Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 01.27.25 SAVE More On Airfares / Your Privacy & Vehicle Data Collection About this episode When looking for a flight deal, there’s a trick that can save you a lot of money. Clark points to 3 airlines that might not be on your radar, but should be. Also - is your car spying on you? It’s highly likely. And what happens with your data? Clark discusses privacy concerns prevalent today. New Airlines & Destinations: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Vehicular Spying & Privacy Rights: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: NYTimes: Coming to a Tiny Airport Near You: New Airlines How To Find Cheap Flights in 3 Easy Steps How To Prevent, Report and Repair Identity Theft What Is a Credit Union? / Credit Union vs. Bank: What's the Difference? Submit a complaint | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau How To Freeze and Unfreeze Your Credit With Experian, Equifax and TransUnion Should You Get a Store Credit Card? Is your car spying on you? What it means that Tesla shared data in the Las Vegas explosion Best Cash Back Credit Cards With No Annual Fee in 2025 Clark.com resources Episode transcripts Community. Clark.com / Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 SURFSHARK - Alternative Number: your online identity safeguard POLICYGENIUS - The Simple Way To Buy Insurance APELLA WEALTH - Advice For Life Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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1:02 Speaker 02 It's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show. You know, our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. Now, I want to tell you something. There are certain tricks to the trade that I talk about with travel. But there's one that I've mentioned over the years that has suddenly become much more relevant than it used to be. And I want to make sure you know, when you're searching for a deal by air, how to take advantage of these new opportunities.
1:40 Speaker 02 And later, my car spies on me every single second. And more and more, that's what's going to happen with cars. So you need to know what's up, and more important, who has access to that data? So air travel goes through continuous change in the United States. And right now especially, because American United and Delta, the three full fare airlines, are so large now. And have concentrated their power so heavily in their, what are known as fortress hubs,
2:25 Speaker 02 that it's changed the equation for people that are looking for a deal. There's also a change in the competitive landscape that I want to make sure you are clued into. And it all starts with an airline that's been around for a while called Allegiant. Allegiant, based in Las Vegas, flies leisure-oriented routes. There's some term for it, family and something like that, but they, they serve markets that are for vacation and family visits. That's what they do. They may not fly to a place every day of the week. In fact, some places they only fly twice a week.
3:08 Speaker 02 To understand what I'm talking about, if you go look at Allegiant and pull up their map of where they fly in the country, I promise you, there are a lot of cities they fly to you've never heard of or only know faintly of. And so what they're doing is they fly to places that the big three don't care about. So they have led to copycats. And now there's Avelo and Breeze, both which started four years ago, that are both growing around the country. But again, they go to places that you wouldn't think to look.
3:53 Speaker 02 One of the places that Avelo is big in is New Haven, Connecticut. Now, let me tell you, somebody going into Massachusetts or going to Hartford or maybe going to the New York suburbs, you're never thinking of looking for a fare to New Haven, Connecticut. You don't even know anybody flies there. Let me tell you, the people in New Haven know because now there's all these huge traffic jams around the airport. Because people who do know are getting fares that are usually one-fourth of what the fare would be on American, United, or Delta, flying to the big city any of those three fly to.
4:39 Speaker 02 That are shouting distance from New Haven. There's also Breeze Air. Breeze does a similar kind of flying. Flying to places that the full fare airlines aren't really interested in. And the advantage with Allegiant and Breeze and Avelo. All their flights are set up to be non-stops. There's no changing in any hub or anything like that. You just have to go on the days of the week they fly and the days of the week they return. This is just a tactic growing in popularity because these airlines are filling these planes. Because people are getting so much better deal.
5:24 Speaker 02 When is it not a deal? So you go to fly and your flight's canceled. Now, remember I said a lot of these routes, they're only flying maybe twice a week, four times a week, and the busiest ones once a day. And that flight gets canceled? It's not a laughing matter. Because you're going to be stranded for a while. Either going from where you're leaving from to where you're going or vice versa. So there is a big, big trade-off with this. You've heard a lot about Spirit being in bankruptcy and Frontier having trouble making money and all that.
