Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 11.07.25 Clark Answers His Critics on Clark Stinks / Screen Out Robocalls About this episode Friday - Clark Stinks day! Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. Also today - Great news - there’s a new weapon against robocalls you should have activated in your phone settings. Clark Stinks: Segments 1 & 2 Stamp Out Robocalls: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: How To Do a Balance Transfer the Right Way Balance Transfer Calculator - Clark Howard Best Balance Transfer Credit Cards: Top Picks for 2025 Top 10 Perks of the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card What’s the Total Value of the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card Perks? Medicare Advantage Warning: Read This Before You Auto-Renew How Much It Will Cost To Watch Every NFL Game in 2025 How To Stop Spam Calls for Good Clark Howard's Simple Steps To Get Better Customer Service Why You Should Never Mail a Check 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
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0:34 Speaker 01 It's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show, where our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. And by the way, I've got some great news for you. There's new weapons that you and I have at our disposal against robo-callers. And gosh, how many of those come in a day? I want to make sure you have set your phone settings to help you with this. I'll tell you what you need to know, but before I get to that, I get to learn from you and your Clark Stinks posts.
1:17 Speaker 02 I should have never encouraged you to speak.
1:19 Speaker 03 You must think I'm pretty stupid.
1:20 Speaker 04 You should be ashamed of yourself. Well, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're right, pal.
1:30 Speaker 05 All right, we're starting out with this one from Warren in Oregon. Clark needs to get one of those super-sized pack of deodorant sticks from Costco because when answering someone who wondered whether to dip into his retirement funds to pay some 24% debt for a rental house he fixed up, Clark suggested personal loans at 6%. Well, there's a better option that he overlooked, and it's generally available to anyone who has a FICO score over 750, and that is balance transfers. 0% interest balance transfers in particular. Sure, they generally have a 3% to 4% upfront fee, but then it's 12, 18, or even 24 months of 0%. Mark your calendar, and if you haven't paid it all off by the End of the term, you can do another balance transfer to another card and get another 12,
2:14 Speaker 05 18, or 24 months. This is also a good way to keep relationships with multiple banks alive while focusing on your day-to-day expenses on a cash back rewards credit card. As long as you're paying the minimum and watching out for that end-of-term cliff, you have flexibility to adjust your payments, which is perfect for matching to the sometimes variable revenue from a rental property.
2:33 Speaker 01 That is a absolutely great suggestion, and we have a balance transfer guide on Clark.com with the latest offers that seem to be out there. I will say that if someone's ratios are too high, they're not going to qualify for a lot of the balance transfer offers right now. I think you said their credit score over 750, you did say that. So that is the key number, is depending on the lender, it could be 740 to 760, somewhere in that range will qualify you for the most generous balance transfer offers.
3:15 Speaker 01 One thing with any balance transfer card, never charge anything to it while you're in that payment holiday. If you charge anything to it, it then takes the payments and puts them at the most unfavorable terms to you, which I don't even want to get into how all that works. Just remember this rule. If you do balance transfer to a balance transfer card where you pay the 3% or 4% upfront and then pay no interest for the one year, 18 months, in the best case it's 24 months, you never charge another penny to it till you finish that interest holiday period.
3:59 Speaker 05 This one from Susan in California, I think, is referring to the couple that was going to Hawaii for a long period of time and wanted to buy spices and all that kind of stuff for cooking. She says, "You really don't stink, but wondering why you didn't recommend placing food items in checked bags? You could fill it full of stuff. I know you don't check bags, but sometimes it works to your advantage rather than paying shipping costs."
4:19 Speaker 01 That is a very valid suggestion. I do have a dead spot in my brain. For anything involving checking bags and your point is completely on the money.
