Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 07.24.26 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / AI Shopping Bots About this episode Friday - Clark Stinks day! Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. Also, many of us are getting more comfortable using artificial intelligence in our daily lives. While AI can be an incredibly useful tool, a dangerous new trend is emerging that could cost you serious money: AI shopping bots. Before you let an AI bot handle your wallet, you need to understand the hidden agenda at play.
All this and more on the July 24, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show.
Clark Stinks: Segments 1 & 2
AI Shopping Bot Pitfalls: Segment 3
Ask Clark: Segment 4
Mentioned on the show:
Credit Score Guide - Clark Howard
Credit Score Expert Discusses Tips, Mistakes and Misconceptions
Is Your Credit Card Working Against You in 2026? - Clark Howard
How Dividing Your Monthly Credit Card Payment Speeds Up Your Payoff
DateAxios: Exclusive: SpaceXAI, GoPuff want you to shop with Grok
Visa plugs its payment network into ChatGPT, letting AI agents shop and pay for users
This Device Can Help You Avoid an Annoying Car Rental Fee
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. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.
0:29 Speaker 01 Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.
0:42 Speaker 02 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
0:45 Speaker 03 I'm so glad you're with us here on The Clark Howard Show. Our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. And it's that time again, Clark stinks. I'll hear your beefs with my advice. What if somebody's a vegetarian?
1:11 Speaker 04 Well, then have another reason to write a Clark stinks.
1:14 Speaker 03 Oh, man. Coming straight ahead. And later, AI tools are supposedly all the rage to save you money when shopping? Oh, boy. What's behind the curtain? You have to be aware of before you use them. But now it's time for Clark stinks.
1:40 Speaker 05 I should have never encouraged you to speak. You must think I'm pretty stupid. You should be ashamed of yourself. Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong.
1:47 Speaker 04 Maybe you're right, pal. Okay, Eric in North Carolina says, something is rotten, but it's not in Denmark. It's your studio.
2:00 Speaker 03 Ooh.
2:01 Speaker 04 I just listened to your episode talking about leasing apartments and how the balance of power has shifted toward renters, but I just about became unglued when you characterized it. The apartment marketplace is overbuilt. No, this is actually the market rightsizing itself to handle the demand and counter the elevated housing costs everyone's been experiencing over the past decade. Housing advocates have been begging for this situation to occur in order to bring housing costs more in line with people's monthly incomes. Calling the market overbuilt suggests a problem, and that's not okay for people struggling to make ends meet, especially when housing costs have risen so much over the last 50 years compared to increases in people's salaries. If this is a problem, then this is a very, very good problem for a lot of people.
2:46 Speaker 03 Eric, thank you very much for that. Okay. So always think about these things from a business economics standpoint. And in a lot of markets in the South, the Southwest, and parts of the West, apartments have been, from the standpoint of investors, have been overbuilt. And that's why there have been mergers of apartment management companies. Those mergers are out of weakness, not strength. So it's to the good for tenants in markets where rents have gone up and up and up and up that it attracted a lot of money from people who built apartments with pro formas,
3:28 Speaker 03 business plans, that anticipated they would be receiving the kind of rents that landlords were able to push on to tenants in recent years. And too many people made that decision in a lot of markets at the same time, which created an overhang of supply of new apartments in a lot of metro areas. So if you're looking at it from the tenant perspective, I was explaining it from the business side. The net effect is the same in either case. Rents are softening and dropping in a number of markets because of the new inventory.
4:09 Speaker 03 And here's the thing, those apartments being built are all at the high end. Nobody's waking up in the morning and saying, you know, I want to build affordable apartments. Nobody's funding those. They're all funding apartments at the high end. But the ultimate effect of that is it creates additional inventory, which is exactly what we need in the new home market. And that pushes down rents throughout the pricing levels.
4:38 Speaker 04 John in South Dakota says, you stink worse than Cousin Eddie when he was dumping his RV sewage down the street drain in the Christmas Vacation movie.
