Travel

Before launching my radio and TV career, I founded a successful chain of travel agencies in the early 1980s. I still travel nearly every week of my life for personal pleasure or professional obligations. So over the years I’ve picked up a thing or two about saving money on travel.

In this chapter, I’ll show you how to avoid those hefty baggage fees most airlines love to charge, how to find the cheapest rates on four- and five-star hotel accommodations, how to get access to your money while overseas without paying an arm and a leg, and how to unload an unwanted timeshare.

ACCOMMODATIONS

Check message boards before you bid on Priceline or Hotwire

I have obsessive-compulsive disorder when it comes to saving on hotels. When I travel for work, I book 95 percent of the hotels I stay in through Priceline.com or Hotwire.com. Priceline and Hotwire might not be for everyone; there’s something of a guess factor involved when using either one because you’re bidding on hotel rooms but don’t find out which brand you’re getting until after you pay nonrefundable money. The only information you see is a hotel’s ranking based on a five-star system.

Before I get ready to do any online bidding, I first check out a couple of related message boards. For Priceline, my first stop is BiddingForTravel.com to get a feel for what other people are bidding. BiddingForTravel.com is a forum where travelers help one another and share knowledge, including tips on how to bid multiple times a day. There’s a similar forum for Hotwire called BetterBidding.com. It also offers a Priceline forum, but it’s far from the authority on Priceline that BiddingForTravel can be.

Once I’ve done research on BiddingForTravel, I go to Hotwire and see what’s available. While BiddingForTravel gives me a general range of price, Hotwire lets me know what it’s making available for that same night. Then for the equivalent level of hotel, I bid 30 percent less on Priceline. It’s the usual math formula that I apply.

Let’s say I’m looking at a city, and Hotwire has a four-star hotel at $100 per night; I’ve seen what people are doing on BiddingForTravel, so I will bid $70 as my first bid on Priceline.

With Priceline, there will be multiple hotel zones in most cities. A major metropolitan area might have eight different zones in the central part of the city, and I look at which ones I’m willing to stay in. I also look for other zones that don’t have four-star hotels.

So I’m able to do first all the zones I want to stay in and then all the zones I don’t want to stay in that don’t have four-star hotels, because I know that even if I add a zone I don’t want as an additional free rebid, I won’t get that zone.

Let’s say my initial Priceline bid of $70 gets turned down; if there are six zones in the metro area and I know that BiddingForTravel says the most anybody has been paying for a four-star hotel is $90, I’ll add another neighborhood and go up a few dollars each bid. Eventually, barring a sellout in that town, I’ll get my room. And if I don’t, I already knew that the worst I’d do is $100 on Hotwire.

Make no doubt about it, this is work and it takes time to do it. But the savings are so great.

Besides, this the closest I get to the thrill people have in a casino! The cool thing is it never costs me any money, it only saves me money. If my bid is turned down, I didn’t lose any money, I just lost that round of bidding. You have to have the patience of knowing you can always come back and fight another day.

Here are examples of some of the latest deals I’ve landed using this strategy:

• a three-star hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for $42
• a three-star hotel in Memphis for $42
• a three-and-a-half-star hotel in Westchester County, New York, for $80
• a three-and-a-half-star hotel in Connecticut for $69
• a four-star hotel in Rome for $85 (roughly 58 euros at the time)
• a four-star hotel in San Francisco for $99
• a five-star hotel in London for $95

My experience is that most people prefer the certainty of Hotwire over the bidding process on Priceline. And if you do, it’s much less hassle on Hotwire, though their rating system of stars tends to be more inflated than Priceline. When you go below three-star hotels or below, the accommodations can be a little dicey. I’ve found that the sweet spot is three and a half stars.

When it comes to Hotwire, I have a little tip to help you figure out what hotel you might get: Select the dates you want to go; click on the “build a package” option for a rental car (even if you don’t plan on renting one); and then it’ll show you what hotels would come with the car rental. This trick will work about 75 percent of the time. Just remember it is nonrefundable once you buy.

The savings you get in exchange for booking “blind” on Priceline or Hotwire can be up to 35 to 60 percent off the usual price. However, many people don’t like the whole idea of the blind bidding sites.

A lot of entrepreneurs travel for business, and there’s a particular site that I really like called QuikBook.com. With this discount hotel reservation site, you get access to the equivalent of corporate-negotiated hotel rates at a lower price than you would normally have available to you as someone with a very small company. I’ve used QuikBook for both business and leisure travel and it’s saved me a decent amount of money.

Find cheap vacation rentals by owners

The soft real estate market means that rentals in prime vacation spots like the mountains and the beach come at a deep discount these days. But even when the economy firms up again, there’s a way to get a deal on a great vacation spot.

As longtime listeners to my show are aware, it’s now become commonplace when you’re looking for a deal to rent a condo or a home directly from the homeowner rather than renting a traditional hotel room. I love VRBO.com (aka Vacation Rentals by Owner) for this purpose. As the name suggests, this website helps you rent straight from the owner—whether you’re talking about a home, condo, cabin, villa, or apartment!

I always look for places that were built in the last five years (or renovated in the last four) and that have a lot of pictures posted online. Both factors help ensure that the rental will be in tip-top shape. But at the same time, you want to be somewhat wary of the pictures of the accommodations supplied by the owner; photography can cover up a lot of sins. Don’t be shy about asking for more pictures beyond just what’s posted online. What you get initially might be misleading, so watch out!