4:33 Speaker 05 Okay, and then Ron in Virginia says, you recently said a heat pump costs more than a traditional HVAC system. What the heck, I'll assume is what he means. WTH, do you think HVAC stands for? Hint, heating, ventilating, air conditioning. A heat pump is an HVAC system. A base heat pump will have the lowest legal efficiency or SEER and probably just a five-year compressor warranty, but a higher SEER unit is likely to have a 10-year compressor warranty and is totally worth the extra cost. First, get a price on the cheapest unit offered and then ask for a price on better units until you get to a price on a 10-year compressor. By the way, don't forget to change the air filter regularly every month on cheap filters or as recommended on higher efficiency filters.
5:19 Speaker 01 So my wife's obsessed with changing our filters herself and you know, she buys them in bulk and changes the filters and that is such a smart suggestion. So I love what you said about HVAC. People think of heat pumps as like their own category, but yeah, they fit under the umbrella of HVAC. But heat pumps are a fantastic way for you to save money in most climates in the United States. Not 100% climates, but most of the time, even though they will often have a higher upfront cost, the cycle of ownership makes them cheaper over time.
6:04 Speaker 05 I assume it's VN, could be Vienn, in Florida says, a listener submitted a question about why their credit score would have dropped to 769. And I think the most logical answer is something that I experienced. I'm surprised Clark did not mention it. I was carrying a credit card given to me by my son-in-law, which was the Citibank Premium Card, which allows Admiral's Club Airport Lounge access. I never charged on the card and I don't remember giving my social security number when he gave me my card and my own name. But when he started carrying a balance, which was similar in size to my My yearly income, my credit took a large hit. This was totally unexpected and I gave him his card back, so he canceled it. His income obviously is quite different than mine,
6:45 Speaker 05 but I like my 816 credit score and I don't like to see it down in the 700s. I'm also surprised Clark did mention that since credit card companies sometimes lower your available credit amount, that this could have also happened to the listener.
6:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you for that. And I did not think about being an authorized user on a family member's card. If it was reflecting in your credit score, then at some point, probably upon application, your social security number was given for you to be an authorized user. So the, the compression of credit limits, we are in a cycle for that right now. And the reason is the banks are terrified that people who've been great payers over the years are suddenly going to default out. So people that are using tiny amounts of their available credit, you may have a bullseye target on you
7:42 Speaker 01 from some of the credit card issuers that they'll say, well, you're only charging $800 a month and you have this $10,000 limit. We're going to drop that limit to 2,500 or something like that. And that can be devastating to your score. And that is actually happening right now to scattered people. It's not, it's not like a tidal wave, but it is happening now.
8:10 Speaker 05 Pete in Massachusetts says, hey Clark, this isn't so much a Clark stinks as a Clark omission.
8:15 Speaker 01 Oh, a sin of omission here?
8:17 Speaker 05 On a recent podcast, you talked about the Venture X card, but you failed to mention that there's often a bonus for this card, either a referral or just a bonus directly from Capital One. If someone's opening any card, they should be checking for a bonus before doing so, as these can often be hundreds of dollars.
8:35 Speaker 01 Thank you for that. And gosh, the Capital One Venture X card has been so in the news lately because with the fee increases on the other.
8:47 Speaker 01 Premium travel cards. This one, to this point, has stayed at the same annual fee by reducing some of the benefits, but they've kept the same fee that, done right, very easily nets out to being basically a zero annual fee for a really useful card to carry.
9:09 Speaker 05 Ralph in Oregon says, "Oh, boy, Clark, you went overboard this time."
9:13 Speaker 01 Uh-oh.
9:14 Speaker 05 "In a recent newsletter, you discussed your well-known dislike of Medicare Advantage plans."
9:18 Speaker 01 What plans?
9:19 Speaker 05 I know. "In one sentence, you compared people who like their Medicare Advantage plans to winning the lottery. This is nowhere close to true and is insulting to thousands of people who trust your advice. People who like their Medicare Advantage plans like them because we have carefully considered the options, done the math, and had in-depth discussions with providers and other people in similar situations, and as we are and have decided that the Medicare Advantage plan works best for us. It's not that we're lucky."