6:06 Speaker 02 What's different about those two is they decided it would be a great idea to go right after the big markets of the full fare airlines and at the same time, treat people like dirt that are flying them. Now, I don't know who ever thought it was a good idea to treat people like dirt, but that's been the problem with both of them. And I have a particular grudge against the CEO of Frontier who has designed the relationship between his employees and the customers as an adversarial one.
6:43 Speaker 02 Where the employees get bonused for every time they can charge a ripoff fee to a customer. The interests of the employee and the customer should be aligned. At Frontier, they are diametrically opposed. I don't know what business school the CEO went to, but he was obviously sleeping through all the classes. But this is something that does have the trade off if there is a flight problem. But I can tell you there's a general rule. Allegiant, Breeze, and Avelo have been running extremely reliable schedules and reliable airlines. When you're looking to book somewhere, look where they go and know that the full fares
7:28 Speaker 02 may at an airport nearby be offering certain deals on certain flight times that match up with the flights that Avelo and Breeze and Allegiant are running to cities nearby. And the Frontier people, I'm more than happy to have them come on the air because I am so unhappy with a company that from the executive suite looks at the customer as an enemy and not their customer. Yuck.
8:00 Speaker 03 Okay, Ray in Florida says, "My wife and I have both been victims of identity theft."
8:06 Speaker 02 I'm sorry about that.
8:07 Speaker 03 "In her case, a thief broke into her car and stole her wallet, including ID. Several months later, they used her ID and probably the info out of a hacked database to call into a bank, transfer a bunch of money into one account, and then withdraw $1,400 in cash. It took us months to make the bank return the money. They should have never paid it out in the first place."
8:28 Speaker 02 Before you go on, I need to say something about that. A bank only has 10 banking days, once you've protested something in writing, to either restore your funds.
8:41 Speaker 02 Permanently, restore them temporarily, or tell you why they're not going to give you the money back. They don't have an endless number of months to do so. And what's key to make this work is you have to go to a branch and put your dispute in writing. And that starts the 10 Business Day Countdown, the two-week countdown. And I hear your thing again and again, where the banks just don't care what the law is. They don't care what the regulations are. They just take their sweet time and go on because I've got more to say.
9:22 Speaker 03 A year later-
9:23 Speaker 02 I love the banks, don't I?
9:24 Speaker 03 A year later, something similar happened to me at another giant monster mega bank. The thief calls in, transfers $750 from two accounts into the main account. Then the thief attempted to withdraw it at a branch, but was caught in the act.
9:37 Speaker 02 Awesome!
9:37 Speaker 03 Yep. Still, I had to go in and change all my account numbers and spent many needless hours in the bank. From my perspective, the banks don't do nearly enough to protect us. They allow people to call in, impersonate us, obviously not from our registered phone numbers, and obtain information and initiate money transfers. These banks could do so much more. They could require an SMS code for all transactions. If you can't give the code, you don't do business. If it's an in-person transaction, they could mandate two forms of ID, a password, and the SMS, or proof of online banking access. But these banks remain big and stupid. Who can I bank with that has a clue about security and will look out for my best interests?
10:17 Speaker 02 Size alone is not the indicator, although I find that with the four giant monster mega banks, they're almost like a law unto themselves. Who are the four giant monsters? Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America. They are so large, so powerful, that they pretty much do what they want. I think there's an advantage. I have such a bias, this is clearly a bias, in you being with a local credit union. You're an owner. You have a board that you've elected. If you choose to participate, there's accountability at a credit union. Imagine at a bank like Chase
11:01 Speaker 02 that has bigger size than the economy of many countries, getting them to respond? But one thing with any financial institution is when you are being ignored, you file a complaint at consumerfinance.gov. It starts a clock ticking. Again, the banks don't like. And a lot of times I find with the banks, it's not that they're trying to cheat you, it's that they don't care. They just don't care. And the bigger they are, the less they care.
