the coast tomorrow, you got temperatures there in the 50s with some areas of fog and low clouds. but san jose should see low 60s tomorrow. upper 50s san francisco to oakland. some pretty foggy conditions to start. and this is not what you expect to see in a january. seven day forecast. mid to upper 60s midweek around san jose, but by next weekend. stay tuned. we may finally at least see some sierra snow showers returning and perhaps showers around the bay area, and maybe a little bit of rain towards southern california, so we'll be hopeful that pattern shift occurs late next week. there could be some relief for socal. yeah, and thank you for watching us. all right. we'll be back at 11. we'll see you then. chris chmura: you're watching an nbc bay area news special. tonight, "nbc bay area responds." female: they took my tickets. male: my tickets were gone. undo scam transfers and we're helping you protect your seats.

plus-- female: i pay, regularly, my policy. chris: is california's home insurance crisis at a crossroads? you'll meet a bay area startup that's selling new policies, not dropping them, they'll create a digital twin of your home, we'll show you why. male: they charged us an extra $460 each. chris: one viewer's airline mistake cost him twice, we have a lesson so you can avoid the same financial turbulence. plus, if you have any holiday holdovers, we have some expert gift-return advice in case those must-haves became must-go-backs. chris: good evening, and welcome to our "nbc bay area responds" special, i'm consumer investigator chris chmura. tonight, we are standing up for viewers like you, we're starting with a word of warning. if you are a ticketmaster customer, check your account,

people's tickets are disappearing, and our team is continuing to help fans undo these unauthorized transfers. alexandria: everyone should go to more comedy shows. chris: alas, the joke was on alexandria, in san francisco, with her tickets to see comedian dave attell at cobb's comedy club. ticketmaster sent an email transferring her four tickets, worth $175, to someone named mike will. alexandria: automatically just called ticketmaster and i was like, "hey, i never transferred my tickets to this person named mike will, i don't know what's going on." chris: alexandria joins a list of miffed viewers. male: my wife's really devastated. chris: around the country. female: i had no warning, they were just gone. chris: dozens of fans have complained to our "nbc responds" and "telemundo responde" teams about unauthorized transfers. female: to a stranger. chris: of expensive ticketmaster tickets. female: over $1,200 for the six tickets that were taken. chris: to its credit, ticketmaster is restoring fans' tickets, after we step in. in one case, twice.

nick: indeed, my tickets were gone. chris: ticketmaster clawed back nick's stolen imagine dragons and taylor swift tickets in early october, after we stepped in. but then, two weeks later, he told us his tickets disappeared again, so we contacted ticketmaster again. the company said its "fan support department reached out to the fan to let them know the tickets were recovered." at the time, nick raised a question, "why don't ticketmaster accounts have two-factor authentication, the security measure that sends you a verification code to log in after you enter a password?" nick: my wife, to book her hairdresser appointment this morning, needed two-factor authentication, which is just bonkers, and it's crazy that you have thousands of dollars in merchandise held in an electronic account and the security is so weak. female: that's a problem. chris: some tech experts, including the national cybersecurity alliance, echoed that sentiment, "big companies like ticketmaster need two-factor authentication." female: we recommend that organizations don't just offer this to their customers, but they turn it on by default.

chris: well, it appears that might be happening, our team's been watching ticketmaster's website, we see it now says, "we've added two-factor authentication security." there are few details, but the ticketmaster site says it will automatically send a code to your phone when you use an unrecognized device. chris: so we just tested it out, we did not get a code when we simply logged in, but we did get one when we tried to change our password or transfer tickets. so how new is two-factor authentication at ticketmaster? we asked, but it didn't answer our security questions. alexandria said she did not get a code when her tickets vanished in late september. alexandria: i didn't get like a password reset. chris: but she didn't just laugh it off, alexandria contacted us, we contacted ticketmaster, it restored her tickets just in time to go to the show. alexandria: i don't think i would have gotten this response if it wasn't for nbc local kind of reaching out for me.

chris: many of us are rightfully nervous about our data's security. well, our "responds" and "responde" teams around the country looked into how quickly or slowly companies tell you when there's a data breach. a friendly word up front, the viewer you're about to meet speaks softly, but his hard lesson is important for everyone to hear. steven: yeah, so i have long covid, that's why i lost my voice. chris: he's whispering, but he wants to shout from the rooftops. steven: i want to scream the message, yeah. chris: we'll call this consumer steven, we're not using his real name or location, because crooks launched a repeated all-out attack on his identity. steven: i got so paranoid, i was like, "how are they keep getting in?" chris: he says they hacked his email, drained his frequent flyer account, got cash advances from his credit card, and he couldn't stop it. steven: i couldn't prove that i was me. chris: steven says the cons started when a corporate data breach leaked his social security number. female: word of a massive data breach. chris: if you watch the news daily.