9:47 Speaker 01 Thank you for that. And I say with Advantage plans, I won't even call them disadvantaged plans. Oh, I just did. Anyway, with Advantage plans, the problem is the lack of mobility if the Advantage plan deteriorates on you. If the doctors and facilities you so carefully checked before you joined that Advantage plan are removed from that plan, and a dispute between the Advantage insurer and the hospital system, or the doctor system, or whatever, and those people you were counting on to go
10:27 Speaker 01 to, you can't go to them anymore, and it happens at the same time that one of you has a major illness, then that could be life-threatening, health-threatening. And so what I don't like is the lack of mobility that you have once you go into an Advantage plan that could, on careful consideration...
10:50 Speaker 01 Have been fantastic for you. It's the fact that that can change so much over the years. But then your mobility is almost nonexistent to go back to traditional Medicare in full.
11:07 Speaker 05 Steven Wisconsin says, "To the person who flew from London to the USA and passed over Greenland, who was yelled at by somebody for intermittently peeking out the window, the problem likely wasn't that the window shade was open instead of closed, but may have been an issue with opening and closing the shade. This causes all the other people's eyes to have to adjust unexpectedly over and over again. Had the window simply been left open, I suspect there would have been no issue. None of that excuses the person who called you out. But as a frequent flyer, I can relate when others have lightened a dark cabin over and over again. It's annoying, but not to the point I could ever imagine saying anything to another flyer in that way. Buy a window seat, leave the shade up, and enjoy the view. And I will take the crummy center seat to share the view.
11:50 Speaker 05 Just don't open and close the shade every few minutes."
11:53 Speaker 01 So, there was on one of the big frequent flyer blogs, there was this article with all these people talking about how somebody had their window shade open on a day flight and was interfering with other people's ability to sleep. And all these people were piling on, like, how could they be that rude to have their window shade open? So this is one that people have become so accustomed to, as soon as a plane takes off, everybody puts down their window shade and the cabin gets dark on a daytime flight. And to me, like, if I'm flying across the Rockies, or I'm going by, you know, the Grand
12:38 Speaker 01 Canyon or whatever, I want to look out and see it.
12:41 Speaker 05 If I want to sleep, I just bring an eye mask. Isn't that an easy solution?
12:47 Speaker 01 That is. That is a Rodney King kind of thing. Can't we all just get along?
12:51 Speaker 05 I mean, come on, especially during the day. I understand an overnight flight, that's different.
12:57 Speaker 01 Right.
12:58 Speaker 05 Okay, Jen in California says, "Okay, Clark, you don't stink, but Costco has started rotting from the inside. I've been a loyal customer, stockholder and proponent for over 25 years. For the last 15 to 20, I've purchased my prescription glasses from them. Between everyday glasses, a backup pair, sunglasses and computer glasses, costs can really add up. Further, it can be a real challenge to find frames that I like. As a result, I often wear the same frames for six-plus years. So imagine my surprise when I went into my local Costco today with my new Costco optical prescription and I was informed that the lab Costco contracts with will no longer put new lenses in frames that are more than two years old. Apparently, the lab instituted this policy during COVID and it worked so well, they decided to stick
13:40 Speaker 05 with it. I'm sure they did. What a surprise that mandating everyone get new frames every two years would work well for the lab. This comes at a considerable cost to Costco members, some of whom may not have vision insurance and pay out of pocket for this burdensome expense." She goes on to talk about how this is against basically Costco's philosophy and policies of putting the customers first.
14:01 Speaker 01 So what I would do is, I don't know if it still works, because we're two CEOs from the CEO, Jim Senegal, who answered his own phone. If you called Costco headquarters in Issaquah, Washington, and you asked for the CEO by name, they would put you right through to him. He answered every member call. And I don't know if the new guy does that. What's his name? Ferris or something like that? But I would try that and let him know that you're not happy with this. I would bet with the size of the company, he doesn't
14:41 Speaker 01 know the company's implemented such a member unfriendly policy. It is really not right to say that if these frames I have, my eyes get worse and I have to put in new lenses, that I shouldn't be able to put new lenses in these existing frames as long as they're in good shape.