This is another case where you want to cull the collective wisdom of the public to find a real winner. Make sure any rental you consider is accompanied by a lot of positive reviews from satisfied customers. And book only if you plan to pay by credit card, so you have the right to do a charge back with the card issuer if the accommodations turn out to not be what was promised.

My mom is an avid Clark listener and is the one who turned me on to the show about a year ago. But because of my job I am unable to listen every day. When she found out that I was shopping around for a weekend vacation spot, she told me about VRBO.com. I checked it out and found a beachfront condo in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, for a Friday and Saturday night. Price paid: $200. And that’s not all; the owner also had a bottle of wine for me on the coffee table. Thank you, Clark . . . and Mom.
Matt P., NC

Stay with newfound friends for free

I’m not thrifty, I’m downright cheap. But there are some lines even I won’t cross. For example, I won’t bunk with a stranger. However, it is my duty in my line of work to bring you ideas that could save you money.

CouchSurfing.com is a site that allows people to meet others around the world and stay at their homes for free. It’s like crashing at a friend’s pad, but you don’t know the friend. This site—with its MySpace-like interface that lets community wisdom vet out any potential unsafe travelers or hosts—is free to use. Talk about doing a good job of making hostels seem expensive!

To tell you the truth, though, I wouldn’t have done this even in my young, mostly broke days. But that’s just me. A couple of producers on my show, Joel Larsgaard and Kimberly Drobes, had some animated discussions about the possible dangers of CouchSurfing.com when I mentioned it in a staff meeting.

Joel says he has stayed with people he didn’t know before, but he didn’t meet them through CouchSurfing.com. He does, however, tentatively have plans to try out this site and see how the experience goes.

Kim, meanwhile, found an article on the ABC News site that reports CouchSurfing.com has been around since 2004 and had only one minor theft incident in all that time. The website uses a system of reference, vouching, and verification to ensure the safety of all its members. While it is not a dating site, CouchSurfing.com has resulted in at least one known baby that’s come about as a result of a host/traveler connection.

Fortunately, CouchSurfing.com doesn’t have an exclusive corner on the sleeping-instrangers-homes thing. HospitalityClub.org is another site that’s free to use, while Evergreen Club.com is a pay portal geared toward more mature travelers looking for a home in which to crash.

A CLARK FAVORITE
Use social media to resolve hotel issues
Travelers are using technology to get new leverage when they’re faced with an unsatisfactory hotel stay, according to The Wall Street Journal. We all know that Facebook and Twitter give people the opportunity to post gripes (or praise) about anything online in real time. And I’ve already discussed the impact of the United Breaks Guitars viral campaign earlier in this book (see “Take Your Gripes Online with the Power of the Internet” on page 73). But now some hotel chains are monitoring social networking sites for instances of their name and responding to customer grievances, according to the newspaper.
Say you get to your hotel and you need some extra towels, just as an example. If you call down to the front desk, you might be ignored if it’s during a high-occupancy time and there are no hands on deck to help you. But if you make a comment about the lack of towels on the hotel’s official Twitter or Facebook page, hotel management might ring your room and offer, “We’re sorry you were unhappy with the lack of clean towels today. Can we come by now and drop some off for you?” This works particularly well if you as a blogger, Tweeter, or
Facebooker have a large following of “friends” who could potentially be swayed by your posts.
Social media policies vary widely by chain and even within chains. The Wall Street Journal noted that customers got particularly good responses to gripes by Tweeting when they stayed at the Marriott Orlando World Center Resort in Florida and the Atlantis, Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Social media is only poised to grow, so making a post on Twitter or Facebook is worth a try.
And you shouldn’t wait until you have a problem to post; writing something online saying you’re greatly anticipating your stay before you get to your hotel is a good way to put yourself on their radar and possibly get some upgrades.

Try a home exchange arrangement when traveling

If you’re a little wary of staying with people you don’t know, perhaps you’d consider staying in their homes by yourself. There are a variety of exchange services that pair families in different countries who want to swap homes for a week or so each year.

HomeExchange.com is the graybeard in the business. If you’ve ever seen the romantic comedy The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, this is the service they were using to swap homes in Los Angeles and London.

Homes in the United States are often much nicer and more spacious than accommodations in European countries, so be realistic in your expectations. You can also use the service for domestic swaps.

There’s a fee of $9.95 per month with a one-year contract that gives you the opportunity to make unlimited exchanges for a year. If you don’t find a home exchange partner during the year, your second year is free. If that’s still too rich for your blood, there’s also a three-month membership option priced at $15.95 per month.

Other sites that offer similar services include Airbnb.com, HomeLink.org, Exchange-Homes. com, JewettStreet.com, and SabbaticalHomes.com; the latter is geared toward the ivory tower crowd.

AIR TRAVEL

Be flexible to find the best deals

If you want to save the most money on travel, you might have to do something many people either can’t or won’t do—not pick a specific travel destination or date. The more flexibility you have about when and where you want to travel, the more likely you will find a great deal.

The key is to buy the deal and then figure out why you want to go there. That’s been my travel philosophy since the airlines deregulated in 1978. Let the deal drive the trip instead of picking one place and time and trying to find an airfare deal to get there.

