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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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 Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The hou Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.