11:38 Speaker 02 So as far as the ID being stolen, from that moment forward, you want to freeze your credit files because a lot of the mischief the criminals are going to do is from taking over your identity through your credit. And if you have your credit frozen, it will eliminate a lot of the kind of hassles you would have. Second thing I'd say is that if there was any information in your wife's wallet about having a relationship with the giant monster mega bank where the money was taken, or the other giant monster mega bank where money was taken from your account, that that would
12:22 Speaker 02 be, for me, a direct call for you, right after the wallet was stolen, to close your banking relationships with those banks and go somewhere else that may be harder for the criminals to figure out where you have moved your banking or to whatever credit union you've moved it to. But these situations are so bad, ugly, and having to wait such a long time to get your money back after the giant monster was sloppy and allowed the criminal to swipe the money is totally unacceptable behavior.
13:02 Speaker 03 Dean in South Carolina says, "My credit is frozen with all three credit reporting agencies and has been for years, so thank you for that. My question is, if I'm at one of those department store checkouts and the pesky clerk says, 'Hey, if you fill out this credit app for our in-store card, you'll get 10% to 20% off today with this purchase,' would this affect my score like a hard inquiry since my credit's frozen? Thanks for everything, Clark."
13:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, so what would happen at most retailers, Dean, is they're going to reject your app. What will happen usually at the register, they'll ask you some basic information, punch it in. And it will come back as no rec or credit frozen and you're not going to get that 10 to 20% off. It will not hurt your credit in any way because it will come back no rec. There will be no credit that it will hit against.
13:56 Speaker 03 But don't do it. Don't do it.
13:57 Speaker 02 My attitude is store credit is junk credit. There's no upside to having store credit. And I know there are people who say to me all the time, but look, I got all these coupons at Macy's for having the Macy's card. It's not worth it for those savings you get. Trust me.
14:19 Speaker 03 And I would worry, like if I had another credit card with the bank that underwrites the card for that store.
14:25 Speaker 02 Oh, it would go right through.
14:26 Speaker 03 It could go through.
14:27 Speaker 02 I never thought about that.
14:29 Speaker 03 They're not offering you that percentage off just for applying. They're offering it if you get approved.
14:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. So the thing is, you brought up a point I've not made in forever. If you have an existing relationship with a financial institution and you apply for something even with your credit frozen, they're already aware of who you are and that app may be approved because a bank is allowed to transition you to a different form of credit. And that could happen in this case.
14:58 Speaker 03 Scotty in Tennessee says, artificial intelligence saves the day. I thought you and your fans might appreciate this story. My teen daughter parked in a downtown parking lot and was only there for about 30 minutes. When she left, she said there was no parking attendant present and she left without paying. About a month later, we got a ticket in the mail for $65.
15:16 Speaker 02 Wow.
15:16 Speaker 03 I looked up the parking lot and found that the charge for all day parking is $8. I was willing to pay a fine, but $65 for an $8 parking fee? I went to their website and was about to pay it, but then saw a dispute option. I went to ChatGPT and asked it to write a detailed dispute based on the details of the incident. I must say, the AI wrote very well-written argument that was kind yet convincing. I then pasted that into the dispute box on their website. Clark, I received an email from the parking lot within 30 minutes saying they would dismiss the ticket. Moral of the story, don't be afraid to dispute tickets and don't be afraid to use AI. Huge thanks to you and your team for all that you do. From a Clark superfan in Knoxville, Tennessee, Scotty Too Hotty.
15:57 Speaker 02 Scotty too hottie. Okay, so did I tell the story about me getting the ticket from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority?
16:05 Speaker 03 I don't remember if you told it on the podcast or not.
16:07 Speaker 02 Okay, so I I get this ticket in the mail from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority. I've never been on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It has a picture of this giant SUV. It was like an Escalade or something. I've never owned anything like that. And it says it was my car and whatever. So I did what you did, Scotty. I went on the website for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. And they have this thing where they say the only way to dispute the ticket is this weird affidavit. You gotta do all this stuff and all that. Instead, I sent in a thing on their question form or whatever and told the story. And I didn't use AI like you did. I actually came up with my own words.
16:52 Speaker 02 And three days later, I got something saying, please excuse the error. That is not your ticket. We've removed it. So just ignoring is not a good idea. Because what was funny on that is how much the fee went up. If I didn't pay within seven days under Pennsylvania statute, whatever, whatever. And ignoring is dangerous. So, but I love your AI suggestion. My son uses AI tools all the time, except where?
17:28 Speaker 03 College?