male: is the latest victim of a cyber attack. chris: it sure seems that, daily, we're reporting new data breaches. female: 2.9 billion records were, in fact, breached. chris: data breach complaints to the federal government have skyrocketed, and hackers are impacting virtually every company, including our own parent, comcast, but how new are the breaches on the news? "nbc bay area," "telemundo 48," and our sister stations around the country started looking into it. chris: when hackers get into a company's computer, california law requires the company to tell you and the attorney general, which makes the report public. well, right now, the attorney general's data breach database has more than 4,000 reports in it, our team analyzed all of them. chris: the average time between the date thieves got into a company's files and the date the company disclosed the breach was a little more than six months, 27 weeks to be exact. chris: is 27 weeks fast enough?

thorin klosowski: no, that's definitely not fast enough. chris: that's thorin klosowski with the electronic frontier foundation, based in san francisco. thorin: a lot can happen in that amount of time, even 90 days, a lot can happen with that data. chris: here's the thing, the law doesn't lay out a timetable to tell consumers, our colleagues around the country found other states's laws aren't any clearer. mark warner: we need to have quicker reporting. chris: that's virginia us senator mark warner, he spoke with my washington colleague, susan hogan. mark: i think the reporting needs to be done, literally, in days, not weeks. chris: warner's vision is a federal standard, but that's only to report to the federal government, not you. privacy experts told us there's no effort to get data breach notices to you any faster. until companies are required to tell you faster, what can you do? first, freeze your credit file so crooks can't get credit in your name. next, stop reusing passwords.

david henry: it's scary. chris:hat's david henry, at netgear, in san jose. netgear recently surveyed more than 2,000 people and found 67% of them are using the same password for multiple accounts. david: all it takes is one of those companies to get breached, well, that password is now on the dark web. chris: henry also recommends two-factor authentication, aka 2fa. david: definitely turn on 2fa across all of your accounts. chris: quietly, but firmly, steven says even that wasn't enough to protect him. steven: before this, i had a credit freeze, i had two-factor, i had complicated passwords, and none of that mattered. chris: steven's convinced the id thieves too easily answered his bank's security questions after they got his breached social security number and looked him up online. steven: it's enough to steal your identity. i asked my employer to take my face off of the website and my bio off the website. chris: steven also recommends asking about adding a spoken

password to access your accounts over the phone. steven: because that is the way that you prevent them from getting hacked. male: this will be a new way of buying insurance. chris: coming up, rockets to the rescue, a bay area startup is employing ai, physics, and yes, some former rocket scientists to disrupt the home insurance market. plus-- male: we're really unhappy about it, i mean, we thought they could have been a little bit more hospitable. chris: one couple's european adventure cost them much more than they expected, you can learn a lifelong lesson from their single airline error, next. these hands create. all of the materials i work with dry out my hands. if my hands get really dry, i can't do my job. i depend on o'keeffe's it's america's #1 selling hand cream for guaranteed relief. if it works for these hands, it'll work for yours. also available in o'keeffe's for healthy feet. (vo) struggling with moderate to severe crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis? talk to your doctor about #1 prescribed entyvio, offering two maintenance options,

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chris: home insurance companies have been dropping families' policies and claiming they're just going to leave california, they're blaming wildfires and growing costs. strength that's anything but ordinary. viewers around the bay area tell us they're losing their coverage and are forced, in a hurry, to find a new policy they can actually afford, and that is tough. some people, like maria in oakland, were dropped even though they've been loyal to a carrier for years. maria told us she felt blindsided and confused. maria espada: why'd they choose me? because i'm a good customer, i pay, regularly, my policy. chris: we've asked insurance commissioner, ricardo lara, what it will take to end this home insurance crisis. his office cut a deal, it says it's letting home insurance companies use future-looking computer catastrophe models to

