08.17.26 Renters Face New Junk Fees / Tap-To-Pay Scam Warning

Finding an affordable rental was hard enough, but now landlords are taking a cue from hotels and airlines by hitting tenants with hidden junk fees. From mandatory charges for bundled trash pickup and overpriced cable to outrageous $200 monthly add-ons just for working from home, these unexpected fees inflate the cost of living. When apartment hunting, Clark urges us to check for this specific list before committing to a lease. Meanwhile, tap-to-pay remains one of the safest ways to shop using digital tokenization, but scammers have found a clever way to exploit your generosity. Fraudsters posing as street solicitors for fake charities are asking people to tap their phones to donate, only to take the device and quietly alter a $20 donation into a $200 charge. Clark shares what you need to know to protect your wallet. Plus, Christa shares your #AskClark questions and Clark gives his take. All this and more on the August 17, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your opinions or questions: Ask Clark. Renter Junk Fees: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 Phone Tap-To-Pay Alert: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: The rent was already high. Then came the $200 work-from-home fee -USA TODAY Clark Deals: Today’s Top Travel Deals How To Use Priceline To Save on Travel - Clark Howard Military and Veterans Guide: Free Resources for Your Finances Cheapest Way to Rent a Car: Expert Tips - Clark Howard Costco Travel: 5 Things To Know Before You Book - Clark Howard USA TODAY: Tap to pay is convenient. These 6 steps can protect your money Empower Review: How It Works, Pros & Cons - Clark Howard Best Budgeting Apps in 2026: Our Top 7 - Clark Howard Clark.com Calculators 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 0:44Speaker 03

  I'm so glad you're with us here on the Clark Howard Show. You know, our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. Speaking of serving you, I hope you've signed up for our free daily newsletter at clark.com/newsletter. It's filled with information that I believe is great. You'll have to decide for yourself, all about you having control. So you keep more in your wallet, you spend less day to day, and you don't get taken by the latest rip offs.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  In today's show, I want to talk about the proliferation of junk fees where you live, not when you leave your home, but at your home. And also I have a key rule for you to avoid getting ripped off on tap to pay, which I love. I use tap to pay all the time, but I could get cheated. I'm going to tell you how to protect yourself. So landlords have taken a page from the playbook of the nation's airlines. How about that they think it's a great idea to mimic what the airlines do, but it's worked for the airlines.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Now the hotels are doing what the airlines do and on and on and on. The whole idea is with the ability for people to shop for so many things online is to get you psychologically hooked and then hit you with the gotchas. So the rental market for apartments, renting an individual house, renting a townhouse, you name it. The rental market has gone full bore into the kind of practices that have made the stockholders of airlines and hotels really happy and made customers miserable.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  That is the add on junk fees. The apartments are doing a lot of mandatory add-ons and these could involve you having to buy internet, whether you want it or not, as an additional fee. Pay for pay TV, even if you don't want it, is an additional fee because you like to watch streaming, making themselves the monopoly providers and making it a mandatory add-on. Garbage pickup. My middle child lived in an apartment complex where in addition to the rent, she had to

• 3:31Speaker 03

  pay a $25 a month apartment, to the apartment for trash pickup. I mean, doesn't it seem like it would be a normal expense when you're renting an apartment? That disposal of trash down a chute or whatever would be part of the rent? Nope. Mandatory add-on fee. And I could go through a long list, but in the news of the weird, the one that just drives me batty, that is just slowly appearing around the country. It's an add-on fee if they decide you work from home or spend too much time at home. Yeah, yeah. How about that?

• 4:15Speaker 03

  I first saw a story about this in the Los Angeles Times and I was like, well, yeah, apartments are hard to find out there. They're adding any junk they can. And now as happens, this is somebody is being copied and people are getting charged this junk fee if the landlord knows or assumes you work from home. And so what does that mean? Let's say you have a baby and you're taking time off from work and you're home with the baby all the time. Is there going to be a newborn baby charge because now you're home more? You know, the whole idea of renting a place is it's where you get to live, right?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  And it's yours to use as you wish, 24 hours a day, seven days of the week, all the length of your lease. So to then say, well, you're there too much. So we're going to charge you an additional fee for using what you've already paid rent to use. So I use this just as a news of the weird example to let you know that the apartment game is about comparison shopping online. And you're looking at different places to rent. The headline says the rent is this and over here it's that, this other place it's this.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  But what you need to know also, and one of the questions you ask the salesperson showing you around in a complex or an agent showing you a home or townhouse for rent or whatever, is you say, what other fees are there that I will have to pay or that are optional fees? Can you give me a list of those? You want to know that stuff before you're committed to a place because the whole idea is to get you thinking, oh, my rent's going to be X number of dollars. And then later you find out it's X plus 300 bucks and various add-on fees. You want to know that upfront.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  I've noticed also that Zillow now will, there's the option for landlord to say this is like the all-in price, like including all the fees because it is, it varies so much when you look at the actual listings and you read, you're responsible for this, this and this. And, but yeah, apartment complexes, I know that there's like package delivery fees and all this crazy stuff too, that I've heard of.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  So I want to go back to hotels, which is one of the things the apartments have copied. A lot of hotel chains now, you can, when you're on the website, you can click a button that'll show you taxes and junk fees, including, they don't call it junk fees.

