about that later. But right now we're going to talk about something you've got to know. There are so many scams operating right now. A lot of them. I want to tell you. First of all, I'm going to mention Amazon. Amazon, Amazon. None of this is Amazon's fault. But criminals are impersonating Amazon security personnel. They know just enough about you that they sound credible. And what they're trying to do is trick you into allowing them to take over their Amazon account. You think you're helping them go after a criminal, but they are actually the criminal themselves. Amazon Security is not trying to contact you about somebody trying to get into your account. That is just bogus. But I want to talk about a wider problem with this. And remember, again, the people will represent themselves as Amazon Security, an agent of Amazon, something like that. But the overall problem that you've got to be aware of is you know how everybody wants you to store a credit card or debit card. This is a lot riskier for people with debit cards, by the way, where you already have stored your form of payment. And Amazon or Walmart or any shopping site, any airline site, any hotel site, they're all trying to get you to store a form of payment. And the reason they want that is so that the purchase is as, what they call in business, as frictionless as possible, that it's as easy as possible. Think about how Amazon tries to get you to do one click purchase and you've already got that form of payment. You got your address, all that, okay? So somebody, without you even realizing it, hacks into one of your accounts, they add a new address, they use the already stored form of payment to pay for the item Going to that address. Unless you're paying close attention to your account and particularly your credit card statement, or really scary, your debit card that debits and you would see it on your checking account statement. You lose the money and they bought the items on you and you have no way to reclaim your money. So I know that everybody in retail hates it when anybody says what I just said. Do not store a form of payment in there. And then, yeah, it means every time you go to buy something, you gotta pull out your card and put it in. Enter all you know, the expiration date. Some retailers want your three or four digit code on it. Most do, actually. You got to do all that manually. Worth it. Because the hassle when somebody without you realizing it having hacked in, starts buying stuff as if they're you, it's a mess. And listen to this. You don't realize they've hacked in. They don't want you to know because they will be able to continue to buy, buy, buy, buy using your form of payment. And you're buying there as well. You don't realize something weird has happened. This is why storing that form of payment is hazardous to your wallet. Again, this is not Amazon's fault. It's not the airline's fault. It's not Walmart's fault. It's nobody's fault other than the crooks.

Krista (7:28)

Okay? Art in Texas says this is a tip for Clark and everyone who listens can eavesdrop. He has complained about the high price of Amazon Prime's membership. If someone has access to Navy Federal Credit Union, they have a credit card called the Visa Signature Flagship Rewards. It has a $49 annual fee, but it includes $139 statement reimbursement if you pay for your prime membership with it. I have a calendar reminder to verify the details a week prior to my renewal in case it ever changes on the Navy Federal site or the prime side. It's not completely free, but it's much more reasonable price for prime benefits at $49.

Clark Howard (8:03)

Isn't that awesome? You know, I'm a Navy Federal member, as I've been for a long, long time. And my Navy Federal card is not this one. So I don't get that benefit. In addition to what you just talked about here, people who have certain American Express cards get Walmart's equivalent membership, Walmart plus, for free. So a lot of credit cards looking for what is the benefit they can offer you that'll get you to use that card more often or to get that card are offering Unusual things like you've just told me about with this Navy Federal card.

Krista (8:41)

Okay. Jason in New York sent this in. I don't know if you want me to mention the retailer here.

Clark Howard (8:46)

Yes, do, because we've had this question before about Costco.

Krista (8:51)

Okay. I've been a long time BJ's Wholesale member and generally speaking, I love shopping there. Great customer service has always been my experience. However, there's one issue that's come up multiple times that I just don't understand. When I buy a high price item that's on sale, for example, a laptop computer or tv, the sales tax I'm charged is not based on this sales price, but based on the original price. This happened a year ago when I bought a computer. When I realized what had happened, I returned it. And they didn't give me any satisfactory explanation as to why they do this. I'm interested now in buying a very expensive tv, but when I go to purchase it, the sales tax is calculated as full price. I live in the highest sales tax county in a high sales tax state. So. So this is a pain in the neck. I went online and saw there are lawsuits in different states regarding this in BJ's. Any idea what's going on here and do I have any leverage?

