Summer Travel Tips

SPEAKER_00 0:05

We're gonna do a really great financial feature. Tom and Dom are talking real money.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to talking real money. I'm Tom Cock. Thank you for joining us. And I gotta say, uh, as you know, normally we talk about investments or we talk about money or we, you know, talk about retirement. Those are kind of the mainstay issues. But I tell you, we try to get off the beaten path every once in a while because there's pretty important stuff that is financial, but not necessarily in our wheelhouse. So we bring in really smart people. Maybe you've seen this guy flying high above us with his cape going behind. Nah, kidding. Uh, he's he's not a bird, he's not a plane, but he is the consumer man, and that's Herb Weisbaum. Herb, thanks for being on the talking real money.

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And I do have a cape.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I believe you do. And uh probably works, is my guess. Superman.

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The drug paying bills are horrendous,

Travel Costs Surge

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let me tell you.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Especially here in Seattle. So uh here we are in the middle of travel season. Everybody, kids are out of school, and everybody's all happy because they want to go somewhere and the weather's nice, and it's time to get out and enjoy things just in time for wow, domestic airfares, according to a recent article he wrote a checkbook, up 18% year over year, international fares up about eight percent. So these are way up, but I gotta assume that you know, when oil prices go back down, the price of these fares is gonna go down too, correct?

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Well, as Don would say to you, well time, one never assumes. Um there's no first of all, there's no way to know if prices will go up some more because the uh oil prices are going up and down, as you know, following them, but basically they're up significantly from where they were. So the price of uh jet fuel to airlines is up dramatically from where it was, and there's no way to know when the oil prices will come down. Uh despite predictions from what the White House says that oil prices are gonna return to normal as soon as a quote deal is done, uh industry analysts tell me it's gonna take a long time, maybe the end of the year, for jet fuel prices to get back to where they were on February twenty eighth before the war. According to Patrick Dehan, you may know his name, he's on TV and radio now more than I am because of the fuel prices. He's the chief petroleum analyst at the Gas Buddy, and he says for every day the uh Strait of Hormuz remains closed, it extends by a week how long it will take for fuel prices to return to normal. So just based on how long the straits have been closed now, he said, we're looking at the end of the year or longer. And to d directly answer your question, will prices come down when jet fuel comes down? Uh you're obviously not an airline executive, Tom.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

I I wish I was today, right? Because I mean was astounded in your article when United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said his company's fares are fifteen to twenty percent higher since the war began. But the longer this lasts, according to Kirby, the higher the probability goes that pricing increases hold. That's not very good news for consumers.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, Delta United and even Alaska have indicated that so far, despite the higher prices, demand has remained strong. People just want to continue to travel. And uh so if it stays like this, there's no real logic, if you're an airline executive, to lower prices back to where they were at a pre-war level. So, yeah, if the prices stick, if people continue to fly, volume stays up, then they probably won't bring the prices down very much. And remember, Spirit is gone. So in all the markets where Spirit was flying, they now no longer have that low price discount competition. They can bring their prices up in those markets because they don't have to worry about the competition. So uh I'm not and the other thing, and because this is a money show, what concerns me, and my wife Deb, and you know Deb was talking about this last night, she goes, where are people getting all this money to travel? I mean, I traveled in f in April for a conference in Orlando round trip, and the airfare on Alaska Airlines and I booked before the war was a thousand bucks round trip to go to Orlando from Seattle. Where are people getting all this money? And the answer is they're either doing buy now, pay later, or they're doing credit cards and getting deeper and deeper and deeper in debt, just throwing their hands up as some surveys have shown, saying, I'm never gonna make ends meet, so you might as well just get in and get to enjoy life and we'll worry about this later, which is a very sad place to be and scary place to be from a financial point.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, it really is, it's because I mean the f you gotta you you can't just go, you know, crazy with your credit cards, as you say, or figure out how to pay later. Okay, but let's okay, so that's the bad news, right? Prices are up, demand staying high because people want to get out

Cutting Flight Expenses

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of here. Any solution on the horizon, a way that people can kind of work their way around this, or are we just kind of like you said, if you want to go, you gotta go, and you're gonna have to pay the pay the piper here?

