Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 05.05.25 Burglars Go High Tech / Avoid This Hotel Booking Mistake About this episode Today, Clark has 2 key warnings. First - you won’t believe how burglars are casing your home now using hidden high tech - what to look out for. And - how to avoid getting burned when booking a hotel. Plus, Clark answers your questions - post at Clark.com/ask. Burglar Surveillance: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Hotel Booking Warning: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: How to Stop the Burglars Who Are Planting Hidden Security Cameras How to Get a Mortgage in 8 Steps Cheapest Way to Rent a Car: Expert Tips 5 Things to Know About the Costco Car Rental Program AutoSlash Review: How To Save on a Rental Car 3 Reasons You Should Never Book a Nonrefundable Hotel Room Travel Insurance: What You Need To Know Before You Buy Clark.com resources Episode transcripts Community. Clark.com / Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript 0:04 Speaker 00 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 so you make better financial decisions in your life. And today I've got two key warnings for you. First, you're not going to believe the new way that police are reporting burglars are casing your home. Okay, I would not have thought of this. Later, how I want you to avoid getting burned when you book a hotel this summer. There's some stuff you gotta know. Also get to your questions.
0:45 Speaker 00 You can post your questions for me at Clark.com/ask. So, this is a stunner, but it's something that CNET first did a warning about this. And when I read it, I was like, really? Really? You're going to give me that to worry about? And now there have been a number of other reports of this. So, CNET, good for you. You were early on this. Criminals are putting portable cameras on the property of houses that they are casing for burglary. So, do
1:23 Speaker 00 you know about Hunter's cameras? Hunter's cameras are these cameras that run on battery. They can be placed pretty discreetly, almost anywhere. They have an SD card typically in them because there's not going to be Wi-Fi usually for them. And so, the perpetrator, the would-be burglar, is recording video, timestamped, to figure out your commuting patterns, when people are likely to be home, when they're not, things like this. It's not something you'd normally be looking for. And that's the whole reason. I'm not trying
2:05 Speaker 00 to put you in the school of paranoia, although that can be the effect of talking about something like this. But instead, to get it into your mind that if you see a little camera that's placed somehow looking at your house, and you didn't put it there...
2:25 Speaker 00 It could be somebody casing you.
2:28 Speaker 01 Definitely going to be on the lookout for that.
2:30 Speaker 00 Yeah. Do you know what a hunter's camera looks like?
2:33 Speaker 01 No, I guess I should pull up some pictures.
2:35 Speaker 00 So often they're, they're sold all over. They're cheap. And they tend to be camouflage because if you're using them, the purpose of them is like for deer hunters or stuff like that, to be able to have a lookout and see the migration patterns of game that they're going to go to want to hunt and see their traffic, traffic patterns, whatever you call them, migration patterns. And now they're being used for this purpose. And you think about those ads that Ring is running right now. I don't know if you've seen any of them. They show how many people are getting caught by the security cameras. This is just taking the technology and turning it around,
3:20 Speaker 00 using it for a bad purpose instead of being used as a way to catch the burglar, catch the Porsche pirate or whatever. And technology can always be used for good and for bad. And this is an example of being used for bad.
3:42 Speaker 01 Well, I, as I get older, I enjoy watching birds and nature more. So I will be looking at my trees very, very carefully. Just put it, make it part of a mindfulness practice, I guess. Like just look at every branch.
3:55 Speaker 00 I'm trying to think how to describe the size of these cameras. They're like the size of, this is such a historical reference too. Like three cigarette packs together.
4:06 Speaker 01 Oh God, okay.
4:07 Speaker 00 Nobody even knows what cigarette packs look like anymore, do they?
4:10 Speaker 01 Some do.
4:10 Speaker 00 Seven percent of adult smoke now, I think is the percent.
4:13 Speaker 01 Well, I think they're vaping. There's a lot of vaping going on. Okay. We'll go to questions on that happy, happy note. Jeremy in Georgia sent this in. I will be making a move soon to take a new job in an area where I've previously lived. I would like to buy a home there and should have enough money for a good down payment. However, over the last year, I've only had part-time and self-employed income. How long will I need to work at the new full-time job before trying to get pre-approved for a mortgage? Thanks for any advice you can give.
4:45 Speaker 00 So first of all, Jeremy, good luck in your new location that was an old location for you.
4:50 Speaker 01 Check the trees.