15:03 Speaker 05 All right. And then Perry in California says, I'm not sure if Clark stinks until after I get a response to my question. I am absolutely ticked off by the cost of watching all available NFL football games on television. NFL Network, Amazon Prime, ESPN, Peacock, Netflix, et cetera. I serve this country to protect freedom, not things such as elitist controlled media. What is a poor retired American to do? How does Clark watch all these football games? Maybe I missed his viewing plans. As a Clarkie, I am curious and Clark's stinkiness is pending.
15:36 Speaker 01 So you're gonna be stunned what I've been doing this year because there'll be games that that I can't see because you know, we switched to Sling because YouTube TV went up, but Sling keeps having these disputes with local network affiliates. And so I don't get a lot of the games now. So what I've been doing is I'm going for a quarter of a loaf. What's a quarter of a loaf? I will, after a game ends, I go on YouTube and I watch the official summary of the game where you see every key play of the game. And it takes about
16:15 Speaker 01 17 to 20 minutes to see the whole game that way. And I found it to be absolutely fine for me to not pay more money to see games I'm not seeing otherwise and watch the summary after the game has ended. Now, key rule, I cannot know who won a game. So I can't look at anything, any updates on my phone, anything like that.
16:46 Speaker 05 I ruined it for you one week. I remember I was like, can you believe, I don't remember who it was. I was like, so and so won and you were like, oh my gosh, I haven't watched it yet.
16:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, our mutual friend Pete did that to me.
16:57 Speaker 05 Oh.
16:57 Speaker 01 On a night game because I watch night games, at least the second half of a night game the next day because I get too keyed up if I watch a night game and have trouble sleeping. So I watch them the next morning and I wake up to a text from him telling me who won the game. And I was like. Oh Pete, I was not happy with you.
17:20 Speaker 05 Can't do it to Clark. You also use your antenna.
17:23 Speaker 01 Antenna, so I have, yeah.
17:24 Speaker 05 You have Prime, right? So you can watch the Thursday night.
17:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, Thursday night games generally are empty calorie games because the players didn't have enough rest. They haven't learned enough of the playbook for playing the opponent. I'm not a super fan of Thursday night. A lot of times I forget even that it's even on on Thursday night. And yep, we did, after I said, I was trying to figure out if we were going to renew Prime. We did renew Prime for one more year.
17:59 Speaker 05 Okay.
17:59 Speaker 01 Don't know if it's going to be after this year. So I just don't know that it's worth it because we have Walmart Plus. And Walmart so often is significantly cheaper than Amazon in my experience. So that's $129 I threw away, or $139.
18:20 Speaker 05 Well, you get to see the football games. I'm going to try Amazon Music to see if I can give up my other subscription for that.
18:26 Speaker 01 Because you're on Spotify.
18:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, family, so my kids are on it and stuff, but like I just, I want to try it and see because then I would save that money. We'll see. I don't know.
18:36 Speaker 01 Spend money over here to save money over there. It's the math all of us do now in the subscription era, isn't it? Well, thank you so much for your post today. I love the variety of things that come up every Clark Stinks because I'm just one guy. And so, you know, I can't remember everything about everything. It's just not going to be, that's why I know nothing about real life because I don't have room for it in my head. So I really appreciate it when you take the time to go to Clark.com/ClarkStinks and post away. Because it's important for me to know where you feel like I left holes in something
19:21 Speaker 01 or my opinions are wrong and why. I mean, I, I love that because that's how we all grow together. We're all in this together and we all help each other. And isn't that what it's supposed to be like? That we all guide each other and help each other? And so I love the rugby scrum of how we all do that together. On the stuff we do here. And so, thank you for doing that. And coming up in just a few minutes, I want to talk about you trying to get phone calls on your phone that you actually want, instead of those you don't want.
