The San Francisco Chronicle Gets It

The San Francisco Chronicle published a column on June 19th regarding of all thing...Card Mills! The article was very well balanced, and did not name any names. It also pinpointed that the line between legitimacy and illegitimacy is very blurred.

Among the comments they made:

Card mills, on the other hand, cross the line into scams. Although a card-mill organization nominally acts exactly like a legitimate agency that uses outside reps, it's totally different. What makes it a card mill is that neither the organizations nor the reps actually expect to sell any appreciable amount of travel (except possibly to themselves). Instead, travelers pay the fees and join solely to get one of those outside agent ID cards, which they supposedly can use to obtain free "fam trip" travel packages and huge "travel agent" discounts on air travel, hotel accommodations, cruises and other services for their personal trips.

Imagine that! No one expects to sell any appreciable amount of travel except to themselves. Paying fees to get a card? They continue:

How do you spot a card mill? Typically, card mills act in two ways that legitimate agencies do not:

-- They promise you can travel like a travel agent in their promotions.

-- They use multilevel marketing, which means they ask reps not just to sell travel but also to sell others on becoming reps. Or, in plain terms, they're pyramid schemes. The more notorious card mills make virtually all their profits through selling memberships rather than travel.

Promise that you can travel like a pro? Come on! Who would do that? They ask reps to recruit as well? Come on this is just ridiculous! A Pyramid scheme? And the "notorious" ones actually make more money selling memberships than travel? Simply unbelievable.

Well, like the LA Times, apparently the San Francisco Chronicle understands that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...