4:53 Speaker 00 Hope the new job is wonderful for you. All right, so I'm going to give you the book answer. The book answer in applying for a conventional mortgage is two years of work at a traditional full-time job. So many people today don't fit that box. So if you're looking for the conventional answer, it would be that two years after you're at this job, that's when you can qualify for a conventional mortgage and go through the process of buying a home. But there's many alternatives. You go to a mortgage broker, tell them your situation, and they may be able to place a loan for you.
5:37 Speaker 00 It will be a higher cost loan, may even be a five-one-arm, you know, five years fixed, and then adjustable after that to give you time to get the work history that allows you to refi into a traditional conventional loan. Or you may find that you can go to a credit union or a small local bank and get what's known as an in-portfolio loan, which is where, based on you having a good credit score, but not that two years' work history, that you're able to get a loan that they hold in the credit union or hold it inside the community bank instead of selling it off
6:22 Speaker 00 in the secondary market where the lender doing the loan has to meet all the checkmarks. So it's not an impossible situation. It's just more work and potentially a more expensive loan doing it without the normal work history.
6:41 Speaker 01 Darcy in Arizona says, "I know that Clark is turning 70 in June and plans to start collecting social security at that time. Since Clark recommends starting the application four months before your birthday, I'm sure he has already started his application. My question for Clark is, have you run into any snags because of the decrease in manpower at the agency? Do you have any additional tips besides starting the application four months out?"
7:04 Speaker 00 So I did start four months out with my application, and it took longer for it to be approved than what I've heard in the past, but I have my approval letter. What Darcy's talking about is Doge.
7:20 Speaker 00 Did a huge reduction in number of employees at social security and closed a large number of offices. And at first mandated that you would have to go in person and have an appointment to go in person to do your social security application. Very quickly, it became clear that they'd never get people processed in many, many, many months. So now the old system seems to be back in place, but there's still the shortage of workers and shortage of offices. So that's why the four-month rule is really important right now, so that your social security check starts when you want it to.
8:01 Speaker 01 Hey, and Paul in Florida says, "My wife and I are planning a trip to the Seattle area to visit our daughter. On our last trip, we used Turo for a car rental, and we're very pleased. However, their current prices have greatly increased. Upon checking Priceline, they are offering a prepaid program with extremely advantageous pricing, but the name of the rental company is not indicated. Is the Priceline offer legitimate, or should we be wary?"
8:26 Speaker 00 I don't like the express deals from Priceline, except just before you're taking the trip, because there's no flexibility with them at all. So let's say you book, and you're planning to go visit your daughter, and something happens, she has to go out of town for work, or whatever, and you can't go when you were gonna go, you have to rebook your trip. You forfeit that money from the Priceline Express rental car deal. You also don't know who you're gonna be with, and if you have the car rental membership programs, you're not able to use those. So it is a very, very inflexible offer with the Priceline
9:08 Speaker 00 Express deals, because it's a blind sale of a rental, and you own it even if you never use it at that point. So I like for you to book a conventional rental, and if you're a Costco member... I so believe in the Costco Travel Car Rental Program. It saves you so much money, it's ridiculous. And not every time, but generally, it's going to beat everything else out there doing the Costco Travel Car Rental Program. And those bookings are not non-refundable, non-changeable, or anything like that.
9:48 Speaker 00 But as I always say, reshop your car rental wherever you do it the week before you're going. It saves me so much money. I'd say at least 80% of the time, but probably more like 90. I'm rebooking my car rentals the week before I go at a lower price than I had reserved before. If you book a Priceline Express deal, you miss those lower prices that come along. So I'd say when you reshop your car rental a week out, it's pretty much certain you're going to go. If the Priceline Express deal is better than anybody else, then you book it.
10:25 Speaker 01 And just quickly, like the other sites you'd recommend checking?
10:29 Speaker 00 Well, I love Costco Travel. I think you can get a survey of the marketplace at rentalcars.com and get a good feel. The car rental market is cheaper than it's been in a good while. It's interesting, you said that the Turo is much more expensive than you recall. But car rental rates have come way, way down of late. And part of it may be because airline bookings have really softened. And car rentals so often are tied indirectly with somebody going on a flight first. And the airlines are racing to park planes as quick as they can right now because of a softening of demand for air travel.