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20:34 Speaker 01 There's something that I've talked about with Androids for a good, long time, that is so great that if you carry an iPhone, you're like, why is Clark bragging about this Android thing again? It's where it screens your calls for you. Well, now, the latest software from Apple on the iPhone has done their own version of what Android has, where it will automatically screen a call for you, not from one of your contacts that comes in. And it will either take that call for you and take a, you know, Apple's had a junior
21:19 Speaker 01 feature of this, where you could hear a voicemail live from whoever it is, and then you could decide to pick up the call right then. But this is where it screens out unknown callers. And it's a very simple setting on the iPhone with the newest version of iOS. And it just screens out those callers, and it can even ask specifically, what's the reason for the call? Now, I have this on my phone, my Android.
21:56 Speaker 01 And it doesn't always work. There's this company that calls me with a robo day after day after day after day. And I can't just block the number because they use a different number over and over again that they're calling in with. And they're trying to lend me money. Or supposedly they're trying to lend me money. And I don't answer, as you know, I don't answer any phone call. I mean, my call screening is if I don't know the person calling or who's supposedly popping up on caller ID, I don't answer. If it's coming in from any business, government agency, whatever, I do not answer because
22:41 Speaker 01 I don't know if the caller ID has been spoofed. And that it's something pretending to be from a credit union or financial institution, whatever. I do not answer that. I wait, listen to the voicemail, and then I make a decision what I'm going to do. But if you are one of those people who the phone rings and you're tempted, you're normally just going to answer it, you're setting yourself up. And that's why doing the settings on your iPhone or Android that screen calls out from unknown contacts is a great thing for you to do to protect yourself.
23:26 Speaker 01 I have a relative who always has his calls come in as private number. That's what pops up. I never answer his calls. And he's like, why do you never answer my calls? I said, because it says private number. And I don't know what it is, who it is, friend or foe. And that's why I call you back when I hear the voicemail. And so I want you to become tougher, particularly with how rife the scamsters are. I want you to become tougher about when you answer your phone. And best is to make those calls coming in essentially invisible to you.
24:11 Speaker 05 I like the thing my phone does now too, where I can interrupt someone leaving a voicemail.
24:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's.
24:16 Speaker 05 I couldn't do that before.
24:17 Speaker 01 Oh.
24:18 Speaker 05 I never could interrupt the actual voicemail being left.
24:20 Speaker 01 Really? I've been able to do that for a while.
24:22 Speaker 05 No, mine just started doing that and I like it. Although it shocks people. They're always like, what? They're so confused.
24:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, so, so the new software from Apple does that.
24:33 Speaker 05 Okay.
24:33 Speaker 01 And.
24:34 Speaker 05 We're on Android.
24:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. But you know, we're superior Android people. We had it first. Oh, man. Okay, so I gotta tell a story about my oldest daughter. She had a protective case on her phone. And she gets stung by a wasp.
24:51 Speaker 05 Oh, gosh.
24:53 Speaker 01 And she drops her phone and as luck would have it, in a protective case, it hits the concrete just at the right angle and breaks apart.
25:05 Speaker 01 So I had a spare phone, of course, was an Android. And she has been through misery for three weeks. Waiting, because she's iPhone. Waiting for the new iPhone 17, I think is the number.
25:23 Speaker 05 I think that's what they're on.
25:24 Speaker 01 To come in. And today is the day her new phone comes. And she's been very, very quiet about how much she hates
25:36 Speaker 01 using the Android, because at least she's had a phone.
25:38 Speaker 05 Sure.
25:39 Speaker 01 But the protective case thing, that happened to Lane too. She dropped her phone, iPhone, on an escalator in a protective case.