set our rates for the very first time, and in exchange, insurance companies are committing, for the very first time, to sell more insurance in california, especially, ideally, in wildfire-distressed areas. well, even before those reforms really start kicking in, a san francisco-based startup just recently began selling new policies. the founders believe they have an advantage: using data and science. female: we insure for direct physical loss to property. chris: insurance is complicated, long, lawyerly contracts. male: ordinance or law, which means any ordinance or law. chris: and jargon by the ream. male: subrogation shall not impair the right of the mortgagee. chris: to the average policyholder, it's as complex as-- male: ignition. chris: --rocket science. male: and the lift off of falcon 9. chris: well, that's exactly what a new insurance company is bringing to california's insurance market-- some rocket science. dan preston: this will be a new way of buying insurance. chris: dan preston just co-founded stand insurance in

san francisco. dan: one half of the company is all really experienced insurance talent from some of the biggest insurance companies that you know, the other side of the company is built from scientists from spacex and boeing. chris: why rocket science? preston says the insurance industry often sets rates and adds or drops policies in bulk, often by zip code. well, instead, preston says stand is focusing on individual houses, it'll build a digital twin of your home, then use physics to simulate how it would withstand extreme weather and disasters. dan: we're basically borrowing from how you would build an aircraft or spacecraft. if we're successful, and we expect to be, we will demonstrate that the reduction in risk actually leads to a lower cost for us and thus for our customers. chris: that is a much-needed option for california, and yet. amy bach: well, i don't love it. chris: amy bach leads united policyholders, a san francisco nonprofit that helps consumers navigate insurance issues. bock agrees that homeowners desperately need more insurance

choices, but some companies, like stand, that are picking up dropped policies are actually partnered with an out-of-state or non-admitted insurance company. amy: the non-admitteds have been a safety valve, but they should not be allowed to replace the admitted carriers, that's not healthy for the consumer. chris: bach noted that if an admitted california carrier goes belly-up, a state fund will cover you up to $1 million, but you get $0 from that fund if you're insured by a non-admitted, out-of-state carrier that fails. dan: the only way to do this is to look at the insurance model. chris: if successful, stand could apply to become admitted here. for now, it has a partner in montana, and with bay area data science, plus $30 million in backing, this team has designs on sending the insurance industry back to the drawing board. dan: fundamental changes like this actually require starting from scratch. chris: if you are shopping for home insurance and come across a non-admitted carrier, they can also be called surplus lines, by

the way, amy at united policyholders suggests asking for their financial rating, and she only recommends b+ or better. stand, by the way, says it has an a-. male: and so, we were in kind of a pickle. chris: up next, a sour note for a north bay couple's trip overseas, we'll show you how one missed flight set off a pricey domino effect. then, some words of caution for you u when retning merchandise, just ahead, a return policy lesson that'll protect your next purchase.

chris: welcome back to our "nbc bay area responds" special, i'm consumer investigator chris chmura. surveys show travel is up, and that means longer lines, fuller flights, and some trouble. if you're traveling soon, we have a case that will give you yet another reason to get to the airport early, to avoid an expensive airline penalty. arthur ruda: about a two-week trip. chris: arthur ruda, and his wife laurie, recently toured italy and croatia. arthur: just a fabulous place with great wines. chris: in addition to learning about new reds and whites, they got an airline education that cost them greenbacks. arthur: we were in kind of a pickle. chris: the couple booked lufthansa for the flight home, milan to frankfurt to san francisco. well, the day of their flight, they learned the hard way that milan has two airports, an hour apart. arthur: on the way, we realized we were really going to the

wrong airport, so we had to rush over to the correct airport. chris: but arthur and laurie missed their flight, that set off a costly domino effect. first, lufthansa made the couple pay for a new ticket from milan to frankfurt at sky-high, last-minute fares. arthur: they charged us an extra $460 each. chris: arthur and laurie flew to frankfurt in time to make their original connection to sfo. arthur: but then they decided that they had the right to charge us an extra $277 each. chris: arthur was miffed. arthur: we got there in time, we didn't miss our flight. chris: same flight, but a new charge, what was going on? pamelarwin: it's the airline that is dictating everything. chris: that's la travel agent, pamela irwin, who's on the american society of travel advisors board, she helped us understand the 47 pages of lufthansa conditions and 24 pages of jargon-laden fare rules we reviewed for the

couple's flights. she says arthur and laurie should have called lufthansa and told them they were running late. pamela: you have to advise the airline ahead of time, otherwise you're a no-show. chris: and when you're a no-show, even one minute past your departure time, many airlines cancel the value of your missed flight. for example, lufthansa's terms say, "we have the right to cancel your booking if you fail to arrive at the boarding gate in time." that's what cost the couple $460 each in milan, they had to buy new tickets to frankfurt. chris: so what about the money lufthansa demanded in frankfurt? that's another $277 per person. turns out that's a bit of a repricing penalty, all because the couple didn't fly their flights in order, and that's required in the fine print of the airline's fare rules. irwin told us, "that's actually a common catch of most airline tickets." pamela: if you have to change any portion of it, you have to