4:46 Speaker 03 I don't know that scene.
4:48 Speaker 04 You've, you've been seeing National Impunes Christmas Vacation? Oh, my gosh. It's the best. Okay. Recently, a caller said-
4:56 Speaker 03 I know nothing about popular culture.
4:58 Speaker 04 You've watched, okay. Recently, a caller said he had paid off all his credit cards. He asked if he should close the accounts to keep from going into debt again. You told him to keep the accounts open and to also use the cards occasionally to keep his credit score up. Jeez, what is up with you and credit scores? Not everyone needs to bow down at the altar of the almighty FICO score. Why in the world would you suggest and keep suggesting that everyone own multiple credit cards and continue to use them just to keep a high credit score? You hate paying for, yet continue to tell callers to use credit cards just to increase their scores. It's the same thing. Debt is debt. Surely you realize that being in constant debt, which is what happens with the vast majority of credit card users, is a plague on the consumer.
5:43 Speaker 04 I've never heard of a self-made millionaire or multimillionaire saying they got wealthy with their credit card airline miles. Contrary to popular beliefs, a person can buy a house or rent an apartment without a credit score. You have to use a lender or broker that does not, does manual underwriting and has a clue other than looking at a credit score. My wife and I have a virtually zero score. We have no debt since 2011, when we paid off our 20-year mortgage in nine and a half years.
6:10 Speaker 03 Congratulations.
6:11 Speaker 04 We don't own any credit cards and haven't since 2009. We don't finance anything. We use debit cards that are linked to our checking accounts or pay cash for all purchases, even large ones. If we can't pay for it with a debit card or cash in full, we don't buy it. We sleep very well at night knowing we owe no one. We never have arguments over money and it is great to be debt-free. Why don't you suggest to more people to get out of debt and stop worrying about and worshiping a credit score?
6:40 Speaker 03 All right. I thank you. First of all, John, I thank you for your passion. Second, you set such a great example, living a completely debt-free life. Third, credit scores are practical and necessary for certain things. You didn't mention you had any trouble getting auto or homeowner's insurance. In many states, your credit score, what's on your credit report, is the number one determining factor, what you're approved for, for auto or homeowner's insurance, and what premiums you pay. And if somebody wants to buy a home,
7:21 Speaker 03 you talked about using a lender or a broker that uses alternative methods to generate a loan. Those loans tend to carry meaningfully higher interest rates than one based on a credit score. I'm talking about manipulating FICO essentially, that somebody who was in debt successfully pays off debt. And what I have also said is that if you keep those credit cards and use them just tactically so that you keep your credit score solid, and you will get into a habit of getting into debt again, then you close the accounts. But if you think you can control how you use them,
8:07 Speaker 03 it is a, in my mind, for most people, a necessary procedure so that you maintain an active credit score and a good one for the various ways that the insurance industry and the financial industry use them to evaluate you. You know, people don't know their customer anymore. And a FICO score has become a substitute. In a marketplace where people don't know their customer, you have been able to make it work, living a completely debt-free existence. I am a debt-free person, but I use credit as a payment system that I pay in full each month.
8:51 Speaker 03 We're both at the same end result. I just think for most people, having an active credit history and profile is really valuable.
9:01 Speaker 04 I also want to just point out, a lot of employers now, almost all I know, pull credit reports when they're hiring.
9:08 Speaker 03 That is true.
9:10 Speaker 04 Diana, Massachusetts, says Clark's advice to check seasonally for subscriptions to cancel isn't really odiferous, but there's, here's a different suggestion on how to manage them. Since limited-time promo offers are usually the best way to snag a deal on a streaming service, just keep track of expiration dates with a calendar. The minute I sign up for a promo offer, I record the signup info and set a reminder on the calendar several weeks before the expiration date to reevaluate. For short-time promos with a particular service, I'll give a heads up to my TV-watching spouse that he may want to focus on shows from that service until the offer ends. Then we cancel, focus on other services or deals, and wait for another promo offer if it's a serious one we consider using again. Also, don't forget that a two- or more-person household
9:55 Speaker 04 offers additional chances to take advantage of offers. Love the show and hope that Clark had a very happy birthday last month.