25:48 Speaker 05 Oh, wow.
25:48 Speaker 01 Dropped a foot and a half and boom, it was done. Yeah, so planned obsolescence, right? And then a friend told the story about, it happened to him. He's a stunt pilot.
26:03 Speaker 01 His phone fell out of the plane.
26:05 Speaker 05 Oh my gosh.
26:07 Speaker 01 This is a crazy story. You're not gonna believe this. The phone got caught in the air currents and essentially floated down to earth and landed in the woods and was fine.
26:21 Speaker 05 He found it?
26:22 Speaker 01 Well, you know, the pang thing, find, find my iPhone? But not only was he there-
26:28 Speaker 05 He should do a commercial for whatever protective case he had on that phone.
26:31 Speaker 01 Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is great. Not only was he there, you know, he landed the plane, drove to where the phone was. Not only was he there, who else was there? The police were there because the phone had sent out a distress thing that had been in a wreck.
26:49 Speaker 05 Oh, wow.
26:50 Speaker 01 You know how there's that setting that will call for 911 if it thinks you've been in an accident? So, uh, they were like, so this is yours?
27:01 Speaker 05 Wow. That's crazy.
27:03 Speaker 01 The sheriff holds the phone up to him. Yeah.
27:05 Speaker 05 It fell out of a plane. It was in distress.
27:07 Speaker 01 Fell out of an, uh-
27:09 Speaker 05 My god.
27:09 Speaker 01 What do you call that? An aerobatic plane? Not acrobatic. What do you call it? A plane that does loop-de-loops and all that kind of stuff.
27:17 Speaker 05 That is crazy. Alright, we'll go to some questions now. Jim in Oregon sent this one in. "Back in 2018, I purchased a 4K Fire TV device that is now no longer made. It's like a fire stick, only it's a small square. Recently, the folks at Amazon sent out an update to everyone who owns a Fire TV or stick. This update did not bode well for my Fire TV and rendered my device unable to start up. I did a little searching on my problem and found out there are a lot of people with my device who have encountered the same problem. I called Amazon and basically they are saying that that's too bad. We'll give you 5% off on another one."
27:56 Speaker 01 Seriously?
27:57 Speaker 05 "I'm thinking I might want to switch to Roku if this is how they're going to treat their customers. Is there anything I can do that you know of to hold their feet to the fire and make them fix what they broke?"
28:07 Speaker 01 Make Amazon fix something? I mean, they're a hugely, monstrously large company and-
28:17 Speaker 01 This is ridiculous. This happens with hardware a lot now. You buy hardware, the company goes bust and you pay for this hardware that's dependent on software and it's becomes just e-waste.
28:32 Speaker 05 We just talked about Microsoft. We've had issues with Chromebooks.
28:34 Speaker 01 Right.
28:35 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:35 Speaker 01 I mean, this is just, this is just so uncool. And Amazon has so many relationships with people. If you're a Prime member, you can always say when your renewal comes, well, you're gonna cancel it. And then maybe then they'll offer you something for free, like a new Fire stick or something. As for Roku, we have a Fire TV and then we have Roku TVs. And it's what you're used to. I've, I've found the Fire to be a lot harder to use. I don't find it as intuitive as Roku.
29:15 Speaker 01 But if you've been used to using Fire and you switch to Roku, you'll scratch your head a little bit at first, too. It's like the thing we were just talking about with iPhone and Android. The, the software you have to adapt to, but it's just not right for one of the world's largest companies to just say, ah, well, your money doesn't matter. And we made your device obsolete.
29:40 Speaker 05 All right. Scott in Wisconsin says, hi Clark, something happened to me that I thought you and the viewers should be aware of. My wife recently purchased some shampoo and conditioner from Amazon. I figured we're on Amazon.
29:51 Speaker 01 This is a bash Amazon.