Clark Howard (9:39)

Okay. So this has been going on for years with any, particularly the warehouse clubs, that will have a price on an item that is discounted because of a manufacturer's discount, not one from the retailer. And if I go to a clothing store like let's go to one of your favorite TJ Maxx, and I buy something from the max and it's on a markdown rack. And so let's say the item was 20 and now it's 15. I pay sales tax on the 15. On the other hand, if I'm in certain states, certain taxing jurisdictions, the sales tax authorities insist that a manufacturer discount is like a rebate and that when it's not from the retailer itself, it's from the manufacturer, you pay tax on the original amount, not the price net of the manufacturer's rebate that the state taxing authorities say that it's a rebate, not a discount. Like a markdown somewhere else. Don't shoot the messenger. That's where the fight has been going on in various states with the warehouse clubs for so many years, I don't even remember.

Krista (11:00)

Okay. Kevin in Iowa says, I often listen to satellite radio and I keep hearing commercial ads for, oh, a form of.

Clark Howard (11:10)

Health coverage, let's call it.

Krista (11:12)

With a bit of research, I learned this is not actual health insurance. Do you have any information on this company, how it works, and why someone would want or not want to take part in this?

Clark Howard (11:22)

Okay, so these plans are not insurance. There is a provision of the law based on the separation of church and state that faith based organizations can offer health reimbursement coverage, not insurance. So it's a risk pool. So instead of an insurance company providing the coverage, everybody who pays in to the risk pool, it's a pool of money. Somebody gets sick, it pays. So what happens with these is they can go bust. If a risk pool has unexpectedly large claims from somebody who needs a very exotic transplant or has a very expensive cancer, something like that, the fund can be exhausted and bills go unpaid. These pooling organizations, it tends to work fine for routine medical. It's when the chips are down, when somebody's got something really serious that they could end up exposed. And so that's the best explanation I can give of a health reimbursement co op, I guess we could call them. And as a general rule these organizations almost 100% of the time will be in some way a religious co op or faith based co op or something like that. So it's much, much cheaper. There's generally not deductibles, but the outside risk. It's so great. Also, these organizations can say they don't cover certain conditions and so they wouldn't cover something up front. They tell you they're not going to cover an expensive illness, a transplant, cancer, things like that. And so you got to know what you're buying. With the much lower premium. Coming up ahead, I'm going to talk about something that the trend is absolutely your friend. What's going on with gas prices?

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Clark Howard (15:41)

This is great news. Barring who knows what in the world, gas prices are headed down. A lot of people who follow the oil and gas industry experts can always be wrong. But the guess is guess is what I'm going to call it is that the better and better prices that are showing up in many states at retail are going to continue through 26. Barring who knows what in the world is there's an oversupply of oil being dug out of the ground, creating an overhang of too much supply out there being sitting on oil tankers around the world. Do you know the wholesale price of gasoline changes every day? But the wholesale price, which is what it's sold behind the curtain by the oil majors is down to a buck 78 a gallon. $78. I mean seeing that price of the one first, what a shock. And in Texas, which generally is one of the price leaders in gasoline, a number of stations are now selling at retail at a dollar something a gallon, pushing up towards two but $90 something a gallon. And this is the leading edge of what I think we'll see over the next few months in more and more states is we'll see prices around the $2 a gallon. Mississippi is already right there. Mississippi is generally one of the lower priced states for gasoline. Here's what's going on behind the scenes. Worldwide, the sale of pure gasoline vehicles now represents only a little more than half of vehicle sales total electric and hybrid and hybrid vehicles get so much better fuel economy than gas engine ones has reduced steadily. The demand for gasoline takes a long Time for the fleet to turn over. It's like a 14 year cycle. But every year, really every month, as the vehicles being sold or more pure electrics or hybrids, the number of gallons of gas demand that was anticipated isn't there. Even as more and more vehicles are being sold in the world. So those electric vehicles and the hybrid drivers are driving the slower demand than was expected. Eventually the oil industry will say, what are we doing here? But for now, as a gas engine vehicle driver, you're going to have the benefit of these lower prices. Now war breaks out somewhere, involves an oil producing country. Things could get ugly quickly in the oil market. But the overall trend is excess supply to the benefit of your wallet at a time that inflation has been pretty ugly for us for six years. Krista.

Krista (18:53)

All right. Paul in Ohio says, is it better to rent a car for a longer drive or drive my own car? I'm driving 2,000 miles over one week.

Clark Howard (19:02)

Absolutely. Rent a vehicle. This is something I've recommended to people for years. Especially if you drive an older vehicle, rent one for your trip. You're driving a long distance of miles, as long as you can book a vehicle at a very decent price. And there's no geographic restrictions on where it can be driven, which is very rare. If there's a geographical restriction, renting the vehicle is much smarter than putting the miles on your own vehicle. Figure that per mile in your own vehicle. If you look at what triple A has figured out costs you about, about 60 cents a mile, which is a number. You're like, how could it cost that much? That's what it costs when you consider insurance and depreciation and, and interest on a loan and fuel, even though that part's gone down. So renting is a much better plan.