10:02 Speaker 03 Thank you very much. It was a great birthday. And I love all the suggestions we're getting about methods that people use to deal with subscription creep. And bills that you're like, where'd that come from? I don't watch that service, or whatever it is. So I had suggested doing it every time we change seasons, just because it's an easy thing to remember. And you'll be able to capture an expense at least once every 90 days. You'll be able to dump out of things. But your suggestion of use a, if you're Good with a calendar using that. It's great too. And I welcome other suggestions.
10:47 Speaker 03 How to deal with the endless subscription monster that you always need a baseball bat to beat down. Cause it always seems when you have a family, it always seems to come back to life.
10:59 Speaker 04 And we had the suggestion last week to put all of them on one credit card that you don't use much. So they'll stand out.
11:04 Speaker 03 That was fun, too.
11:05 Speaker 04 Russ in Connecticut says, there was a recent question where Sheri was disgusted by the recent increase on the Costco City Visa card. Clark provided a clear explanation why the interest rate may have changed. And that Citibank was responsible for the interest rates, not Costco. However, I think Howard missed an important point. Sheri indicated she pays her card twice a month and does not carry a balance. So while she may be disgusted, the impact on her because she carries no balance is zero.
11:35 Speaker 03 Right. I have a confession to make. Do you know, I don't know what the interest rate is on any credit card I have. Because I never run a balance. And I always say, you know, you need to know the interest rate on your cards. And that's a hundred percent the fact if you run balances. And most people run balances are just as in the dark about their interest rates as I am. But it's a distinction with a difference that you just made.
12:06 Speaker 04 Kurt in Arizona says, Clark, Clark, Clark, you talked about charging rental applicants fees for conducting a background check. You say you hate fees and then you seem to have no issue passing this cost, the cost of your business along to the consumer. You are the one requiring the check. You pay it.
12:24 Speaker 03 Okay. So Kurt, it's not a junk fee. It's an actual hard cost that a prospective tenant faces.
12:34 Speaker 03 That a landlord has as a cost for someone who may just be thinking, well, maybe I want to go to that apartment and they're putting in an application. It requires that a tenant be more serious, a prospective tenant be more serious about it being a place they might want to live. Think about what it would be like, particularly for a small landlord, if people kept inquiring about it and wanting to put in an application. The landlord has hard costs with that and then that person actually doesn't buy, doesn't sign a lease. They've got that cost and no benefit at all.
13:15 Speaker 03 So I hear you and I'm, this happened more than once this week that I've been talking about something from the perspective of business and also from consumer.
13:28 Speaker 04 Jeff in Colorado says, Clark, you don't stink, but your guidance on 529 plans is dangerous. You usually recommend investing in the age-based portfolios. These become more conservative the closer you get to college enrollment. Many of the age-based portfolios have 40 to 60% or they're investments in stock and bond funds. I think what they mean is they have a 40 60 split of investments in stock and bond funds, even up to and including the year they expect to use the funds. In years like 2022, this results in large decline in account balances. We lost over $6,000 in '22 when we started withdrawing from the account because both bonds and stocks were sharply down. Please suggest investing in 100% short-term reserves once the student approaches the
14:12 Speaker 04 age of needing the funds to avoid an unusual decline in both stock and bond markets.