This is also the philosophy I use when I book an annual staff trip for the employees who make me look good every day. Our team simply waits for a deal to pop up and then we buy it. By doing this, we’ve gone on trips, at bargain rates, to Japan, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Spain, China, Budapest, Italy, Switzerland, England, France, Holland, and Argentina.

Where should you look for a deal? Travelzoo.com, AirGorilla.com, Momondo.com and Kayak.com are all good options. Mobissimo.com is a good option if you’re looking for an international destination.

Great travel deals often pop up and then disappear quickly. When you see one, pounce on it.

We took an all-inclusive (air, meals and 4-star lodging) to Cancún in March for only $650/person for 7 days. Normally it goes for over $2,000 a person. First, we checked out the best days to fly by using Travelocity flexible dates option. Then, on Orbitz we searched for vacation packages during the cheapest flight dates. Then, on RetailMeNot.com we found a coupon for Orbitz good for $100 off per person. The place was wonderful and the cheap price made it more memorable.
Chuck M., OH
CLARK’S GREATEST HITS
Fly the discount airlines—not the full-fare fleets
You get what you pay for, right? That’s a perception that many people have about the airline industry, where you have the expensive full-fare airlines on the one hand and the much cheaper discount airlines on the other. But USA Today has done an exhaustive analysis of government and consumer survey data for the industry going back to 2004 and found that, as a general rule, the cheaper the airline, the better the service.
The newspaper has come up with a new tally of the airlines, ranked on quality and service. Here’s the breakdown from best to worst: JetBlue, Hawaiian, Southwest, Frontier, Alaska, Continental, Northwest (before the Delta merger), American, Delta, United, and US Airways.
The data was overwhelming that you get a much better experience on the discounters than the full-fare airlines, regardless of price. As USA Today put it, “Despite lower fares, passengers consistently rank discount airlines higher in quality and service than better-known traditional carriers.” JetBlue, Southwest (which has since absorbed AirTran), and Frontier are all discounters, while the remaining ones on the list are full-fare airlines.
How is it that the discounters can offer their superior services so much more cheaply? Typically, they run a much simpler business. The full-fares fly up to eight or ten types of airplanes in their fleets. Discounters, however, will fly only one or two types of jets. That move alone can save big bucks in terms of maintenance and upkeep of the aircraft. In addition, the discounters put the focus on customers by offering deals instead of trying to come up with new ways to fee you to death like the full-fares do.
When a discounter goes into a market, airfares start dropping like flies. When they’re absent, boy, can it hurt your wallet. Recently, I had to take an hour-long flight to a market that was served only by full-fare airlines. I paid $1,350 round-trip! If I’d had access to a discounter, I would have paid at most a few hundred dollars for the same trip.
Little wonder then that discounters were the only ones making money during the Great Recession as people dialed back on discretionary travel. The full-fares, meanwhile, were reporting quarterly losses of up to $250 million each at the peak of the recession.
Longtime listeners to my show know that I love Southwest. In addition to no baggage fees, Southwest does not charge customers to change nonrefundable tickets. It also has a simplified boarding process that makes it an oasis of calm at the gate. So I think you can expect to see Southwest back up at the top of the list soon!

Use hard discounter airlines to travel around Europe

Visiting Europe is one of my favorite things to do. I simply love places like western Ireland, Lucerne, Switzerland, and all of Italy, to name a few spots. The key to cheap travel to and around Europe is to fly into Ireland, Britain, or Germany during the off-peak season when fares are low and then use hard discounter airlines like Ryanair and easyJet to fly around the continent for unbelievably low rates. (Ireland is the real key here, because sometimes the taxes on a ticket into Britain can really take the price up into the stratosphere.)

Ryanair is widely acknowledged as the world’s cheapest airline. I’ve flown them extensively around Europe, but they’re something of an acquired taste. They’ve stripped every frill out of their planes to deliver the lowest fares. For example, the seats don’t recline, there are no seat-back pockets, and you won’t find any window shades. They even cram 199 seats onto a 737 that usually holds only 150 people. You can expect to be uncomfortable if you weigh more than one hundred pounds or are taller than four feet, eight inches. I’m kidding of course, but you get the idea. And don’t even mention the boarding process; it’s as frenzied as a rugby scrum. But, oh, what savings: I took a flight from England to Ireland for the equivalent of $1.75!

The company’s chief executive is a wild man with a foul mouth named Michael O’Leary. He hires flight attendants from formerly communist Eastern European countries and pays them on commissions from the in-flight sales of goods. So you have these stewardesses running around the plane in five-inch heels trying to sell cigarettes, lottery tickets, trinkets, and more during the entire flight.

A word about airfares to Europe in general. When we went to the Open Skies policy, part of the deal was that all international airlines could enter into co-ops or alliances. Today there are three main ones—Oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance—that actually work to the detriment of the flying public.

Airlines within these co-ops coordinate schedules, routes, and fares, which has greatly reduced competition when you want to fly between the United States and especially Europe. This makes it more important than ever to fly wherever in Europe you find a deal, if you don’t mind the inconvenience, and then take Ryanair or easyJet.