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Well, I think there's a couple of things you have to do to deal with this. First of all, as you know, check bags are now a big moneymaker for the airlines, and all six major U.S. carriers have increased the check baggage fee. Most now charge $45 for the first check bag, and on a one-way, on a that's a one-way flight. So we do a round trip that's $90 and $55 for the second bag. So what you can do is either limit yourself to carry on luggage, uh, or if you're a frequent flyer with status, you can usually check at least one bag for free uh and or get an airline credit card. Now you may pay a fee for that. For example, the Alaska Airlines At most rewards card with an annual fee of $95 gives you a free check bag for any card holder and up to six guests on the same reservation when the flight is paid for with the airline's credit cards. If you're traveling with the whole family, you're gonna more than pay back that $95 fee in one trip. So that's one way to get around this. Have status, get an airline credit card, limit yourself to carry-on baggage, try to be flexible with your schedule. So if you uh don't have to go at peak times or peak days of the week, if you put in a search engine when you're doing it, lowest price, and you see that there's a better deal on a Tuesday and you can go on a Tuesday rather than a Sunday, maybe that's the way to go. You can do that. And maybe pick destinations where not everybody and their brother is going. I mean, obviously the big destinations are always popular. I mean, people are gonna go, know what in the summertime. They're gonna go to uh you know, they're gonna go to New York, and they're gonna go possibly to a couple places in Canada, and they're gonna go to California and where all the vacation sites are, maybe Florida. Maybe you pick another place. You know, maybe you visit uh beautiful downtown I don't know, Paulsbow or something like that. Yeah. Yes. And that yes, and you pay 'em uh you pay about as much in gasoline to get from Seattle Metro to where you live, Tom, and about uh that you pay for a ticket for an airplane. But seriously, maybe think about going to someplace where everybody and the brother aren't going this summer and and do it that way, just to plan around that. And if you can lock in the rate now sooner rather than later is the best way to go because prices are only likely to go up, and if it goes down, you can rebook your ticket. I spoke on my podcast, which as you know is called consumerpedia.org with syndicated travel expert Christopher Elliott. He grew up in Washington State. He's now traveling the world for years. He hasn't been home in like 18 years or

Travel Insurance Options

SPEAKER_02 7:06

something like that. Well, seriously, we caught up with him in Australia, and he suggests that you might get cancel for any reason travel insurance if you really have to be someplace on time, like you booked a cruise ship or a non-refundable vacation resort or something like that, because they really are canceling willy-nilly flights are being canceled uh as airlines try to cut back routes that are making money or to uh just balance their budget. It's more expensive than basic travel insurance, which by the way, he pointed out to me does not cover causes of delay due to acts of war. So that they're something to keep in mind. So you want all uh cancel for any reason travel insurance. It's about 10 to 12 percent of the total trip cost, but it would cover you if your flight got canceled, then you're gonna miss the cruise or the the resort and anything like that. That might be worth it. And then keep in mind, I mean, check with your airline if you're if you're gonna if you're planning a trip. Um, as you know from the article, Delta has already suspended some flights from major hubs, including JFK and Boston Logan and Detroit Metropolitan. And internationally, Tom, they're really getting clobbered because not only is the price up, but they're running out of supply, and they just can't get the fuel they need. So some international carriers, including Air Canada, Lufthansa, KLM, SAS, and Air New Zealand, have already significantly reduced their summer flight schedules. Lufthansa, that's the German airline in mid-April announced that it would eliminate 20,000 European short haul flights over the summer. As Don would say, 20,000 flights. So you're lucky in Europe he can take trains. It's easier to take trains, but Air Canada is gonna suspend flights from Montreal and Toronto to JFK June 1 through October

Summer Travel Chaos

SPEAKER_02 8:46

25th. So the flights you're even thinking about going on or you may have gone before may not even be flying anymore. So there's there's gonna be Elliot told me this is gonna be the most uh confusing travel so the most challenging travel season, most unpredictable. Sound the table.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