14:18 Speaker 03 Jeff, thank you. And you're going back to '22, which was a bizarre year and it was a year there was total correlation in stocks and bonds. They both fell at the same time. This is an unusual and rare occurrence and brutalized your 529 account. In a normal year, and you look back, you can back test this over the years since 529s came along and look in the years since the unfortunate losses you suffered. And normally, the age-based portfolio for a student
14:58 Speaker 03 Who is enrolled in school will be conservative enough, but there are also states that in their age-based portfolios, once you are enrolled, do become much more, as you suggested, that are basically overwhelmingly short-term reserves. I've seen that with my middle child's, my daughter's 529 plan did that, where, once she was enrolled in school, it became essentially a short-term reserve plan. So, the age-based portfolios do vary from administrator to administrator
15:40 Speaker 03 and state to state. And I'm really sorry you suffered that unfortunate loss right at that time in history when they didn't zig and zag, they both zagged at the same time.
15:53 Speaker 04 Robert in North Carolina says, Clark, you don't stink, but you left an easy tip out of your story in the newsletter about using reward gift cards that act like credit cards. And this was a tip I learned from listening to your show. Some online merchants, notably Amazon, will let you load and reload a gift card in a custom amount. For example, if you have $5.83 left on a Visa gift card, you can load it into your Amazon Wallet payment methods, then reload your Amazon gift card balance with the remaining balance from the card. We've done this dozens of times with various Visa and MasterCard gift cards since learning about it from one of the listeners on your show. Clearly, he did not leave a lasting memory for you. Thanks for all you do.
16:32 Speaker 03 Thank you. And, okay, so this is another area where people have been so helpful to us with the reward cards that have money that starts accruing fees. And we're not talking about reward credit cards. We're talking about kind of like rebate cards, gift cards, and being able to empty that money out of them, particularly what is known in the industry as breakage, where companies benefit from small amounts that people leave cumulatively over all the many people who have cards. They kind of forget about the cards when the balance is below like 10 bucks.
17:14 Speaker 03 And this is a way for you to make sure you don't have any breakage in your life. And the money you have ends up working for you instead of going poof.
17:25 Speaker 04 David Nevada says, you stink for being so kind, friendly and funny while making being cheap look so good. I love it when Lane comes on the air to tell you how it is and congrats on your son being a pilot, but I just can't forgive the fact that you and Krista are diehard Android users. I know Android is open source, but some of us prefer iPhones. Security, switch to Apple.
17:46 Speaker 03 Well, you know, the thing for me with Android is that Apple decides like a dictator, what phones you can have, what shape they're going to be, size, how good the screen's going to be, how good the camera's going to be. And you can only buy what Apple says you can have and use the Apple operating system. What I love about Android is I can have, you know, a screen like this, for those of you who watch the YouTube show, that gives me the ability to have what Apple is going to have next year. And when they present
18:28 Speaker 03 it, it's going to be, nothing like this has ever existed before for Apple customers. So yeah, is the walled garden that Apple offers more secure? No doubt. Does Apple do a phenomenal job at allowing content to move across all your devices from your iPad to your phone to your computer? I mean, it's incredible to your watch, all the things that are so beautifully integrated. Every member of my family is with you and explains that to me. So I just love with the phone, having the versatility of being able to buy
19:11 Speaker 03 any kind of hardware from any manufacturer, instead of being a prisoner to what Apple decides I can have as a phone. So that's really what it's about. Now, market share speaks. In the United States, a majority of phones being purchased are iPhones.
19:30 Speaker 03 And of our listeners and viewers, it's overwhelmingly iPhone. So the market is doing your work for you. People are gravitating to what works for them. I just happen to be in that group of people, the minority of people in the United States, who really love my Android phone. And that's why I use it. So yeah, I'd like better security, but I love my Android. Thank you all for all your posts on Clark stinks today. Every week, if you listen regularly to Clark stinks, you can hear how different one thing
20:11 Speaker 03 after another after another is, and how much you have to teach me, how much I have to learn, how much I have to, even though I had an opinion that maybe was fact and right at one time, that I need to change as the circumstances change, as technology changes, as life changes. And you help me do that. So please, if there's something you've heard me say, watch me talk about, and you're like, Clark, come on, don't just say it to yourself. Go to Clark.com/ClarkStinks and post it. Coming up ahead, I want to talk to you about where AI is definitely not your friend.
