How can a valet rip you off?

Once relegated to high-end restaurants and clubs, valets are increasingly common across the United States. But how can you trust your valet -- and how will you know if the valet is scamming you? Tune in and find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com.
We're Smart Happens. I am Marshall Brain with today's question,
how can a valet rip you off at a valet
parking facility? Now, let me first admit that, generally speaking,

(00:22):
I'm not the kind of person who would use a valet,
and neither is my wife Lee. Where the kinds of
people who park a half mile away and walk because
we're fat and we want to get the exercise. But
if you are the kind of person who uses a valet,
this post is for you, and we should admit that
valets seem to becoming more and more popular. For example,

(00:43):
you now see them at the mall, at most restaurants
that are not of a fast food sort, at hospitals,
you know they're They're pretty common now. The first and
most obvious way to get scammed by a valet is
to have the valet take something out of your car
or out of your trunk, because you're given the guy

(01:05):
your car and the keys to the trunk, and if
you've left anything in there, their obvious targets. So your
first line of defense is to not leave things in
your car, or if you do, to have a mental
catalog or better yet, a picture of those things, so
that if something turns up missing, you're able to recognize
it immediately and confront the valet service and get your

(01:29):
rightem back. But that kind of stuff is pretty mundane
these days, and the reason why this post showed up
in the blog is because of two far more interesting scams.
The first was the fake valet scam, and it came
to light because a woman showed up at a hospital
in Massachusetts and a man in a uniform came up
to her and offered to park her car as a valet,

(01:51):
So she handed him her keys and proceeded into the hospital,
and it turned out that that hospital didn't offer valet service.
He was just a rand a person who then stole
her car and drove away. So the lesson to learn
here is that there can be people who masquerade as
valets and you need to protect yourself against that. So

(02:12):
how do you protect yourself In almost all cases where
it's a real valet, there are going to be three
things in evidence. First, there's gonna be some signage identifying
the availability of valet parking. Second, there's gonna be some
kind of kiosk or podium or something with a lock
box where the keys are stored. And third, there's gonna

(02:34):
be official looking tickets that will be given to you
so that you can later retrieve your keys and your car.
If those three things aren't in evidence, then that's a
pretty good indication that this is a fake valet that
you're dealing with. The other reason that this post appeared
in the blog is because of an amazing video that
showed an interesting valet scam. And the scam worked like this.

(02:58):
You pulled up at a restaurant that did have a
legitimate valet service, but one of the valets was uh,
well head converted over to the dark side. Let's say,
so the valet would come up to your car, take
your keys, and then say, hey, we're doing a drawing.
Would you like to enter in this drawing? And you'd
say sure, you know, for a free car wash or

(03:21):
dinner or money. Most people would enter a contest. So
then he would just ask you for your address so
that he could put it on the raffle ticket. And
at that moment, you have handed a valet your key
chain normally which has your house key on it, and
your car, and now the valet knows your address. And
he simply proceeds to your address and either with the

(03:45):
garage door opener in your car or with the key
that you've handed him, he walks into your house and
has his way with it. And this, you've got to admit,
that's a pretty innovative scheme, and it's also going to
be hard to track, and it's also pretty depressing to
get home and find all your stuff gune. So the

(04:05):
moral of this story is give a valet only your
car key, and if you're asked for the address, do
not release it, and probably you should not have your
address in evidence inside your car. This whole garage door
opener thing is actually a pretty significant security problem. If
someone gets ahold of your car and knows your address

(04:26):
and there's a garage door opener in your car, then
unless you're locking the door into the house, which a
lot of people don't, you've just left your house open
to anybody to walk in once they have your car
and your car key. And if they can't get into
your house, they can still get into your garage and
there may be a lot of valuable stuff in there.

(04:47):
So maybe you want to take your garage door opener
out of your car as you hand your car over
to a valet, or you may want to do what
I'm doing, which is parked the car yourself and walk
to the place, because there's a lot less risk of
deft in that case. Be sure to check out our
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff

(05:10):
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
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