The truth is that these three co-op cartels have raised the fares so much to Europe that there’s a giant opportunity for one of the European hard discounters to start service to the United States and blow them out of the water. Ryanair has made noise about flying to the U.S. with eye-popping fares as low as $15. So far it’s just talk, but at some point it will happen.

Track fares online and get a refund if the price drops

Have you heard of airfare envy? That’s when you buy a ticket and find the same itinerary for less money afterward. The good news is that there are a handful of airlines that will give you a voucher for the difference if you ask. These include Alaska Air, JetBlue, Southwest, United, and US Airways.

Each airline picks a price point at which they’ll dole out. For Alaska and JetBlue, you’ll get a refund for any price drop whatsoever. For US Airways, however, the price drop has to be $150 or more before they’ll shell out.

But unless you religiously follow airfares after you’ve made your purchase, you might not even know that you’ve overpaid. That’s where Yapta.com comes in handy. After completing the free registration, Yapta will e-mail you when your flight goes down in price and help you get a refund for the difference.

One caveat here. Some airlines will charge big fees if you want to process a refund. United and US Air both charge a whopping $150. So make sure it’s worth your while before you get involved.

Ditch the frequent-flyer miles credit card

I have a long-standing beef with my nephew David, who is addicted to frequent-flyer mileage programs and jumps through all kinds of hoops to accumulate miles. Here’s what David doesn’t understand: There’s an industry-wide trend of airlines to devalue frequent-flyer miles by making the miles tougher to redeem and earn.

Having a stockpile of miles is like having a reverse savings account—the value leaches out of it every day. If you use a credit card that earns frequent-flyer miles, I would prefer that you ditch it and get a card that pays you cash instead. With cash, there are no restrictions on when you can use it.

My senior producer Kimberly Drobes is also one of those people conned by the mileage programs. She once redeemed miles and had to fly to the wrong city, while changing planes two times to get there and two more times to get home. That’s a lot of work to take a “free” trip.

So what should you do with your mileage balances? The full-fare airlines are adding international routes all the time, so look for new service announcements on their websites and jump when you get the opportunity. Then jump at a credit card that pays cash dividends, not miles.

Know when to buy trip insurance

The 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland that left millions of travelers stranded on both sides of the Atlantic presented one compelling argument for buying trip insurance.

Policies are designed to protect consumers by giving them refunds in the event of illness of the traveler or immediate family member, or to provide a refund in the case of company, tour operator, or airline default.

These policies should always be purchased when you are taking a cruise, a tour, or traveling on a trip that requires prepayment of thousands of dollars. Just be sure you purchase a policy independent of the cruise, tour, or vacation planner. Never purchase the trip protection plan from the trip organizer. Those types of policies are designed to protect the company, not the consumer!

You can expect a policy to cost around 6 percent of the total cost of the trip. Of course, it’s possible to run that number way up. Visit InsureMyTrip.com to comparison shop for policies.

Flight delays are sometimes an unavoidable fact of life when you’re traveling. Yet often, they’re more of an annoyance or a nuisance, not a disaster. My advice is to try to keep your perspective. Let little hassles roll off your back if you can. If you miss a connection or are delayed with a flight cancellation, do not stand in line at the airport. People will queue up for a tenth of a mile to talk to customer no-service and it does no good. Get on the phone or online and see what you can accomplish instead.

Recently, I traveled from Alabama to California. The week before I had heard Clark talking about what to do if your flight was cancelled—not to stand in lines, but call reservations. Well, my flight going into Dallas from Huntsville was rerouted to Oklahoma (due to storms). While on the long wait on the runway at Oklahoma, my connecting flight to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport was cancelled. I called reservations and they got me on a later flight to LAX. When we finally got to Dallas, I was able to get on the plane to LAX and there was a mad scramble and a long line because so many were messed up because of the weather. Thank you so much for the advice! I had to be there for surgery on a close family member so it was very important for me to get there.
Betty J., AL

Save on airport parking

Parking at the airport can be a real headache—driving up and down mile-long lines of already parked vehicles in the economy section. Using off-site parking and taking advantage of free shuttles to the terminal can be a much better idea. But with so many off-site parking lots competing for your business, how do you know which one offers the best deal? Sites like BestParking.com and LongTermParking.com have a solution.

BestParking.com is a free parking search engine that steers drivers toward the cheapest and most convenient parking facilities in sixteen cities and sixty-six airports. Addresses, phone numbers, photos, rates, and other attributes are provided for all facilities, and some of the nation’s largest parking operators also offer exclusive discounts and reservations through the service.

Using BestParking is a cinch. Simply select your desired airport and your arrival and departure dates/times. BestParking will crunch the numbers and pop up the dollar amounts of all available parking vendors on a Google map. Saving money can be that simple! And save you can, especially when you consider that in midtown Manhattan, motorists can spend anywhere between $12 and $87 for a full day of parking, or that a week’s stay at Los Angeles International Airport can range from $53 to $210.

Like everything else these days, BestParking also offers a free app for iPhone, Android, and select BlackBerry users.

Of course, the default option is to do a simple Web search for “airport parking coupons + [the name of the airport or city]” or something similar. For example, I had to leave a car in Jacksonville, Florida, for three weeks and couldn’t find any parking that was less than $4.99 each day. When I did a Bing search for “Jacksonsville airport parking discount,” I found a deal for $2.75 each day! It’s like a treasure hunt just looking around for things.