17:29 Speaker 02 College, because every professor knows every answer that ChatGPT is going to give to anything that somebody tries to do that as a way of avoiding work. That's not going to work for college students. Coming up ahead, we're talking about AI and all that. What about your cars? What did they know about you? More than you might like.
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20:21 Speaker 02 On this event that happened in Las Vegas with this decorated soldier committing suicide in the Cybertruck, Tesla Cybertruck, it was so sad that he felt like if he had sought help for his depression, that he would have been bounced out of the prestigious unit he was in, in the military. I just feel so bad about that. When somebody feels like they lose too much if they were to seek help. But in his case, he lost everything. And I just feel so bad about that. But you know, within two hours of when the soldier took
21:05 Speaker 02 his life, the law enforcement people in Nevada had every bit of information on that Cybertruck, where the soldier picked it up, where he stopped to charge, where he stopped to do everything. And I noticed in people's reaction to the media coverage about how much Tesla knew about what the soldier had been up to, that people are not aware that this is a common industry practice now. I had told you last year about GM tracking people's driving and then selling the information to insurance companies so they could cancel
21:49 Speaker 02 your insurance or charge you higher rates. And GM was like, well, it's in our terms of service. Then when there was such a backlash, GM apologized, they're being sued, they're not doing it anymore, where they're not sharing when you're not a good driver with your insurance company. But unless you really want an older analog vehicle, it's the thing where automakers are putting in this technology to track everything that goes on in your car, everything you do, because they're trying to monetize the data that they come up with. And so we don't, in most modern vehicles, have the privacy we used to.
22:35 Speaker 02 And I know this is going to sound weird, but it bothers me that we still don't have a federal law with a right to privacy. That we should have with all the technology that exists today. We should have the ability, the right, to choose not to have information shared. Right now, what happens is just as GM said, well, it was in the terms of service. Written by some lawyer to write something that's 80 pages long. I don't know how many the GM thing was. And in all the legal mumbo jumbo, you've signed away everything. This is not right.
23:18 Speaker 02 We're in a time where the technology is accelerating so quickly. And we need to have more control over what others know about us. To me, it's, it's pretty simple. It's pretty clear that the, the rights of an American citizen should outweigh the commercial desires of companies, both American and foreign, that are tracking everything we do. And with the cars, I can see there's going to be a market for people buying vehicles that are sold without all the advanced technology in it. That will not allow somebody
24:02 Speaker 02 to track everything you do. Obviously, there are times is an example for law enforcement. It was really useful that they were able to find out so much information so quickly after what at first appeared to be possibly a terrorist attack. But at the same time, we have this constant push and pull between your and my privacy. And what right we have to it under the law, none, pretty much. And then what others may misuse that information for to our harm or for their commercial benefit.
24:46 Speaker 02 Krista, you and I both drive Teslas. And it knows all.
24:51 Speaker 03 It sure does. Yep.
24:52 Speaker 02 And there's some of that stuff that's great. If it's cold, you can start the heat in your vehicle before you go to it.
25:00 Speaker 03 Got my seat heater on high. Yep.
25:02 Speaker 02 If it's hot, you can put the air conditioning on way before you get to it. And that's just the most basic of things it does.
25:11 Speaker 03 Yep. I love it. I have to say, but I'm also not.
25:14 Speaker 02 And you've given up on privacy. What, 15 years ago, you said to me, there's no right to privacy.
25:20 Speaker 03 No, it's over. Janice in Georgia says, I'm not saying I like it. I'm just saying, okay. Janice in Georgia says, Clark recently talked about going to a freestanding MRI CT scan, et cetera, in order to save money and not have to pay his exorbitant hospital price. And I agree, but there's a catch. I had to do just such a thing with a scan. I got the freestanding scan and when I sent it to the hospital, they said they can't read it.
25:44 Speaker 02 No, they didn't want to read it.
25:46 Speaker 03 They said they couldn't. They said it's because they have their own system that doesn't read off-site information. I had to do it again and pay the exorbitant price. Just for listeners to be aware, it may not always work, although my ultimate results were good.