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21:37 Speaker 02 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
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23:09 Speaker 03 More and more of us are getting really comfortable in incorporating AI into our daily lives. I use routinely two of them. I use Gemini, but my favorite is Claude. Other people use ChatGPT. Others use Grok, you name it. And these things can be useful tools in our lives. Don't take what you get as a response because the way they respond is like, this is fact, fact, fact. And I've been testing these with questions that are, that are things that I know the answer
23:49 Speaker 03 to. And there are times that Gemini and Claude are just, they're just plain wrong, but they make it sound like 100%. This is it. And then there are times I've used them and they've been a fantastic aide or assistant. So it is a mixed bag, but I want to tell you, everybody in the business in that industry is trying to generate revenue, obviously from the enormous cost of improving these tools for the companies that own them and trying to get market share one from another and boost the value of the enterprises. So the shortcut that is like the thing of the moment is
24:33 Speaker 03 using them to shop. And let me tell you where this is a problem. You've got to look to see what the hidden agenda is. And many times with the AI shopping tools, the real agenda is to generate referral income from partners who have captured essentially the AI tool for their purposes. So you think you're doing an actual real AI search of shopping for something, I don't care what it is, consumer goods, travel, whatever it is you're trying to make a purchase decision
25:14 Speaker 03 on, be very aware and wary that there is a lot of hidden agenda stuff going on. And you think that AI has found you the lowest price on blah, blah, blah. Well, guess what? Many times it's not close to the lowest price. It's the lowest price on who's paying them to do the search. It's not a legit lowest price.
25:42 Speaker 03 The latest in this game is credit card companies that are offering you AI tools. And the idea is it's expedited shopping that there's a couple of hidden agendas here going on at the same time. One is to generate fee income for the credit card processing network that is promoting the AI shopping tool. The other is pushing you towards buying stuff from certain preferred vendors. So again, ease of use that is really easy to harm your wallet. Be aware and
26:26 Speaker 03 be very wary using AI shopping bots that say, trust us, we're your friend.
26:35 Speaker 04 You know, who is your friend? The Clark Deals team. We have real people doing it.
26:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, it's funny. This is going to sound self-serving, but it's actually a fact. When we set up Clark Deals almost 11 years ago now, it was because of a real frustration that we had as a team, that a lot of the bargain sites out there were actually just advertorial sites. And they were not actually telling you, hey, there's this hot deal on whatever. They were promoting whatever they were getting paid to promote. And we wanted to set up a deal site that was clean. You know, that the people on the deals team, they know their only mission is to
27:20 Speaker 03 not waste your time and give you real deals. And so all that we're talking about here with the AI is a new level of sophistication at making you think that you've actually found a real deal when you might not have found a real deal.
27:38 Speaker 04 All right, Deborah in Missouri wrote in and says, she says, Clark, we currently have $960,000 in Vanguard, 480K in Fidelity, and 700K in Schwab. I manage the accounts and would like to make my life easier by transferring everything to Fidelity. My husband, who thinks I-
27:55 Speaker 03 If I did quick math, that means you got over 2 million bucks in the three of them. That's pretty great.
28:02 Speaker 04 My husband, who thinks I do a good job with our accounts, thinks I would be, quote, "putting all our eggs in one basket by doing that. Do you think merging our accounts into one institution is a good idea? And if you do, can you help me convince my husband it's a good idea?"
28:17 Speaker 03 So you ask me, do I want you to have my three favorite children? Or do I want you to pick one over the other two? I mean, I have three kids in my life. I'm not going to name a favorite child. They're all three my favorite children, and they're all different. So now in the real world, not my own family. So I think it's fine to consolidate your assets with one of the three. The simplicity of it, I'm with all three. And it's a lot of work. And plus, I have accounts other places. It's a lot to deal with. And I think about the proliferation of people having 401Ks from older employers that are
29:01 Speaker 03 at who knows how many different places, and how likely they are to lose track of those. And the advantage of consolidating. Here's the problem in your case. You don't say in this over $2 million, and again, congratulations, Deborah, how much of it is in investment accounts instead of retirement accounts? If it's in investment accounts, depending on the holdings in them, some of them may be house account kind of items, that you will trigger capital gains tax consolidating, because you might have to sell certain things to close out an account with one of these three companies and migrate the money and buy again.