A CLARK FAVORITE
Avoid baggage fees by not checking a bag
Only two discount airlines—JetBlue and Southwest—allow you to check a bag without paying a fee. Your first bag is free on JetBlue, while a second bag will cost you $30. Southwest, meanwhile, allows up to two checked bags absolutely free. Nobody knows if Southwest will continue with their liberal “no baggage fees” policy. But it certainly has made for some strong imaging for them. You can see their “no baggage fees” commercials in constant rotation during heavily watched sports events like the NFL play-offs.
Not everyone lives in a market served by JetBlue or Southwest. So there’s still one other way to avoid baggage fees no matter which carrier you’re flying: Don’t check a bag! I travel only with what an airline permits free as a single carry-on—usually a 22 x 14 x 8-inch piece of luggage. Another plus is I never worry about the airline losing my baggage.
Sometimes getting everything you need into a carry-on can be an extreme test. When you fly Ryanair, the European discounter, your suitcase must be less than twenty-two pounds—or you’ll pay a nearly $50 fee to check it in at the airport ($20 online). So my favorite Ryanair story involves the time I had to wear multiple layers of clothing in Dublin to make sure I avoided that hefty $50 fee! That meant three pairs of pants, two shirts, and a sweatshirt on top of that while flying. My wife even has the pictures to prove it!

CAR RENTALS AND OTHER TRANSPORTATION

Ride the bus around the country for $1!

There is a real market demand for cheap, reliable, and safe city-to-city bus transportation. The push for cheap fares among big cities really started with bus lines running in the Washington D.C./New York/Boston corridor that were geared toward ethnic Chinese customers. But if “bus service” makes you think of a Greyhound terminal in a seedy part of town, boy, have things changed!

Greyhound has launched a new line called BoltBus.com with eight daily trips between Washington, D.C., and New York, plus other Northeast Corridor routes. Online fares start at $1, and onboard amenities include free Wi-Fi and extra legroom because they’ve removed some seats.

There’s also a European player in the game called Megabus.com that serves a large swath of the country from New Hampshire to North Carolina and all the way out to the midwestern states of Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri (inclusive of everything in between, from the East Coast to the Midwest).

A select number of seats on every bus sells for about $1, with the deals typically going to passengers who book six or more days in advance. A Washington Post reporter went from Washington, D.C., to midtown Manhattan for $1.50! Of course, there are only a limited number of seats at those kinds of prices. Other seats can run up to the $20 range. Still, any of these options offer great alternatives to flight delays and high gas prices the next time you have to move around.

These new breeds of bus lines are trying to attract customers out of their cars by avoiding traditional crime-ridden bus terminals. They instead pick up in high-income commercial districts and drop passengers off at other high-income areas at the end of the line.

With BoltBus.com, the irony is that it’s owned by the same parent company that owns Greyhound. They were obviously smart enough to ditch the Greyhound reputation and go with new branding and a new fleet of buses!

My wife and I decided to go to Boston and see a nephew of ours who was coming from out of the country for a medical convention. We were going to use our car, taking turns driving on what would be a four-hour road trip for us. That was the plan until we heard Clark talk about Megabus. After a quick visit to the website, we made reservations from New York to Boston that weekend.
On the day of our travel, we took the ferry from Fort Lee to Manhattan and at the corner of 9th Avenue and 31st Street we got on the bus with our 2 suitcases. In four hours we were at Boston’s South Station (Gate 11)! The bus was indeed “mega” (2 decks) and clean, the seats were comfortable and the view from the second deck kept me awake the whole trip. There was a toilet, electric outlets, television and free Wi-Fi. Total cost for the both of us? $52 round trip!
We were so pleased with the experience that when we wanted to go to Philadelphia about a month later, we looked at each other and said, “Megabus!” Previously, we used to drive there. The trip was two hours (same as with the car) and the final cost for the both of us? $26.50 round trip!! Who can beat that?
Paul K., NJ

Find a $10 to $20 car rental before peak travel times at select locations

There are still some ways to beat the high cost of rental cars, despite the fact that they represent the one segment of the travel business that has gone up in price during the Great Recession.

Ahead of peak travel seasons in November-December and late April, there’s often a mad rush to get cars from across the nation to hot vacation destinations like Florida. You might find companies like Dollar Rent A Car and Thrifty Car Rental offering rentals for as little as $10 or $20 per day if you can move their vehicles from the Northeast and Midwest to the Sunshine State.

There might also be similar deals to reposition cars from the West to vacation destinations like Arizona and Southern California. It’s certainly to the benefit of the rental companies to offer these deals. Otherwise they’d have to fly paid employees out to do the same work or load cars on trucks to move them around.

With these kinds of deals, you want to be ahead of the curve. So call around to a few agencies that are located at airports several weeks before a peak travel time and ask if they’re participating and where they need their cars moved.

Now, because of the cheap price, there will be a lot of restrictions on these deals, plus additional taxes and fees. But if you can make it work, this is a real steal.

Here’s another way you can save money on car rentals: Pay a cab to take you off an airport property and get into the town. For example, my family and I booked a Colorado ski trip right before Christmas last year. Cars at Denver Airport were as much as a few hundred dollars a day. So I checked and found we could rent a car in the town of Denver for $24 a day.