• 7:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  I forget what they call it, but anyway, you can see the all-in price.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  And what's fascinating is I'll look like I was looking at a Marriott availability in a big metro area and I was looking and I looked first without the add-ons and then I clicked and looked with the add-ons and the price comparison became so much more relevant because there were places there that didn't have meaningful junk fees and others that had very large junk fees. And so what was the cheapest hotel was very different than when it looked at first glance.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  All right, let's go to some questions. Raj in New Jersey sent this one in. My family stayed at a hotel for two nights. Speaking of hotels, both nights, guests in the room above us were jumping and making loud noise until 2:00 AM and we could not sleep.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Oh, come on.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  I complained to the hotel staff, but they were not helpful. I asked to be moved to another room or for a refund so I could go to another hotel, but they refused. We paid for two nights, but could not sleep. I'm requesting a full refund. Please advise what can be done.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  So at a hotel, you should be able to figure out who the general manager is and you want to contact the GM because your greatest ability to resolve a problem with a hotel is never with the chain. It is always with the GM of that location. And while you're still there, I mean, obviously in the middle of the night, you're only going to have, a lot of hotels, you're only going to have what historically they called the night auditor. They have one person basically babysitting the hotel from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. That person usually has no authority to fix anything. So the first night, you're just, you lose it.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  But having to go through a second night, people who are running a jungle gym above you, that's just unacceptable. I hope that you have posted online reviews, naming the hotel, being very specific of the circumstance, the failure of the hotel to help you at all. Hotels really suffer from those negative reviews. Post them everywhere. Post it on TripAdvisor, Google reviews are probably have more market share than anybody else now. Post those things, but also Raj, figure out who the GM is of that particular location

• 9:38Speaker 03

  and tell them the problem you had and what you want, because that's just ridiculous. Who is, who has the good night sleep guarantee? Hampton Inn, 100% satisfaction guarantee?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  This wasn't a Hampton Inn.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've always loved that. I don't know that anybody's ever been able to use the 100% guarantee.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  But I love that they do it.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Andy in Virginia says, Clark says that he lets the deal determine where he travels. Find the deal and then find a reason to go there.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Couple of times it's not worked out well.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  This sounds great. We have a couple, but your percentage is good though. However, how do you know what a good deal is? The Clark Howard team even posts travel deals. How do they know that it's a deal? Do they look at historical costs of flights and if it's X percent less, it's a deal? But that's just flights. How does he determine the entire trip if it's a deal?

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Okay. So Andy, that's all automated now. I want to go in the wayback machine.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  I started in broadcasting and I used to write for, I don't know if people know what this is, they were called newspapers. I used to write four columns a week about travel. And I used to keep spreadsheets, handwritten spreadsheets of what fares were over time. And I'd go look at the spreadsheets. And that's how I knew whether if there was a sale, it was a sale and not a non-sale sale. So today, I have been made obsolete.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Obsolete?

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Obsolete.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  I don't think you have.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  I'm obsolete in that because now you can go on like Google Flights and Hopper and things like that. And you can see whether prices are lower than normal, higher than normal, whatever, and what the historical averages are. And then you're able to see with real data, whether a deal is a deal or a non-deal deal.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Right. And our deals team does keep historical data and they look at, they use various methods and spreadsheets still to track their deals. So, okay, Johnny in North Carolina says, is there a reason you don't recommend Priceline and military travel discounts? I don't know where that came from.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  I don't know where that came from, because actually, I use Priceline regularly. I used to use Priceline for probably 90 plus percent of my hotels. Now I'd say it's below 50, because they're not as, they were significantly cheaper typically than other places. That pattern's not necessarily true anymore. But I do use Priceline a lot. And there are times that it's much cheaper than other places I could book. Military, we have a special section of Clark.com just on military discounts. And specifically, there are great military

• 12:35Speaker 03

  discounts. Cruise lines in particular have always offered during slow booking times for particular ships, they've offered very good deals to military personnel. So yeah, both of those are very viable ways to save money, Johnny. And so, there is no reason, I would say, you don't grab that military discount, or don't take that hotel booking that you find a great deal on Priceline. It's just what I've found is that I have to be more of a free agent booking things than I used to. Now, I will give a specific recommendation,