I was just you jumped my to my my next seg. I was gonna say you you quoted him and you're saying called this you called it the most unpredictable summer travel season since the pandemic. Sounds like you agree with him.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Uh absolutely. I mean, you know, airlines are making all sorts of changes. Fares are up, baggage fees are up, fuel charges are being added on, by the way. So you may see the fuel charge drop, but the basic fare stays up. That's one way to keep making more revenue. Flights are being eliminated. Yeah, it's gonna be a crazy year. A lot of people have decided they don't want to participate. They're gonna take a driving vacation, go someplace and see the USA in your Chevrolet. Uh how's that for gone back in time? That's going way back. Yeah, and anybody listening who's old enough to re who remember that jingle, you need to invest your money with Tom because he's gonna take it.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, that's a good pitch. Okay. Flexibility. Flexibility. Starting early. I mean, my wife, God bless her, booked all this many months ago before the war. So she's she's always on top of this. But if you're just still thinking about it, as you say, flexibility and just roll the f the punches, right? Because there's not a whole lot

Avoiding Travel Scams

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else you can do.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Right. And one more tip, seriously, and that is to make sure you have the airplanes app on your phone if you're going to travel the summer season. Because if a flight is canceled or you're at the airport or last minute, rather than trying to get in line with uh, you know, 150 other people at the customer service desk are calling a line that isn't answered, you can possibly do much of your work on the app and figure out what's going on and and get that done. But one scam, I wrote a separate report about this, one scam to watch out for is that if you're stuck at the airport and you don't know uh have your app and you don't know what the number is for Alaska or Delta United, you might Google it. Excuse me. And so what happens is the scammers are now buying Google ads, search engine ads, and they show up at the top of the search engine results. So you will call this number, you are going to a scammer, they will answer the phone, they will be happy to tell you they'll rebook your f your uh ticket for you, but they need your credit card in order to do that. And what they'll do is either book you a ticket at an uh an inflated price, or they won't book a ticket at all, but they'll charge your credit card. So you've got to be really, really careful. The advice is it have the app and take the phone number, the legitimate phone number of your airline with you when you head to the airport. This has been a scam for a while, Tom. It's really growing in popularity with the scammers. They're doing this for hotels, they're doing this for airlines. They answer the phone as if you've called the airline or if you've called the hotel, so you really don't know that you've called a scammer. Uh and uh the one way you can tell Chris Elliott, he said this on the podcast, which was really funny. He said, if you call an airline and they pick up on the first ring, you know you're talking to a scammer, because what airline is gonna answer on the first ring? You know it's a good tip. Absolutely. But be careful. A lot of a lot of people are getting burned this way. So not only are you out of money and you have to deal with a credit card fraud, but you didn't get on the other flight, so you're not gonna get to your destination. So there's a double hit if you wind up contacting a scammer. So get the app and have the air lines and maybe the hotel's um phone number if you need to contact them if something goes wrong on the chip, just be prepared ahead of time.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, that's really good advice. You know, we got stuck in, I think you know this, in London last summer. Yep. And uh there was a line of about 150 or 200 people. Thankfully, I had sent my wife earlier. She was like second in line because I don't know, the rest of those people may still be waiting. I don't know. But you raised another good point. We're talking with Herb Weisbaum, who is a consumer man. Of course, you can read his great work at checkbook.org all the time. It's up there. Do you have weekly? How often do you update that?

SPEAKER_02 12:35

I write a I write a story every week. I'm talking about consumerpedia.org every other week.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

That's awesome. Great

Credit Cards Over Debit

SPEAKER_01 12:41

information. So, okay, but you raised something that's very important. We'll get to another part of the the article about travel, but just but just in a general sense. This use of the way you pay for things, because you mentioned using your credit card. If you use your credit card, you have some protection. If you use a debit card, you have basically no protection. Or as you account in another article you wrote, somebody wired money to somebody. I mean, once you've sent the money out of your bank account, you got nothing. So you really should be using that credit card on any sort of major purchase, correct?