11:14 Speaker 00 But it takes a while to get those planes parked. And so airlines are offering better and better fares. I mean, I just booked some flights that usually you complain about how expensive tickets are. I just booked flights so cheap, I couldn't believe it for several trips I'm taking over the next six. Weeks and best fares I've seen for this time of year in years and years and years.
11:39 Speaker 01 I just wanted to mention on the car rental, just going back to that for a second. I do like Auto Slash as well, and I've gotten deals on Priceline through Auto Slash that are cheaper than Priceline's publishing. So that's another option to just survey.
11:51 Speaker 00 I should have mentioned Auto Slash and Hotel Slash are both services of a particular company that that originally was designed to automatically reshop your hotel rooms or your car rentals. But everybody in the industry hated what they were doing. So now it just is a shopping service and booking service that can save you quite a bit of money. I should have mentioned it. But that's why you're here because you're the smarter one.
12:20 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. I think everyone knows that's not true.
12:22 Speaker 00 That is not true. You are the smartest there is.
12:26 Speaker 01 Speaking of travel.
12:27 Speaker 00 Yes. Coming up ahead, I want to talk about what you need to know about booking a hotel for this summer or even beyond. There's stuff you got to be aware of because there's a lot of dirty dealing going on out there for your room at the end, and I'll fill you in.
12:47 Speaker 00 So a lot of people book hotels totally unrelated to air travel. You're on the road. You're driving somewhere. Most trips this summer are by car, not by air. And so when you book a hotel, whether it's after you've landed from a plane or driving somewhere, there's something that was out in the marketplace last summer, and I didn't like it. And now it's everywhere. Hotel rooms being offered non-refundable, non-changeable. Don't do it. Don't do it.
13:28 Speaker 00 Because with the hotel thing, life happens. You book a hotel and you later can't go or you miss the opportunity to reshop and find a better deal. Well, you're out your money. And I'm going to tell a story out of school on my middle brother. He and I were talking about booking for a family event we were going to. He found a deal that he was saving just a little bit of money booking non-refundable. And I said, don't do that. Don't do that. It's not worth the savings you're getting. And as luck would have it, the family event we were going to was canceled.
14:12 Speaker 00 Did I ever say I told you so? I am right now.
14:15 Speaker 01 You don't sound like you're very sad about it being canceled.
14:17 Speaker 00 No, no, no. I mean, this is a couple of years now, so I can just laugh about it. But I am saying I told you so now.
14:25 Speaker 01 I mean, luck would have it.
14:27 Speaker 00 Yeah. So anyway, as unlucky would have it, the family event gets canceled and my brother's money gets canceled on him for a room he doesn't get to use. That's just one example. The thing with the non-refundable hotels is the hotels are like, hey, it's working for the airlines. Why wouldn't it work for us? But how does it work at the airlines? Unless you buy one of those yucky awful basic economy tickets that you, they're like buying a ticket to a concert. You use it or you lose it. Except with the concert, you can sell the ticket in the secondary market to someone else.
15:11 Speaker 00 You can't sell that basic economy ticket to someone else when you can't go. You just lose the money. So with hotels, they basically adopted the basic economy airline model where most people buy an airline ticket that you can't get a refund, but you can change your date without any penalty. The hotels are doing though, pretty much blanket the basic economy thing. You book that hotel, you save that little bit of money by making it non-refundable,
15:50 Speaker 00 and then you're stuck. You miss my nirvana, which is being able to reshop my hotel a week or so out where I almost always get a lower price for my stay than I originally booked. You miss that for that puny little savings you're getting with that non-refundable.
16:13 Speaker 01 Nirvana.
16:14 Speaker 00 Well, I don't know. Is that not an appropriate term?
16:17 Speaker 01 I guess it is for you.
16:19 Speaker 00 Is that a little strong?
16:20 Speaker 01 How you feel?
16:21 Speaker 00 Nirvana wallet, whatever.
16:22 Speaker 01 Your greatest joy?
16:23 Speaker 00 Greatest joy, yeah. Saving money. Anyway.
16:26 Speaker 01 It's time to reshop my hotel room. I mean, that's the great thing about you. You're so easy to please. Like, you know, it doesn't take much.
16:33 Speaker 00 I make the mundane exciting in the exciting mundane.
16:36 Speaker 01 You do.