• 13:17Speaker 03

  and I am the man from Costco when I talk about this. Car rentals, always start, if you're a Costco member, start your car rental price search at CostcoTravel.com. Because Costco discounts car rentals consistently at better rates than you will find anywhere else. Not always, but consistently better at CostcoTravel.com. And if you're a couple traveling, you can have with the Costco Travel car rental bookings, you can have one additional driver without a daily junk fee. And that's very valuable for couples traveling. So yeah,

• 14:00Speaker 03

  there are lots of tools I use to save money. And even in the case of Costco Travel for car rentals, just because I search there, that's not the only place I search to find the best deal. It's just usually I do find the best deal on car rentals at Costco Travel, at least for now, because travel never stops changing. Coming up ahead, I want to talk about a scam with Tap to Pay that unfortunately, is growing in popularity, and then for you and me, heartache.

• 14:36Speaker 00

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• 16:52Speaker 03

  Tap to Pay, I use it all the time. In fact, I find that I don't need my wallet when I'm out and about, virtually never, because Tap to Pay is so common today. And it's a safer way for you to pay, because it generates a unique tokenization, or however the tech people explain it. They're not getting your actual credit card number that a thief can grab hold of and use. So I love Tap to Pay, till this. This came up once before, I feel like we talked about it like last Christmas, maybe. But now it's become

• 17:37Speaker 03

  not just an occasional thing, this has become a common con. Solicitor will approach you, and I think we'll see it a lot this Christmas season, when people are out and about more, and there's so many, we're in such a giving spirit, it lays you wide open for this scam. So you get approached by somebody, and they say, we're doing a collection for blah, blah, blah, for disease, for kids. Most often, it'll be something to do with kids. People let their guard down more, and allow their heartstrings more to respond, when it involves something about children. And so they'll say, we're collecting for whatever. They say,

• 18:19Speaker 03

  well, you can give a donation right now. I've got it set up for Tap to Pay. And then this is where the con comes. This is ugly. First of all, they're not really collecting for a legit charity. That's rule one. Number two, they ask you to give them your phone. Oh, let me, let me do that for you. And they set it up, the con has various versions. But one of the most common is they set up to take your donation of $5, $10, $20, whatever. But they set it up so that as you're tapping, it's not working, it's not working. Oh, let

• 18:58Speaker 03

  me see your phone. Oh, let me see if I can fix that. And they change the amount surreptitiously without you even realizing. And suddenly, the $5 is 500, or the 20 is 200, or whatever. And they tap, it goes beep, you're happy. They hand you back your phone. Thanks so much for helping the kids today. And your money's gone. And it didn't go to a legitimate purpose. Do not, do not give up possession of your phone when you're doing Tap to Pay.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Look closely at the amount that you're agreeing to give. And while we're at it, I don't like for you to give money to random UFO people soliciting you out and about by, it's not home phone anymore, by cellphone, whatever. I don't want you doing that, because... You haven't checked out that they really are there for whatever organization they say. You don't know the organization they name is actually a real organization. You don't know that it's legit. You want your hard earned money, I hope, to go to causes and organizations that you trust,

• 20:19Speaker 03

  that are causes that you want to help and serve. That's where your money should go. And remember the rule. Do not hand over your phone on tap to pay for someone else to do the tap to pay.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  Really don't hand over your phone for anything, right? Because and the other thing Sally and our team mentioned to me, she's like, I get nervous giving people my phone to take pictures, which so many of us do when we're traveling. And I kind of thought.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  They could quickly send something.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  It's unlocked. Yeah. I don't know. That is, that makes me think, okay.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  Okay. So that's a question Inquiring Minds had for you. I don't use any of the payment apps. Can you put a password on them that protects them even when your phone's unlocked?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  With your phone, any, any app, like I have all my financial apps and stuff where when my phone is unlocked, I still have to put in a PIN to get into the app when I click on it.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  So this is something we absolutely should be advising people to do.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Cash app, Venmo, or Big Bad Cell.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Okay. Kip in Washington says, X money has just been made available to more X premium subscribers. It has some interesting benefits, but doesn't operate like a credit card, but more like a debit card.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  That's what it is.

• 21:38Speaker 04

  With a backed account. A few of the benefits are 3% cash back for all qualifying purchases, 4% interest on money in the account, 6% if deposited 1K in the last 34 days.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  34? Who comes up with 34?