Both Enterprise and Hertz have a huge network of in-town rental locations that are geared to locals with completely different pricing than what’s available at airports.

In another example, my brother once couldn’t find a decent car rental in Dallas because there was some convention going on. All the rentals were more than $100 a day. So I told him to take an airport shuttle from Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to downtown Dallas and he got a car for $22 a day. Giving up convenience in exchange for saving money must run in the family!

I recently visited the San Francisco area and needed to rent a car for a week. I got quotes from several agencies BUT what I did was compare their prices for picking up the car at different local airports. One particular agency’s prices—FOR THE SAME CAR—were: SFO $525, SJO (San Jose Airport) $600, and OAK (Oakland) $200! I took the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system over to Oakland and picked up the rental car there. After my trip was done, I returned the car to Oakland and the agency gave me a free ride to the BART station and I hopped the train back to SFO. Taking BART (round-trip to both airports) cost me $16 and I saved over $300!
Dayle V., FL
A CLARK FAVORITE
Use a Diners Club card if you frequently rent cars
Certain VISA and American Express cards and MasterCards will provide secondary coverage when you rent a car. But if you’re a frequent car renter, you might want to pay the huge annual fee of $95 for a Diners Club card because they offer full primary coverage.
Diners Club makes it easy. You simply decline the collision damage waiver (CDW) at the desk when you’re renting and charge the rental to your Diners Club card. In the event of an accident, they’ll step in with full primary coverage on cars valued up to $50,000 for a basic cardholder account.
That can be a savings of up to $20 per day; if you rent often enough, I think this is a no-brainer. Best of all, because Diners Club is primary, any accident that occurs won’t be reported to your insurance company. So you save again by avoiding premium hike.
There are now a small number of individual issuers of Visas and MasterCards that are doing primary coverage. My experience is that when they do, they trumpet it. So if you get a solicitation for a card and you’re looking at their car rental coverage, it will say “primary” in big, bold type. If it’s not primary, they aren’t going to mention it.

TIMESHARES

Timeshare solicitations are now posing as fake birthday postcards

David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times has uncovered a new wrinkle in the mail pitches being sent out for timeshares. Have you received a postcard around your birthday with an offer of two round-trip airfares to any U.S. location, plus a car rental? Don’t dial that number in an attempt to redeem it! It’s very likely a timeshare solicitation disguised as a free trip.

If you take the bait, you’ll need to sit through a ninety-minute strong-arm pitch. And those free tickets aren’t really free. You can go only where they say and when. Why the smoke and mirrors? “If we said ‘timeshare,’ our response rate would probably go down,” one marketer told Lazarus. “That’s why we say, ‘Call for details.’ ”

You never want to buy a timeshare new from the original developer. The only way to buy a timeshare is used from an existing owner. Visit the Timeshare Users Group at TUG2.net and check out their Timeshare Marketplace forum for a listing of timeshares being sold at a discount. Just beware that if the operator of the timeshare is insolvent, you’ll likely have problems with maintenance of amenities like pools or tennis courts. This is very dicey territory. You have been warned!

Beware of promises to help you resell your timeshare

Buying a timeshare is a bad enough rip-off. But imagine getting ripped off twice or three times by crooks promising to help you resell your timeshare!

Florida is the epicenter of the universe when it comes to timeshares. The St. Petersburg Times reports the Sunshine State’s attorney general received more than 2,700 complaints about the timeshare resale industry during a recent year, up from nearly 1,000 a year prior. That’s almost triple the number of complaints year over year.

The crooks typically ask for money up front for advertising, title searches, and other administrative fees. You might even be told you’ll get your money back if your timeshare isn’t sold in ninety days. That’s a big fat lie. You won’t get anything back except a lighter wallet. But there’s more than one level of danger here; there’s also the element of what’s called a reload scam. Crooks in this field routinely share the names and numbers of people who they’ve already successfully ripped off. That way other criminals know who is an easy mark and can be hit up for money several times over.

Here’s the real truth: Anyone promising you more than a few pennies on the dollar for what you originally paid if you bought a timeshare new is lying. Salespeople should receive commissions only at the time of the sale, not a second before.

Get rid of your timeshare—but it may cost you

I’ve received many calls over the years from people who are stuck with a timeshare they can’t sell. Timeshares are extremely difficult to unload no matter what you paid for them or when you bought them.

Even if you love your timeshare, sometimes your circumstances change and you need to sell your week. The trouble is that there is no solid, active secondary market for selling timeshares because they lose about 80 percent of their value the moment they leave a developer’s hands.

For the last eight years, I’ve guided timeshare owners who wanted to get rid of their obligation to donateforacause.org (DFC). Historically, this group allowed you to donate your timeshare to charity and claim a tax deduction of up to $5,000 with no costs involved on your end. The process eliminated all maintenance fees, taxes, and any special assessments from your life.

After the transfer of ownership, you would get a receipt for your donation and the proceeds would go to a nonprofit organization of your choosing. The American Cancer Society, Feed the Children, and National Public Radio are just a few of the possible recipients working with DFC. Be sure to discuss the tax issues with your accountant before you claim it as a deduction.