16:37 Speaker 00 Yeah. Something about, Laine and I, my wife and I, were on this great trip to England last summer, and we're right near Buckingham Palace. And she's saying, "Look at this, look at that." And then I see a car I haven't seen before. And all I'm doing is looking at the car and taking a picture of the car and all that. And she's like, "No, no, no. You're supposed to be looking over here at these beautiful gardens and the palace behind them." No, I can make anything exciting dull and make anything dull exciting. That's just who I am. All right. Now, this is not exciting, and pay attention to this, and
17:18 Speaker 00 this is bad, ugly. Here's the other thing with hotels. Google is having a big problem. A big problem. And I'm not talking about all the antitrust lawsuits they keep losing. Criminals and con artists have cracked the code on busting Google search results. And as an example, let's say I'm searching for blah blah hotel in Chicago for July. And so I'm searching for this particular hotel because I stayed there before and I loved it and I do a Google search for it. And then I see the results and I think I'm looking at the hotel's own website and I click on it to book that hotel.
18:03 Speaker 00 Well, bad news for you and me. You look at those results, one after another, after another, after another are phony baloney crooks. So you click to book that hotel and what you're getting is you're getting usually some terrible, sleazy, third party that came up with a website that looks like that hotel. And you book and they may actually book a room for you, but at a cost that could be 50% higher, twice as expensive, whatever, than what it would actually be if you had gone to the actual real website of that hotel.
18:48 Speaker 00 I've talked before about not trusting Google searches for customer no service numbers. I mean, you get customer no service just fine when you call the real number. Don't complicate it by calling a fake one. So Google searches are really something that is no longer applicable when you're trying to find an organization or in this case, we're talking about right now, a hotel. What should you be doing? When you're trying to go somewhere, you want to go, in a hotel case, you want to go to the chain itself.
19:28 Speaker 00 And then you can click on the individual location you're interested in, click next on their own website for that hotel and then you're getting somewhere. You're getting the real thing. But when you use a Google search, you're just asking for it with an airline. Car rental, hotel, any big company, you go to their website, their main website, and then try to find where they've hidden, how you actually contact somebody there. But do not do a Google search unless you want trouble in your life.
20:08 Speaker 00 Google is no longer, I mean, it's a reputable company, but their search data no longer is effective or actually something you can trust. And that's a problem for Google, but more important, it's a problem for you and for me.
20:27 Speaker 01 Okay, I've got some questions for you. Lucas in California says, "I'm curious what Clark thinks about travel insurance. My mom and I just got back from Kauai and we're booking another trip for the same time next year. The trip insurance..."
20:39 Speaker 00 Wild Chicken Island?
20:40 Speaker 01 Yes. "The trip insurance was around $212. It says it covers cancellations, etc., but it also says that it covers any kind of injury or an emergency room visit while on the trip. Booking so far in advance, I just went ahead and got it just in case something happens between now and the trip. It seemed like a small price to pay for peace of mind. What's your opinion on trip insurance?" And then if it's okay with you, Clark, I'm going to read a second one here as well because it's similar. Lydia in Colorado says, "Clark, you're the best. I'm wondering your thoughts on the travel insurance provided by Airbnb. I only need trip insurance to cover our Airbnb stay. Both rental car and flights can be canceled without any ramifications. We're traveling to South Carolina in July. Want to be covered in case of a hurricane or if we cannot travel due to health issues."
21:24 Speaker 00 Okay, so, trip insurance, travel insurance, it's an area that we hear a lot of problems that people have when they try to make a claim. It is a very, very difficult area because having trip insurance or travel insurance is potentially a valuable thing to have because if you're booking things that are often non-refundable, like an Airbnb, or maybe the elements of your trip to Hawaii, to Kauai, that could be non-refundable parts of the trip, walking away from that money, for most people, you know, you work hard for your money, you can't afford to not take the trip and lose all the money.
22:09 Speaker 00 The problem is that trip insurance providers...
22:13 Speaker 00 Are very difficult to work with when you do have a claim. And there's a lot of arguing about covered events. And so the Airbnb story is the Airbnb coverage tends to come from different insurance providers. And often what it covers is things that make it difficult for you to get to the place. Not necessarily cover you not being able to stay at the place itself. What I mean by that is the covered reasons part is very important for you to understand with anything you buy from Airbnb. Will it actually cover what you paid non-refundable for that Airbnb?