Krista (19:59)

All right. So it doesn't depend on what car you have or anything like that.

Clark Howard (20:02)

Like, not, not if you're, if you're putting on like. Was that 2,000 miles in a week?

Krista (20:07)

Yeah, 2,000.

Clark Howard (20:08)

Yeah. That needs to be done in a rental.

Krista (20:11)

Okay. All right. Brent in Washington says, I'm planning a trip to Arizona soon and I'm afraid to use any rental car company at this point because of the horror stories of bogus charges. Are they all bad? And should we all just take our own chances with, with Turo? Take our chances?

Clark Howard (20:28)

Yeah. And I've been part of the chorus letting you know about all the problems with the car rental industry. The only company that I will not rent from now is Herz because of the problems Herz has had with the implementation of using their supposed AI brilliant technology. And people have been just, in my opinion, totally hosed by Hertz, really mistreated by Hertz. The reality is, no matter who you rent from, even with a Turo, you need to shoot a thorough video of the rental car or the Turo before you leave with it. Really take your time. Shoot that video, store it on your phone. When you return the Turo or rental car, you do the same thing again. Now what I've read in trade publications is you got about a 1 in 30 chance when you rent a car that the rental agency is going to try to charge you for supposed damage to the vehicle. Some of that is absolutely true. You damaged it, you got to pay for it or your credit card or your insurer or whatever. But your best protection is if you're doing the walk around in a vehicle and there's clear damage on it, go get a different vehicle before you leave. If it's a Turo, you need to call the owner and say, hey, look at this picture I got of your fender. What do we do here? It needs to be dealt with up front before you leave. And then you shoot that same video when you return it. Keep that video for 90 days. And then by 90 days you should be in the clear with any damage claim from a car rental company or a Turo owner.

Krista (22:23)

Okay. Gail in Ohio says, I'm thinking of leasing an apartment and car long term where my grandkids live. I'm already accumulating four to five months there each year. I don't want to sell my home. It's finally paid off. But travel costs, particular hotel costs are prohibitively high. Furthermore, I'd like the idea of my own place to come back to when I visit. Any cautions or observations would be helpful.

Clark Howard (22:46)

So Gail, you're really smart person because renting an apartment, a lot of apartments rent in three month cycles or more. Doing like a six month lease, something like that would save you so much money you're going to have more space. Even if you do a studio apartment to have more space than you would staying in hotel rooms. That is really good thinking on the car, something I've not mentioned in at least a year. 60s rental car s I X T I guess is how they spell it. Which is. A European owned rental car company does short term leases of vehicles in the United States. 30 day cycles are longer. It's like a subscription to a vehicle. So you could subscribe where you go to be with the grandkids. And if there's a sixth available there that does the 30 day plus leases. It is a more economical way than you renting a vehicle. So both of those things make perfect sense.

Krista (23:59)

All right. Victor in Alaska says thank you for your service. I wanted to report a good customer service customer support case from Walmart and how they used technology to resolve my case. I bought a pair of inexpensive gloves from them along with some other grocery items and used self checkout. Once I reached home, I couldn't find my gloves. A couple days later, I had to go to the same store for another purchase. Since the customer service line was empty, I explained my missing gloves case to the person at the desk. The she called her supervisor. The supervisor took the item details, checkout kiosk number and timestamp from the receipt and asked me to wait. A couple of minutes later she returned and informed me they had seen my gloves fall onto the floor at checkout in their security camera footage. She asked me to pick out another pair of the same brand and have it checked out at the customer service support free of cost, which I did. I was impressed by the use of the technology to resolve my case and I wasn't sure this was possible. And I checked with customer service only because that line was empty. They may have a limit on their video storage and may overwrite newer videos after a specific period. So this may not work for everyone. I wanted to share this incident that shows the positive side of surveillance.

Clark Howard (25:07)

I love that story because you know, we talked about how Sam's Club, which is Walmart owned, has. If you're a Sam's member, you look, there are AI based cameras everywhere in there and that's how people are able to do the just walk out thing at Sam's Club. And Walmart has a much bigger, what they call shrinkage problem, much larger theft problem than Sam's Club has. So they have such explicit video and that they used it in a way that was so positive for you as a customer is really great. You ever done that? You ever walked out of the store? Without everything I have, I'll end up, I'll be, you know, I'm so social, I'll be talking to somebody. Oh yeah, and I'll leave one of the bags that I rang up at self checkout there. And I don't realize, I don't realize till I got home. Hey, where's the so and so that I bought?

