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Recent Deals and Money-Saving advice from the Clark Howard Show.
I have obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to saving on hotels. When I travel for work, which is almost every week of the year, I book 95 percent of the hotels I stay in through Priceline.com or Hotwire.com. But before I even place a bid on either site, I have a complicated system that involves checking related message boards to get a feel for what other people are bidding. Then I have almost like a formula and set process I go through when bidding that’s very methodical and boring to some. As I’ve tried to explain it over the years, I just seem to create more confusion among people!
Now there’s a new website called TheBiddingTraveler.com that has automated the process that I do manually. It can do in 3 minutes or less what takes me 15 or 20 minutes (for select cities). And it is far superior to the way I have always booked my own rooms. See more of what I have to say about this site and one other.
More info: TheBiddingTraveler.com
You’ve heard of subscriptions for newspapers and magazines, but what about a subscription for cereal or toilet paper or who knows what?! My associate producer Joel introduced me to Amazon’s Subcribe and Save program after he scheduled a delivery of 6 boxes of Kashi cereal for his wife at a cost of $11 (no shipping charges) through this free program.
Every purchase through the program gets you 15% off your bill. And you can schedule a future delivery in a couple of weeks or a month or whenever you desire. If convenience is what you love, yet you don’t want to throw money away, the Amazon program could be great for you. See more about my thoughts on this program.
More info: Amazon.com
Don’t risk an account breach if you think a keylogger might be tracking your keystrokes when you enter your credit card info online. Do what I do: Encrypt your credit card info by swiping, rather than typing! SmartSwipe is a product I recently got that I absolutely love. It’s a little card reader that plugs right into your computer. You just swipe your card from the comfort of your home or office and you’re done!
More info: SmartSwipe.ca
$100 a night in some major metropolitan cities usually gets you a disgusting dump. But what if you could pay $50 and get a clean room in, say, the swank Westminster neighborhood of London? It’s now possible…but you might have to pay additional fees to rent the TV, nightly maid service and even the towels in the room!
More info: TuneHotels.com
With AirBNB.com, you can get private residences of varying quality all over the world, with a particular emphasis on overseas accommodations. From what I’ve seen so far, the prices for residential accommodations can undercut VRBO, but there is more potential hazard. What happens if something goes wrong with your trip that’s booked through AirBNB.com? As far as I can tell, you’re pretty much on your own. AirBNB.com just plays the match game, much like eBay does in hooking up a buyer and a seller. So AirBNB.com is truly buyer (and seller) beware.
One possible way to protect yourself would be to make reservations only with a credit card. You have the right to do a chargeback within 60 days if your reservation falls through for some reason.
More info: AirBNB.com
This post was last modified on February 14, 2018 1:39 pm
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