26:00 Speaker 02 Okay, that story is so disturbing to me. So you ended up having the scan twice, Janice, and being ripped off by the hospital system. For those of you missed when I talked about me having an MRI of my knee, without contrast, I went to a freestander after I took some work. I wanted to find out what does it cost at the hospital near me? It was 2,400 bucks. So then I call a freestander and the same MRI without contrast was 300 bucks. My copay.
26:39 Speaker 02 Through my insurance would have been more than the $300 that I paid, I didn't have to pay 300. I had to pay $53, I think, 55, something like that. Because I only had to pay my copay versus the bill. And the hospitals hate this. They hate it that people are learning more and more about the free standards to go to. They treat you much better. They're on time. And it costs a fraction. And this is a crazy story you're telling me that they said they couldn't read it. So what I did was I got the disc as well as the report.
27:23 Speaker 02 So any hospital, anybody could put that disc in their computer and they would see the results. And it's just wrong that they would pretend that only their own scan was a valid scan. Wow. And you know what? I bet you, Janice, any amount of money, that hospital that cheated you this way is a nonprofit that's supposed to be doing things to benefit the community and avoid paying taxes that way. And then they lie and cheat you like that. Ooh.
28:02 Speaker 03 Byron in Kentucky says, I recently upgraded my phone through my prepaid no contract service for $99. This didn't require a plan upgrade, so I got to keep my $15 a month service. However, they collected tax on the full retail value of the phone, which was around $600. If I'm never charged full price for the phone and I'm not subsidizing it with monthly service fees, why do they collect so much tax? Does this just become extra profit when they file their tax return?
28:28 Speaker 02 So Byron, I'm familiar with this because this came up before and there've been stories about this. Different state taxing authorities treat discounts that you receive differently. And what you're telling me is Kentucky is one of the states that's interpreted the sales tax code that you pay on the original price. And they treat it as a, I don't know if they call it a manufacturer's discount or what they call it, but what you pay is not what's used in some states to determine the sales tax. And I find it just a crazy thing that the state would potentially take advantage of you that way.
29:13 Speaker 02 But if you want to verify that it's the state of Kentucky that's doing this to you and not the cellphone provider, cellphone carrier, I would call the state sales and, what do they call it, Sales and Use Tax Office and ask them the situation and ask them, are you supposed to pay tax on the original retail price or what you paid? And you'd get the answer if that's Kentucky's interpretation or an error, let's call it an error, on the part of the cellphone carrier.
29:48 Speaker 03 All right, and this is from Diana in South Carolina. I pay my credit card balances off entirely every month.
29:53 Speaker 02 Good for you.
29:54 Speaker 03 I try to do this before the next statement date, so my statement shows zero due each time. My credit score is excellent. So here's the question. When I receive an offer from my credit card company for a six-month promo for a lower interest rate than the normal rate of my account, example, 9.99% for six months instead of 17%, should I accept these offers even though I'm never owing any interest? Is there a benefit in doing so?
30:18 Speaker 02 No interest, Diana, at all. But if you do pay your balance in full every month, I hope that the card you have is paying you cash back or some other kind of reward because as a net payer, a payer in full every month. You are in a position that a lot of these reward programs would work very well for you. Right now, it's like not even a heavy lift at all to get a card that will pay you 2% cash back on everything you do. And you should be rewarded for your incredible payment habits of always having a zero balance.
30:59 Speaker 02 But taking the offer for the 9.99 for six months does nothing for you unless you're anticipating a really major expense in your life where you wouldn't be able to pay off your balance in full. And with that, we conclude today's podcast. And I want to tell you, we've got so much else available to you. All week long, we've got one-on-one free advice available to you, Monday through Friday, from the Team Clark Consumer Action Center. We've been offering this free advice since February of 1993. You want to know how to get it? Go to Clark.com/CAC.
31:43 Speaker 02 And whether it's free advice, one-on-one, our newsletters, our websites, our social media, our podcasts, our YouTube show, or if you live in a city where I'm on radio or television, I want to tell you, it's always with the same purpose, for you to learn ways to save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. Have a great rest of your day.
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Previous 01.24.25 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Job Change and Your 401(k) Next 01.28.25 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss - Is It Ever Too Late To Save for Retirement? and Big Social Security Change for Millions Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