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yeah, you do have some rights with a debit card, but you don't have anywhere near the rights you get for fraud protection with a credit card, because with a credit card you're using the bank's money, with a debit card, you're using your money. By the way, I don't have a debit card because I've talked to too many victims who have had a problem. The bank has either investigated and they by law have at least 10 days to investigate. So while they're investigating, that money is out of your bank account to see, you know, that you can't use your money to pay the rent or the mortgage or whatever. And then in many cases, they would tell somebody, did you give that debit card number to that scammer? And you'd say yes, and then well, it's not a scam. You gave them the number and they'll not and they won't put the money back. So I don't have a debit card. I only use a credit card because of all the forward protection. Wire transfer, come on, pay uh by Bitcoin, seriously. Uh you know, the I mean, or pay or peer-to-peer app. You know, even the apps say you shouldn't do anything but send money to somebody you know. Somebody's asking you to pay for any kind of travel experience, uh, and they need you to wire the money or pay by Bitcoin or pay by a peer-to-peer app, run away as fast as you can. You're absolutely dealing with a scammer. But the the credit card, so if you have a problem, you call the credit card company and say, I just called the airline, I got hooked up with a scammer, they have my credit card, they charge the card, it's a bogus charge. The credit card company pulls it off to the side, you don't have to pay for it, so no harm, no foul, and they'll investigate. And in most cases, checkbook is found, they find it in favor of the consumer if it's a legitimate complaint. They take that off your account, they deal with it with the merchant. It's called a chargeback. So that's the protection you have with a credit card.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, and this comes up because when people are booking through third parties, for example, you wrote a piece about uh booking.com, I think it was, and maybe even mentioned Airbnb and the vacation rental process. Yeah, where people book these things, they send off the money, and then they find out it was all a big scam and they're not staying anywhere. I mean, tell us a little bit more about that. It's fairly shocking.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Sure. I will I just want to follow up on another thought because I've heard people tell me through the years, Tom, I don't want to give my credit card number because I don't want to possibly give my credit card number to a scammer. That's why you have a credit card. Right. If you give it to a scammer, you call the credit card. If you give a debit card to the scammer, you got a lot more problems. They took your money, and now you got to get it back in your

Rental Booking Risks

SPEAKER_02 15:17

account. So that's that's why not that willy-nilly use your credit card, but that's why you have it to protect against fraud. Yeah, this is a really big article, a major investigation that my boss, Kevin Brassler, our executive editor of Checkbook, did, and he looked into all the terms and conditions and the problems that people are having when they book their vacations with vacation rental services. The problems tend to be worse with VRBO and with um booking.com and tend to be a little bit uh the Airbnb tends to be more helpful. So here's the problem: the people go on and and book these vacations, and what they find out is something happens to the uh to their property, they get a contact from the property that there's a problem with their rental. In some cases, they booked a scam property and there's no such property there, and they either find out before they go, or in some cases, horrendously, when they arrive and there's no such property. Can you imagine showing up at a house of people going my house? I'm not renting my house. Or other cases, the uh the uh host cancels the reservation but doesn't return the money, the deposit you paid. And uh we to I talked to for for my podcast, I talked to a victim, her name is Susan Chud. Uh she booked a house in Kentucky for a family reunion, so this was a huge amount of money. It was a scam. And on the phone, VRBO acknowledged that the host had canceled other guest stays and refused to issue the refunds for deposits, and they told her they would refund the money, and she said they seemed very empathetic and said they would help. And then a day or so later, she got an email that said, Deal with your credit card company. We're not paying back anything, or not even refunding the booking charge you paid directly to us, Virbo. So uh she was sort of stuck that with that was a $780 charge Virbo had, they wouldn't even refund that. Thankfully, she did the uh chargeback appeal to the credit card company and they they reversed the transaction. But she and the other victims we talked to wanted people to know that despite all the uh promises and the claims and the advertising, they go through the platforms, it's a safe way to book. You can trust us that what happens is if verbo and booking.com have a problem, you may not get your money back. And here's what my boss found out he found out that verbo and booking.com pay the host as soon as the reservation is booked. So they get the money ahead of time. And the difference is that Airbnb pays the host after the person shows up for the rental. Ah. So they so that that makes it less likely that there's going to be a scam because you got, you know, you're alerted, they're there, you're there, you're at the property. So if you alert them, something's not going on. So they control all the financial transactions, and if somebody gets scammed, they still have your money, not the scammers, and they appear to be a little bit more willing to issue refunds, uh, we write. Um, so and they also seem to remove fake listings faster than other companies. So that's the problem with uh verbo and booking.com is they pay and and and in the article and in the podcast, my boss said, Why don't you just switch verbo booking.com? Why don't you just, yeah, you're gonna annoy the host because they want their money right away. But where are they but where are they gonna go? You're you're two of the big guys. You know, they gotta use you if they want to rent these things. Just switch it and and favor the consumer instead of favoring this the potential scammer who's gonna steal people's money and then say to them, sorry, we're not gonna help you. You've got to go to the credit card company and deal with the credit card company and get this taken care of. This Susan Chud said it ruined the whole experience with her, and she would never ever use them again.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Oh boy, that's harsh. We did not touch on this prior to our interview. We're talking with Herb Weissbaum, who is the consumer man and has been for I don't should we say it? Almost

