"Make lots of money selling travel!" "Travel like a travel agent!" With travel costs constantly escalating, travelers are looking just about everywhere they can to find lower prices or better ways to arrange their trips. That's why some of them fall victim to "card mill" promotions that promise some combination of added income and lower travel prices. A reader recently asked me about why one specific organization had been called a "card mill," and I suspect quite a few of you might be interested in the concept.
The distinction between a card mill and a legitimate outside travel sales operation is sometimes difficult to see. In both cases, an umbrella organization appoints part-timers as representatives. The representatives are supposed to sell a full spectrum of travel services—airline tickets, tours, cruises, accommodations, whatever—while the organization provides the "back room" ticketing, accounting, and clerical support. The organization splits the commissions and fees with the representatives.
So far, so good. Lots of travel agencies employ outside salespersons who work on that basis. Some specialize in cruises or tours; others sell a broad range of travel. Some sell mainly to friends, neighbors, and family members; others pursue aggressive sales and marketing efforts to reach as many potential customers as possible. Representatives can work as much or as little as they wish, with commensurate variation in income potential. Some, but not all, of these umbrella organizations require that potential outside reps pay some combination of an initial fee to join plus a monthly charge—possibly offset by earnings.
As a normal part of this process, the umbrella organization issues business ID cards to these outside reps indicating that they are, in fact, travel agents. The cards typically include the umbrella organization's industry affiliations: an IATA (International Air Transport Association) number, plus membership in its trade associations, including ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents), IATAN (International Airlines Travel Agent Network), CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association), and such. Again, this is all legitimate.
Card mills, on the other hand, cross the line into scams. Although a card mill organization nominally acts exactly as a legitimate agency that uses outside reps, it's totally different. What makes it a card mill is that neither the organizations nor the individual reps actually expect the reps 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.
How do you spot a card mill? Typically, card mills act in two ways that legitimate agencies do not:
 | In their promotions, they promise you can "travel like a travel agent." |
| They use multi-level marketing, which, in ordinary English, means they ask reps not just to sell travel but also to sell others on becoming reps. In plain terms, they're pyramid schemes. The more notorious card mills make virtually all their profits through selling memberships rather than travel. |
These days, card mills may downplay the travel benefit side of the appeal, largely because the industry has caught on to the scam and doesn't blindly honor those phony travel agent IDs. An IATAN ID for outside reps requires them at least 20 hours a week selling travel and $5,000 per year in salary or commissions—a hurdle that's tougher than it might seem. And airlines limit their deals to agents who really produce big sales figures. To be sure, a few suppliers continue to honor just about any sort of travel agent ID, but in my experience they're mainly outfits that discount to just about everyone.
Working as a legitimate outside travel rep is a respectable vocation, but it's highly competitive and requires a lot of hard work. But paying a card mill anywhere from $500 to $5,000 plus monthly charges in the hope of finding fantastic travel discounts is simply wasting your money.
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