29:45 Speaker 03 And then you're harvesting tax bills you wouldn't have to otherwise. If it's all in retirement shelters that you generate no tax moving the money, consolidating sounds great. You know, with all three- Vanguard is obviously the lowest cost of any of the three overall, but the cost differences between the three are really relatively small enough versus the overall investment environment. But if you want to do it, minus the tax hit you could have, I think you could go for it.
30:19 Speaker 04 Crystal in Florida says, I've owned a small business for approximately eight years. I've cash flowed everything. I decided to look for a business loan to start building business credit so I can acquire a vehicle for the business and purchase a couple of pieces of medical equipment. The process took over four weeks. I was only wanting to borrow $20,000. I had to get all of these invoices together for what I wanted to purchase. Once they finally approved all of the invoices, I was carefully reading over the contract. The company would lease me the equipment and at the end of the terms of the loan, I would be obligated to return the equipment. I was kind of blown away. Why in the world would I want to pay for this equipment only to give it to the lender after I worked hard to pay it off? Is this common?
31:03 Speaker 04 I didn't take the loan and decided to open a card and take a couple of lines of credit out with a couple of medical supply companies. This blew me away.
31:12 Speaker 03 So Crystal, you discovered something that most of us have learned who've been small business owners over the years. Business lending is a swamp. The disclosures that are required in consumer lending do not exist in business lending. And a lot of the players in business lending are really sleaze balls. So you have to be very, very careful with business lending. So let me give you an example. You wanted to have credit for the business and you wanted to acquire a vehicle. You've been in business nearly a decade. So whatever bank you use for your business checking
31:54 Speaker 03 would love to lend you money for that vehicle purchase. And what they do require, even though you've been in the business eight years, they may require. A personal guarantee, they may not, depending on having been your bank for that period of time. And they will probably lend you money at a very favorable rate. You'll own it, you'll be establishing, it'll be additional, if they do require a cosign, it'll be additional credit in your individual record, but it will also establish credit for you as a business. I mean, that's the easiest way to do it. Although you did other things that work as well, industry trade lines that you did in your industry is a
32:39 Speaker 03 good way to establish. Be very careful, though, what the interest rates are on the lines of credit you were able to take out and business card, industry card you were able to take out. The interest levels do not have to have full disclosure for these business loans. You want to make sure you're not paying crazy amounts like, it's not all unusual for small business lending. For people who are low credit risk, being kind into 50% to 60% interest rates on business loans.
33:13 Speaker 04 Wow. Okay, Matt Nevada says, I'm sure you have mentioned this before, but I just wanted to give your listeners a warning about a sneaky rental car charge. While visiting the Panhandle of Florida, I had no idea that a major rental car company would charge a $9.99 convenience fee for using a $2 toll road. If I knew that, I would have taken the route back to Pensacola that was 23 minutes longer.
33:39 Speaker 03 Okay, Matt, I can top it. I can top it. I was in Tidewater, Virginia. I had put on my Google Maps, avoid tolls. And it's taking me on a route. And all of a sudden, I end up on the freeway and I notice as I'm driving past the exit, it says, last exit before toll.
34:01 Speaker 04 Front row.
34:02 Speaker 03 So I get this toll and the car rental company charged me the toll plus, what was their convenience fee? $25.
34:16 Speaker 04 Were you screaming as you went through the toll?
34:21 Speaker 04 Were you alone?
34:21 Speaker 03 Very high pitched.
34:22 Speaker 04 Were you alone in the car?