World Cup Scam Warnings

SPEAKER_01 18:58

almost 50 years. Um but we're in the middle of a pretty special time for people that love soccer or football. The World Cup. Any scams that have been going on there that you would did you've around tickets or anything else that you've been aware of?

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Um not particularly because you know I'm not a I'm not a football or soccer guy. You keep trying to you keep trying to convert me. So I mean I did watch Ted Lasso, so I guess I like it a little bit. Just be suspicious of any offer, and especially like if you're gonna stay at a room, a hotel or uh some kind of place, and somebody is offering an unbelievable deal that is way below the market value, or somebody who uh wants you to pay in a one of the bizarre ways we talked about via bank transfer or via uh wire transfer or some kind of other way, a peer-to-peer app. Just be careful. And I'm sure there's gonna be those kind of scams going on uh when you know, pay special attention if you're doing a vacation rental to reviews and look for ones to talk about any kind of scam or or problem with that review with that host. That's a good way to do that. Uh again, there's probably gonna be ticket scalping of scams. I think the fact that the tickets are digital will probably reduce that a little bit because they can't stand outside the stadium and say, hey, I got my tickets for row six or whatever. But you know, with in today's world, they can they can do anything digitally and fake something. So you just really, really need to be careful. And yes, this is a golden opportunity. This is the moments that scammers live for. Big events where people are anxious, emotional, not thinking. You know, if you get a text message, hey, I got special deal on tickets, you know, the hotel room just went on sale, click now. That's when you get the little voice inside's gotta say, Herb said, Don't do that. Slow down, you're gonna get in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Is that what it's gonna take to make you a soccer fan, get you into row six? Is that the row that we need to to secure to get you to join the club here, or what's the deal?

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Well, I'd like to share with our listeners that you've promised to take me to a match, and I've said I will come. I said I will come. I asked you if I could bring the newspaper along with me. But if you if you if you do invite me and buy a hot dog and beer, I will absolutely come.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Okay. I can count you in. You can also tell, I'll tell you another thing you can count on for a very long time is this guy is watching out for you. He writes about it, as he said, regularly at checkbook.org. What's where where do they find the podcast again? You find that there at sure.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

The podcast the podcast is at consumerpedia.org, consumerpedia.org. The articles are checkbook.org. And if you want to write me and you like see a scam or you have a question based on what we're talking about here with Tom, I answer every question that comes in from listeners. Go to my website, consumerman.com, which has all my checkbook stories. Consumerman.com, you'll see an envelope, an old-fashioned envelope at the top. That's my email link. Write me and know and say I was listening to the podcast. I have a question, or I got a scam you might want to look into because that's how I get the some of the best stories, Tom. Is pe there are the eyes and ears out there, and they say, Did you did you know about this one? And that's how we find out about things.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

I love it. And keep up the great work. And for those of you who have questions for Don and myself, well, you can go to talkingrealmoney.com. That's right. And then click on it's really tough. Ask a question. You can ask it, uh you can type it, you can voice it, you can do all kinds of stuff there. So we love that. And if you want help from an advisor, it's right there on the website as well. You know we're gonna be here. Thank you, Herb, by the way, for joining us because it's always great when you uh when you come on the program. It was a pleasure, and as Don would say, and we'll be back with another episode tomorrow of uh because you know we're always gonna be here, always gonna be here talking real money.

SPEAKER_04 22:35

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