Today, though, there’s a postscript to this story. Before the economy tanked, DFC was able to take on the majority of timeshares that people brought to them to unload. Recently, however, I’ve gotten complaints on my show from listeners who said they were either getting the brush-off from DFC or being asked to pay big money, which is a red flag in my book.

So I got in touch with DFC and spoke to Crystal Foss, the company’s president. Foss explained the timeshare resale market is so broken that they accept less than 10 percent of the properties people contact them about. To deal with the more than 90 percent that they can’t do a thing with, DFC set up a guaranteed for-profit operation. For a charge of $2,500, DFC will now take a timeshare off your hands.

Make sure you don’t owe any money against the timeshare you want to get rid of—including outstanding maintenance fees—or it won’t even be considered. DFC still offers their original no-cost option too, but the reality is that the donation is contingent upon resale of the property during a 120-day period . . . and there ain’t no way that’s happening in today’s market! In fact, I have very serious reservations about whether the timeshare market will recover at any point during my lifetime.

At first glance, it might seem counterintuitive to include a tip in this book that’s going to cost you $2,500. But when you consider that maintenance fees, taxes, and any special assessments on a timeshare can add up pretty quickly—not to mention the interest you’re paying if you took out a loan to buy your timeshare—well, I think you’ll agree this one can be a real money saver.

So this remains a legitimate way to get rid of your timeshare, but I know it might prove cost-prohibitive for many people. And I realize that it’s like adding insult to injury if you already paid big once to get your timeshare. In the end, I think the best advice I can give is, if you have a timeshare, try your hardest to get out there once a year and enjoy your week.

PROTECTING YOUR WALLET ON THE ROAD

Purchase advance travel with a credit card

So many airlines have gone bust in just the past few years. There were a number of factors that led to their demise: the drop in leisure travel throughout the recession, the reduction in business travel overall since 2001, and then the final nail in the coffin—a spurt in oil prices.

Every rise or fall in the cost of jet fuel (kerosene) makes a massive difference in the cost structure of the nation’s airlines. They see an almost instantaneous benefit from just the tiniest drop in oil prices. So you can imagine the financial hurt they felt when oil rose to nearly $150 a barrel after it had been around $100 a barrel just a few months earlier!

I recall getting a lot of questions on my show about the one-two punch that affected travelers when two airlines that served Hawaii—Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines—failed within months of each other. Both failures left thousands of Hawaiians stranded on the mainland and thousands of mainlanders stranded on Hawaii. (Well, you can’t really have too much sympathy for the latter group, can you?)

These kinds of failures always highlight a weak spot in how some people choose to purchase their airfare. People who paid in cash, by check, or with a money order or debit card got burned and had no recourse to get their money back. Those who used a credit card, on the other hand, were eligible to get their money back. All it required was contacting their credit card issuer and doing a charge back within sixty days of the original date of purchase. Now that’s the way to book smart and safe!

Don’t use a debit card when renting a car or checking into a hotel

Plastic can often be a traveler’s best friend. Have you ever tried booking a rental car or a hotel room without a credit or debit card? It’s impossible. But as in other areas of your finances, the type of plastic a traveler chooses to pull out is very important.

Debit cards are an overwhelmingly inferior product to credit cards for a number of reasons. The worst weakness is that hotels and rental car companies will put a hold on your checking account if you use a debit card to make a transaction. If you have other checks floating around that someone tries to cash, that could throw you over into insufficient funds land and result in heavy fees.

But there are other, less publicized dangers in using a debit card at the car rental counter or even at the front desk at a hotel during check-in. Pamela Yip of The Dallas Morning News found that it’s standard practice (and completely legal) in the industry for car rental companies to do a hard inquiry on your credit report, often without your knowledge or consent. Why would they do this? They’re trying to protect themselves against auto thieves that love to use debit cards as a low-risk method to get rentals that they can steal. But that inquiry can drastically lower your credit score in the process. The simple solution is to use a real credit card instead.

CLARK’S GREATEST HITS
Use a no-fee credit card overseas
Using a credit card overseas can be easy and cheap or it can be fraught with a lot of heavy and unnecessary expenses. Several years ago, a reporter for The New York Times called major credit card issuers and asked about the fees for using a credit card overseas. The reporter wrote that it was not easy to get answers, but the funniest responses were why the fees existed at all: The most honest answer was that the bank needed to make more money.
Traditionally, you were charged for the bank’s foreign-currency buying rate (aka the wholesale-bankers’ buying rate) plus a 1 percent conversion fee when using a credit card overseas. But last decade, banks started charging up to 5 percent for absolutely no reason. I want you to find out your credit card’s conversion fees before traveling overseas. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but you need to call your issuer and see what kind of rate they charge.
Banks have to tell you the fees they charge for overseas charges or they can be sued.
Most credit card issuers charge 3 percent if you use their card outside the United States. Capital One, however, has no fees at all on their credit cards when used internationally. Many smaller issuers and credit unions will not charge rip-off fees. Use those cards if you can. In addition, USAA has no foreign-transaction fee, though there is a 1 percent MasterCard/Visa fee associated with their cards. (See “If You’re a Veteran, Get USAA” on page 162.)
Using ATMs abroad is the most effective way to get money when traveling. But some banks will charge a foreign-currency rip-off fee that usually starts at $9 or $10 per transaction! That’s outrageous. If you’re with a big bank, check to see if they are part of any alliance where you can use ATMs fee-free in other countries. Simply tell them what country you’re going to and they can tell you if there’s a fee-free alliance partner bank there. You can also get fee-free ATM transactions abroad with most Capital One cards.