29:53 Speaker 05 I mean, when the package was delivered, the post office said that we had to pay an additional $17.25, $17.25 for the shipping because the shipping label used by the seller was fraudulent. When I went to Amazon, I realized that the third-party seller was from China and that not paying for shipping was likely due to the seller trying to offset the cost of the tariffs. Amazon makes it incredibly difficult to resolve these types of issues because you have to contact the seller first. I luckily was refunded my shipping costs, but I'm betting that these sellers are counting on people not going through the hassle of getting refunded.
30:27 Speaker 01 All right. So, thank you for your story. And, you know, I've been, I've been busy picking on Amazon for the decline in customer no-service there. And what Amazon has done is they put up, just as you described, they put up extra hoops for you to jump through, figuring most people just give up. Don't give up.
30:46 Speaker 05 Well, the seller in this, I mean, third-party, which you've always said is the problem, right? They used a fake label.
30:52 Speaker 01 Right. Okay. So, the fake labels. Do you know about all the fake postage stamps?
30:56 Speaker 05 Yeah.
30:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. So, people bought, in good faith, very heavily on Amazon, bought US postage that was counterfeit postage, and didn't have any idea they were buying counterfeit postage. And it's cost the, if the postal service needed more financial trouble, it's cost the postal service big money from all these items with counterfeit postage on them. So, now, obviously with a bigger item, they're hitting you up for the money. But it is right that Amazon, when you go to amazon.com and you go to buy something, you're buying
31:38 Speaker 01 based on Amazon's reputation. You're not buying based on the fact that it's who-knows-who third-party. Now, Amazon has this gray area in-between that's different than this. It's where it's fulfilled by Amazon. There are not as many problems, in my opinion, people have when they buy from a third-party seller on Amazon, where inventorying and fulfillment is handled by Amazon. But when they're just using Amazon as like a listing service, and it's being inventoried by that third-party seller, shipped by that third-party seller,
32:22 Speaker 01 that's where, more often than not, in my opinion, the problems occur.
32:27 Speaker 05 I haven't had a big issue myself, but because of everyone we've heard from, all the Clarkies, I have started, I will only buy if it's Amazons or fulfilled by Amazon, because I just don't want to get into this kind of thing. But I'm glad that, in this case, Scott, you know, stayed on it and got the shipping costs refunded.
32:44 Speaker 01 Right. And you will find with Amazon, that if you keep pushing... You get, you get what you're looking for. But what they count on is that most people give up too easily.
32:56 Speaker 05 Yeah. Okay. Sean in Hawaii says, I run a small service business in Maui and all of my customers pay by check through the mail. You say that no one should ever mail a check, but it would be a significant cost to my business if I took credit cards. Do you know of a low or no cost payment option that I could offer my customers?
33:15 Speaker 01 So Sean, that's a great question. So what would that alternative be? It would be something that I say consumers should not do, but people do every day. And that's paid by Venmo or Cash App or pay through PayPal, something like that. That would have minimal cost to you, in many cases, no cost to you. But let's talk about this situation. The risk in this case is not to you, it's to your customer. So if they want to pay by check and they're comfortable sending that check through the US mail, which they should not be comfortable doing, but they're doing that and that eliminates costs for you.
34:00 Speaker 01 And that's how they prefer to pay, then they can keep doing that and pay you. Cause the alternatives, you're right, you take credit cards. It's going to be a huge cost for you, most often somewhere effectively around 3% for taking that credit card.
34:20 Speaker 05 Couldn't you offer both like, but tell them it's, you have to offset the credit card fee if you choose.
34:25 Speaker 01 What you do is you offer people a cash discount.
34:27 Speaker 05 Right, yeah.
34:28 Speaker 01 And that way you say, or depending on the laws in Hawaii, you may be able to do a credit card surcharge. You see it more and more and more because the marketplace eventually comes up with accommodation. You know, we have this Visa, Mastercard cartel in the United States that gives us the highest merchant processing fees worldwide. I mean, so many times other countries, it's like mind blowing. And so merchants are like, this is eating meat alive, paying all these fees to Visa, Mastercard and American Express, Discover, whatever. And so having.