34:23 Speaker 03 I was alone in the car.
34:24 Speaker 04 Oh, boy.
34:25 Speaker 03 There was nothing I could do. There was no place I could even make an illegal U-turn.
34:30 Speaker 04 You were sweating?
34:32 Speaker 03 So I sent the bill to Alphabet, the parent company of Google. No, I mean, man, they stuck me big time. So I call up the car rental company and they said, yeah, it's in your contract. I said, $25 fee? Yeah, well, look at all the work we have to do. It was like, so that's when I bought.
34:57 Speaker 04 Your transponder?
34:59 Speaker 03 Yeah. So I have a multi-state toll reader that suction cups to the windshield that when I get in a rental car, I register it to that plate or tag. When I get out of the rental car, I remove it from that tag. And you know, I learned that because I forgot to remove it one time and I started getting toll bills for some money.
35:22 Speaker 04 Ooh.
35:24 Speaker 03 Vehicle to my, yeah. I took the transponder out, but I forgot to remove that plate.
35:30 Speaker 04 Even Clark Howard has consumer issues sometimes.
35:33 Speaker 03 Of course I do. But this thing, Matt, is such a rental car ripoff. So much so, do you know the Orlando airport got into a war with the car rental companies doing this to people? That they have a big display where you can get one of the temporary toll readers so the car rental companies can't rip you off at that airport. Cause the airport authority kept having people scream at them about getting ripped off on these phony toll charges. And they were like, yeah, this is ridiculous. And they did something about it that I thought was really nice.
36:10 Speaker 04 They got to protect the tourists from, that are going to the happiest place in the world, right?
36:15 Speaker 03 That's right. Costco.
36:21 Speaker 03 So how many times in your life have you been to Walt Disney World or Disneyland?
36:25 Speaker 04 I've been there, I think it's three times now.
36:29 Speaker 03 Well, I've been three also, two at Disney World and one at Disneyland.
36:34 Speaker 04 Oh, actually, I did go to Disneyland one time with a friend, so four.
36:37 Speaker 03 So you're one ahead of me.
36:38 Speaker 04 Yep, three at Disney World.
36:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, it's tough for me to go to an amusement park because I'm lineophobic.
36:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, I mean, the costs, I wouldn't go again. I'm not going again. My kids are grown, I'm out. Maybe when I have grandkids, if I have them. But I mean, by then, it's gonna be like, you're gonna have to mortgage your home to go.
36:58 Speaker 03 Oh, I think you already have to mortgage your home to go to an amusement park.
37:02 Speaker 04 It's wild.
37:03 Speaker 03 It is crazy, crazy expensive. Hey, by the way, since we're talking about Orlando, we talked about amusement parks. We talked about the toll readers. Know that the admission costs are variable at the parks. And you can generally look at a calendar for any of the major amusement parks. And you can see when the prices drop because it's dynamic demand pricing now. So there are times that you can go that it's not gonna be as crowded, maybe, and you get the lower price. And then others where it's gonna be packed to the gills, you pay the big money.
37:44 Speaker 03 Or you pay much bigger money to go into like an executive line with the, they called fast passes or something?
37:52 Speaker 04 That sounds right.
37:53 Speaker 03 Whatever they're called.
37:54 Speaker 04 Executive, executive Disney visitor.
37:57 Speaker 03 All of that is way outside of anything that I would do. Not happening. Not gonna spend that money. It's just a fact. This is also a fact. It's time for the weekend. And your job is to go out and have a great time this weekend.
38:20 Speaker 03 Do something for yourself. Go out for a walk. Enjoy the summer weather. Depending on how hot it is where you are, maybe that walk's early in the day or just before sunset. But go enjoy your day, your weekend, and we're with you all weekend long at Clark.com and Clarkdeals.com. Empowerment for you never sleeps. Know we're all about your empowerment for these purposes. So you will learn ways to save more, spend less, and never, never, not ever get ripped off. See you Monday.
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