Krista (26:09)

All right. Yeah, do a quick one more question. This might be a record. Eileen in North Carolina says when searching for a three night hotel stay in Las Vegas on kayaks Several choices are sometimes 50% cheaper. Cheaper than going directly to the hotel and resorts website. Can I trust some of these other sites or should I just deal directly with the hotel?

Clark Howard (26:29)

So what a wonderful question. The UFO hotel sites are hazard with potential opportunity. A lot of those sites are not trustworthy and it's very, very hard when you use them. And when I'm looking for a hotel room somewhere and I'll see this great price and then I'll see a crazy UFO hotel booking site. And what I do before I book it is I go elsewhere and I start looking at reviews of it. And there's only been one time I've ever seen one of those UFO ones that after reading reviews I went ahead and booked it. Having said that, Las Vegas is in a slump. And so Las Vegas is a unique circumstance right now. And that Las Vegas overpriced things got greedy. I'm not even going to do. A lot of news stories have been attacking private equity for that. I've done enough with private equity. I'm not going to say that.

Krista (27:31)

I mean, I also think a lot of gambling has gone online and people probably aren't going there as much as they used to because of all this. The big online gambling problem. I mean that's just my guess.

Clark Howard (27:41)

That's possible. I don't know. But Vegas has gotten so expensive that people are like, I'm not doing that. So there are more deals than there have been in a while with hotel specials. Though be aware that a lot of the Vegas hotels charge huge daily resort fees. There was a funny story in the Wall Street Journal from their travel writer where she booked, I think it was an $11 hotel room. And by the time she was done with all the fees, it was over a hundred bucks a night.

Krista (28:15)

Wow.

Clark Howard (28:15)

For an 11 hotel room. But it is possible that you'll find crazy cheap rates on hotel rooms that will not show on a hotel's own website or a casino hotel's own website. Because they don't want to discount everybody. They only want it to be almost like a semi private special. And that's why I book so much through priceline hotels.com booking.com because a lot of times hotels will discount through them. But not direct. Especially true with Marriott properties. Marriott doesn't want their hotel owners selling through the third party sites. But when you book through Marriott, you'll pay, you get your points, but you'll generally pay the highest prices available on a Marriott branded property, not the lowest price. You have to go to these third party sites where you won't get your Bonvoy points to get the better rates.

Krista (29:18)

All right, I'm going to read one more thing just to really kick it in here. Aaron in Minnesota says on a recent episode you referenced your dogs being named Costco Wholesale and Kirkland Signature. You pose the question of what your next dog's name should be. I'd like to humbly suggest you go with buck 50 all beef, which continues to keep naming in line with your favorite wholesaler, buck 50 all beef, the hot dog.

Clark Howard (29:39)

Buck 50 all beef. So you called Buck. Have I said what Lane has said? Our next dog is going to be named.

Krista (29:48)

Yes, Dyson did say that.

Clark Howard (29:51)

Yeah. I mean, which is as polar opposite my cheapness as you could be. But she is obsessed with anything Dyson she's ever owned is being the best quality ever there's ever been. Now, me, even if Dyson's the best, I've always said I'll accept lower quality for a lower price. And I could never find myself spending the money on a Dyson item. But buck 50.

Krista (30:21)

Little buck. Come here, Buck.

Clark Howard (30:24)

One of our best friends has a dog named Bunk.

Krista (30:27)

Oh, that's cute.

Clark Howard (30:28)

So that would be confusing when the two of them are together.

Krista (30:31)

Yeah, yeah.

Clark Howard (30:32)

Bunk and buck 50. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This is our last show before Christmas and I want to wish you.

Krista (30:43)

We'll be back next Monday.

Clark Howard (30:44)

Next Monday, you're right. I want to wish you the most wonderful and joyous holiday season. Me to celebrate Christmas, you celebrate Hanukkah, you celebrate whatever. I hope that it's a time for you to enjoy family and friends and know what we're about all year long. Even on Christmas Day. Our present to you all year long. Our whole goal is to give you ways to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. And see you next Monday.

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Krista (31:47)

Liberty. Liberty.

Clark Howard (31:49)

Liberty Savings.

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