22:58 Speaker 00 Or does it only pay if there's a flight interruption? Or a storm that makes it difficult for you to get there, covering trip delay or whatever? So you need to, with any policy, you need to read the coverages thoroughly. And then you need to go read reviews. And people are gaming reviews in the travel trip insurance business by having somebody pops up in a search that will be like their captive kind of review thing. They'll show, everybody loves it. But you want to look third party. You want to see, scroll down and find other sites where there are reviews of that travel insurance and see if it is going to be okay for you.
23:42 Speaker 00 But with any travel insurance policy, there's a look see period that varies by state, which means you buy it and then you have a period of time to review the actual contract of the policy itself. And if you see it really is a bunch of hooey, because there are so many restrictions on when it covers and what it covers, that you have time in that look see period, that's often 30 days, to reject the policy and get your money back.
24:11 Speaker 01 Okay, and we do have an article on buying travel insurance at Clark.com. Glynnis in Texas says, Dear Clark, I'd like to share travel warning with my fellow Clarkies. In DC in March on our family's spring break trip, I researched solutions for the few hours between our arrival in the city and our check-in time at our short-term rental. After reading many reviews of luggage hero, I decided to set up a profile and use the service. Establishing a profile included providing credit card info. I should have known at this step. It was advertised as a shared economy model wherein you check your luggage for a few hours and the vendor is paid through the app and the user is charged through the app. And we have talked about this, like it is a service.
24:51 Speaker 00 Right.
24:51 Speaker 01 This particular location was at a newsstand in a DC metro station. When we arrived with our bags, the newsstand gentleman at the counter said right away, "It's a scam. We have no affiliation with luggage hero and we are getting people in here weekly now thinking this is a legitimate service." I immediately contacted my credit card company to get a new card issued and ensured there were no fraudulent charges. Don't let this happen to you. I felt so foolish and should have realized, but there were numerous reviews that were very convincing, probably AI-generated.
25:21 Speaker 00 So, interesting thing because the last time we had a complaint about it, I did digging, and there are people who use luggage hero who think this is the greatest thing ever because it worked for them. And then there are others who have a problem like you have. It is not a scam, but you want to see people polarized? You read the reviews that people have posted, not where you saw them that looked like they were AI-generated, but actual, real reviews.
25:53 Speaker 01 And this was a scam though. It sounds like somebody created, like as if they were a place with luggage hero, like they were an affiliate and took her money.
26:02 Speaker 00 Oh, you think that's what was going on?
26:04 Speaker 01 That's what I think is going on. I think, you know, because it's one of those models, kind of like, you know, a fake Airbnb, I guess, where you'd go on there and say, "I have this," and then they get a cut. That's what, how I think it's going down.
26:15 Speaker 00 I mean, we're only speculating here on that, what the problem is, but it is a... Kind of libertarian kind of model for storing your bags because they're only playing the match game at luggage hero. So there are complaints people have, they go back to pick up their luggage and the place was closed when they were supposed to be open and they couldn't get their luggage back and stuff like that. So it is something is only as good as the weakest link in the operation. It's just terrible because you go somewhere and you want to be able to go sightseeing, not have to drag your bag with you and all that. And so people need a solution for that.
26:58 Speaker 00 And if you go in the wayback machine, it used to be when you got to an airport, you got to, people used to ride these things called trains, you get to a train station, a bus station, anything like that. There were storage lockers that depending on the size of your luggage, you put your stuff in and you paid to use that locker. And when you came back, you got your stuff out. And unfortunately, those went away because of terrorism where people were putting bombs and those kinds of things. Now it requires a staffed location to do this and it's a hard service to offer. I thank you so much for your post and how interesting that the only two times anybody's
27:42 Speaker 00 ever contacted us about luggage hero are times that it didn't work out. We haven't heard from anybody who had a good experience and I assume there are people where it did work out for you. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope that you've heard something today that is useful to you in your own life that you can use to empower yourself so you're saving more, spending less and avoiding getting ripped off. And I like to mention early in the week that all week long, weekdays, we have free one-on-one advice available for you from our Team Clark Consumer Action Center, something we've been doing since February of 93.
28:30 Speaker 00 One-on-one free advice and guidance with problem solving or a question. And you want to know how to do that? Get that free one-on-one advice? Go to Clark.com/CAC. Tomorrow, we have our Ask an Advisor podcast, and then I'll be back with you on Wednesday.
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