Make cheap international cell calls while traveling

After traveling recently in Europe, I was reminded how expensive it can be to call the United States. While in Venice, Italy, I overheard an American woman telling her friend how she got ripped off on calls back home. She was charged $68 for a five-minute call to family and $10 for a one-minute call to check her voice mail. So I told the woman I was paying only 5.8 cents a minute and offered to let her use my cell. Well, she probably thought I was a con artist because she didn’t take me up on my offer!

So what’s my secret? I heeded a listener’s advice and used a service called Pingo.com. This is not a free service; you have to pay $12 to sign up and are immediately credited with $5 in calling time. So the net initial cost is $7. But the payoff is in the great rates. I even found an online coupon to receive bonus minutes when I first signed up.

Since then, I’ve learned about a couple of newer services called CallArc.com and Ring-Plus. net that promise free international calling.

Both services require you to listen to ads in exchange for free talk time. We’ll see how these services play out over time. Let’s hope they don’t end up in Clark’s Graveyard! (See page 241.)

The cost of international calling changes at light speed. And the rates keep going down and down. You might find things that are not exactly free, but so cheap that it will feel like it’s free! Visit ClarkHoward.com for my updates on the latest and greatest deals.

Aside from that, there are a couple of different ways you can avoid getting eaten alive on charges from your wireless carrier when you’re overseas. For starters, you can enroll in your carrier’s own international calling plan and use your own phone. If you choose to go this route, make sure you get an e-mail confirmation of your enrollment with the terms and conditions before you travel.

But to go even cheaper, you’ve got to start with an unlocked world phone that uses Global System for Mobile (GSM) technology. T-Mobile will unlock your existing handset after ninety days, while AT&T requires you to complete your contract before they unlock you. When I was in England and had to get a new world phone, I went to the Carphone Warehouse chain and bought an unlocked phone for $14. You can also try going on eBay and buying an already unlocked world phone on the cheap.

Once you have the unlocked world phone, you should buy a prepaid SIM chip for it online. You might want to use GoSim.com or Telestial.com, which are both good for when you’re doing a single-country trip. Check out RangeRoamer.com if you’re going to be traveling to multiple nations. If you’re going to Europe, you should know about Lycamobile.com. They sell ultra-cheap chips that you can use to call back for practically zilch—some 6 or 10 cents per minute.

One aside here, for those taking an action-adventure trip in uncharted territory, I’d recommend buying or renting a satellite phone from Telestial.com. It will still cost less per minute than the usual charges from your carrier.

Remember, your wallet will be destroyed if you use your standard U.S. cell phone while traveling overseas. And I don’t ever want to see that happen.

Block international calling with your cell provider in case of theft

Not too long ago people used to line up in airports at endless banks of pay phones. The mad rush for pay phones in the pre–cell phone days gave rise to a dangerous crime called “shoulder surfing.”

Criminals would pretend to videotape family members near the gates, but they’d really be filming people punching in their long-distance calling card numbers. The crooks would turn around and sell those codes all around the country within minutes of filming.

The days of shoulder surfing are long gone, but the threat of having someone run up thousands of dollars in international calls remains. Today it most often happens when you lose your phone or it gets stolen.

Under current law, you are responsible for those costs even in the case of theft or loss. To avoid a scenario like this, call your cell phone provider and get an international calling block put on your line. That will shut down any criminals who try to dial abroad.

Ship packages when you travel

The nation’s airlines are continually looking for more ways to get in your pocket. A few years ago, Delta and Continental raised baggage fees to the point that it could exceed some ticket prices if you had more than one piece of luggage to check in! Then Spirit Airlines outraged people in 2010 by charging a new carry-on fee that ranges from $20 to $45 per bag.

Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, still has no baggage fees as I write this. Nor will this discount airline charge you to change a trip once you’ve booked it. Perhaps that’s why Southwest keeps gaining more market share while the full-fare airlines watch their shares shrink.

Think Southwest is crazy? Well, I say they’re crazy like a fox. Customers who might be on the cusp about taking a trip are probably more likely to book with Southwest because they know they won’t get hit with a fee to change a ticket.

But what if Southwest doesn’t serve the markets you need? There’s another way to avoid baggage fees on the full-fare airlines: Shipping packages with UPS Ground or FedEx Ground can help.

One of my coauthors on this book, Theo Thimou, lives in Atlanta, but both he and his wife are natives of New Jersey. Every Christmas, they travel with their child to visit family in the Garden State. They’ve found they can ship presents back to Georgia in a medium-sized box (18 x 18 x 16 inches, or 3 cubic feet) for about $20–$25, via a UPS Ground drop-off point that’s located inside one of the local big-box office supply stores.

That beats having to pay $100 on Continental or $125 on Delta for a third suitcase. Of course, they could be saving much more if they traveled with no luggage at all, but as a parent myself, I know that can be difficult when you have children.

Visit Kayak.com/airline-fees for a full list of fees pertaining to checked baggage, meals, pets, unaccompanied-minor service, and more.