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Free or instant transfers to other X accounts, debit card with Visa purchase protection. Hmm, interesting. FDIC insured up to 250K. It seems like an interesting way to get a maximum return on purchases, but you would have to change the way you pay for things. Credit cards, you pay after the fact. X card, you have to have the funds available in the account. For that, you get 3% purchase kickback and 4% on the money saved in the account. This is better than the 2% from typical credit cards and 1% you may get from your checking account while funds are held until you pay your credit card.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, Kip, this is a loss leader is Musk is trying to establish market share. And a lot of, in other countries in the world, it's very common that various social media apps of various types not only are involved in trying to connect you to other people and other content, they're also trying to be your wallet. And so Musk is trying to do that with X. If you remember, Musk made his first wealth from PayPal. So he's really into the whole payment space. So these are just teaser rates.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  And once they get enough market share, let me tell you, they're not going to be offering this kind of sweetheart deal. So this is one of those things, you gotta be someone who doesn't live by inertia. You take advantage of what's available to you as a premium X user, get the deals. And then when they don't have the deals anymore, you say, next?

• 23:33Speaker 04

  Shirley in California says, I'm buying my first EV and it will be a new Tesla Model Y. I've been researching and one of the things I read mentioned buying Tesla windshield insurance for $16 per month. Some people said this was smart because if you need to replace your Tesla windshield, it's very expensive. Other people said it's just an extended warranty and not worth it. I live outside of Sacramento in a rural area with lots of potholes and large semi trucks kicking up gravel. What should I do? Please help.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Okay. So Shirley, it's true. Tesla windshields, because of all the electronics involved in them, can be very expensive. They are cheaper on the Y than historically Teslas were. I mean, now they're like 1,012, 1,400, depending on where you go to get one. You may remember, Krista, years ago, I had to replace a Tesla windshield back when it was thousands of dollars to replace one. And I was like, what? Why? And it hurt to have to pay all that money.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  But today, they are significantly more expensive than a lot of windshields, but not crazy more. I can't tell you whether you, I mean, you're talking about paying 200 bucks a year approximately to insure the windshield, times the number of years you own it, you're, you're playing a math game. And so you pointed out specifically that the area you live at near Sacramento, you got a lot of, lot of Roxban kicked up and all that. I'm going to let you make that call. I would not buy it. I only insure big picture things, not things that are, even though that windshield's expensive

• 25:27Speaker 03

  to replace, that is a smaller expense that I would not personally insure.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  David in California says, I have my checking account with Chase, my savings and emergency account with Ally Bank, and my Roth IRA and brokerage accounts with Vanguard. I'm a union electrician.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Oh, man, you're in a great field to be in right now.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Besides my pension, I get a defined contribution with Empower. As you can see, I have money in multiple locations. I want an application to track my total net wealth and budget, but I have reservations due to security issues. Since I have Empower, I could link all my accounts and utilize their budgeting and wealth application. Is it safe to link my accounts to one central location so I could track my money?

• 26:13Speaker 03

  Okay. There are two ways, this is called a screen scraper technology. And there are the older methods where you have to provide your username and password and it'll be stored by whoever is doing your financial dashboard, dashboard, screen scraper, whatever. And then there are newer methods where you enter that information one time, but it's not stored by, in this case, Empower. So that's the key question is Empower in possession of your username and password or not. You also could potentially do a dashboard with all the big players you talked about.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Whoever you use to track your finances and net worth, you want to make sure that they are doing what's known as a tokenization of information where they get access to be able to load the information on your accounts. But if they were to suffer a hack, the hackers would not have your username and password for your various accounts. That's the key marker that you want to watch.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  It looks like Empower uses Plaid, which is a very popular.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  And so if I remember right, under the Plaid architecture, they would not have at Empower, the usernames and passwords. So the risk is if Plaid was cracked, right?

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Okay. All this stuff is hard.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  I know, it is.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I would say knowing your financial picture is a very valuable thing. And one of the things I find is that people who have a dashboard where they see their assets are more likely to be motivated to contribute more to various things to see their wealth go. It's almost like the whole idea of having a map, that it's your roadmap to financial security. So that sounds like a slogan, commercial. Wasn't trying to do that. But if, in fact, it is a safe environment to do it, I think it'd be great to do. And on that note, we are done for the day.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  And I want to tell you that all week long, we will serve you so many different ways to empower your wallet. How's that? So you can save more and spend less and absolutely avoid getting ripped off. And however you gather information, it's all about power in your life. I want you to have more control. And I want you to have information that not only you can trust, but that you can act on as well in your own life. And that's the spirit of what we do at Clark and Clark Deals, both dot coms, to only show

• 29:20Speaker 03

  you deals at Clark Deals, that we don't waste your time, that really are deals, not non-deal deals. And at Clark.com, to give you information that expands your pool of knowledge and is all about decision making. That's why we have so many calculators and tools there that you can put in the variables from your own life and help you with making decisions. If you're putting off making a decision that would help make you more financially secure, I hope we're able to help you get going, take action at Clark.com.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  So with that having been said, we'll be back at your service on Wednesday with our podcast and YouTube show. And I hope you'll join us then for more empowerment so you can save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off.

• 30:20Speaker 01

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  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

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