35:13 Speaker 01 A pressure release valve, which is relief valve, which is, yeah, if a customer wants to pay with a credit card, they're paying an extra whatever percent, to me is the marketplace solution to a political problem where the Congress has not been willing to do anything about the price fixing going on with credit cards in the United States. Now, what's the alternative? Who benefits from all these merchant fees? I do. Anybody who pays their cards in full and has all these rewarding cards, cash
35:51 Speaker 01 back, points, whatever, we're being subsidized by the massive fees that merchants are paying in the United States. And so you bring up a really valid point. Now, what could be an alternative? The debit card. Because you may have merchant clearing on debit cards that is such a small amount that effectively it would be almost no cost to you as a business.
36:27 Speaker 05 It's no risk to either.
36:28 Speaker 01 The debit card risk is again to the customer, not to the business.
36:34 Speaker 05 You're gonna have to wash your mouth out with soap now.
36:36 Speaker 01 I said, well, okay, I'll call it Visa trash fake Visa or fake MasterCard, the debit card, taking a debit card. I'm hopeful that the Capital One purchase of Discover will lead to a competitive channel for merchant processing of debits and credits, debit cards and credit cards. If it does, then we'll have a real fight on our hands to the benefit of merchants and ultimately consumers. But it's early innings and don't know if Capital One has the oomph, has the guts to take on the Visa, MasterCard cartel. We'll see over
37:19 Speaker 01 time because Discover that they bought already has a payment processing network and could provide meaningful competition to clearing in the United States like people have in other countries. But I haven't talked about this in like a year and a half or so. Australia...
37:41 Speaker 01 When you go to a store to buy something, there's a tablet, could be an iPad or a Samsung tablet or whatever, and it shows up to the minute what fee you pay for every method of pay. It shows you, I mean, you're sitting there at the register and it says, "Okay, you use Visa, it's gonna be this much. You use MasterCard that much. You use American Express, it's this much. You use their version of a debit card, a payment card, it's this little..." And you know what they don't show on any of those? I've never seen anywhere in Australia.
38:17 Speaker 05 Discover?
38:18 Speaker 01 Cash!
38:18 Speaker 05 Oh, cash.
38:20 Speaker 01 I don't know that anybody in Australia even carries cash anymore.
38:26 Speaker 05 Does Diners Club still exist?
38:28 Speaker 01 Yes, and we have Diners Club brand in the United States, but it clears as MasterCard.
38:34 Speaker 05 Okay.
38:34 Speaker 01 But in some other countries in the world, wow, we're moving into low-level trivia here.
38:39 Speaker 05 Sorry.
38:39 Speaker 01 In some other countries, Diners Club is like an independent charging mechanism.
38:46 Speaker 05 You had a Diners Club card when I first met you.
38:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, and then it was sold to, it bounced around from owner to owner, ended up with a Canadian owner for the card in the United States, and they really never knew what to do with it. There used to be another one called Card Blanche, too. You ever heard of that one?
39:05 Speaker 05 No.
39:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:07 Speaker 05 I've never heard that expression, "Card Blanche. You have Card Blanche to do whatever you want."
39:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was, it was, it may have been possibly the first
39:15 Speaker 05 Oh, wow.
39:16 Speaker 01 charge card ever. I don't remember. Okay, so there's, so now we're gonna hear from some banking historian who's gonna say, "Clark, you got this all wrong." Blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what Clark stinks is for.
39:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
39:28 Speaker 01 Anyway, thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope we haven't put your weekend into oblivion with this last 90 seconds. I want to thank you so much for spending your time with us. I hope that something you heard here today is useful in your own life. Remember what we're all about: you, learning ways to save more, spend less, and never, never, not ever, get ripped off. See you Monday.
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