change the whole ticket, and it reprices it, when you change one part, it reprices the entire ticket. chris: arthur and laurie admit their one mistake, but felt lufthansa pinched them twice. arthur: we were really unhappy about it, we thought they could have been a little bit more hospitable. chris: so, they contacted us, we contacted lufthansa. it did not reply to our request for comment, but lufthansa did send arthur and his wife partial refunds that totaled $217. in an email to arthur, the airline called it a gesture of goodwill. arthur: i really appreciated the help. chris: as for you, heed the warning from laurie and arthur's case. arthur: it's a lesson to learn that, perhaps we could have handled it better, if we had at the last minute called them and said, "we're gonna be late--" chris: all right, don't go fumbling for phone numbers on your next trip, before you leave, save your airline and, if you have one, your travel agent's phone number into your phone for easy access, download your airline's app, and also

save the web address to their chat option in case you can't get through by calling. for a while, i have recommended putting a wi-fi tracker like an airtag in your bag while traveling to help you find your lost luggage. well, now the bay area's largest air carrier is on board with that technology, united has just begun letting you share your apple airtag's location data with its baggage reps. airlines generally have a 99% on-time record delivering your checked bags, what united showed us empowers customers in the 1% of cases when they don't deliver on time. here's what united told us when we spoke with them at sfo recently. lori augustine: so this will give us the ability to integrate their airtag into our united app, and we can see the bag and sfo recently. recover it. chris: all right, how about non-apple trackers? united said it had nothing to announce. united is the first but not the only carrier to fold airtag

data into their baggage systems, when apple said it was partnering with these airlines, it announced more than a dozen of them globally. no matter which airline you're flying, consider investing in a wi-fi tracker. chris: too big, too small, too cheap, too expensive? whatever the reason, returning merchandise can be a hassle, but it doesn't have to be. we'll arm you with one savvy move that'll make you a smarter shopper, next.

i told myself i was ok with my moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis symptoms... ...with my psoriatic arthritis symptoms. but just ok isn't ok. and i was done settling. if you still have symptoms after trying a tnf blocker like humira or enbrel, rinvoq works differently. rinvoq is a once-daily pill that can rapidly relieve joint pain, stiffness, and swelling as fast as 2 weeks for some. and even at the 3-year mark, many people felt this relief. rinvoq can stop joint damage. and in psa, can leave skin clear or almost clear. rinvoq can lower ability to fight infections. before treatment, test for tb and do bloodwork. serious infectioions, blood clots, some fatal; ...cancers, including lymphoma and skin; serious allergic reactions; gi tears; death; heart attack; and stroke occurred. cv event risk increases in age 50 plus with a heart disease risk factor. tell your doctor if you've had these events, infection, hep b or c, smoked, are pregnant or planning. don't take if allergic or have an infection. done settling? ask your rheumatologist for rinvoq. and take back what's yours.

(♪♪) chris: many, many, many viewers ask for our help when their merchandise returns go sideways. if you've made a few purchases lately, or if you're planning to, we have a note for you about returns. and take back what's yours. cardrates.com surveyed 1,000 shoppers and is predicting returns are ramping up. here's the good news, many stores actually loosen their policies and extend their return windows this time of year. but here's the thing, you're not automatically entitled to a refund or exchange, the attorney general's office says, "refunds and exchanges are not required by law." when a store has a no-return policy, the ag says, "the store's got to tell you, with signs posted on each door or at each register." bottom line, check a store's return policy before you check out. female: have that be a deciding factor for where you shop, if the return policy is difficult or has a really tight window, then that can be your sign to look elsewhere.

chris: all right, if you are tied up in a return runaround or any other type of consumer issue, you can let our team know, snap the qr code that is on your screen right now to fill out our consumer complaint form online. all those tips that you send us really do add up. since our team started back in 2016, we've tracked every penny we've helped you save or recover, and look at that tote board, more than $7.8 million and counting. okay, that's gonna do it for our "nbc bay area responds" special for tonight, i'm consumer investigator chris chmura, thank you so much for watching, have a great night. ♪♪♪

right now on access hollywood, life imitating art. the chicago fire star turned fire hero. zuri: and then, jessica simpson's split shocker. were there clues that this breakup was coming? scott: and our wheel exclusive with vanna white