Remember the group of ambulance chasers who followed California’s play with a class action law suit of their own just days after Jerry Brown made his bold attempt to topple what he called a “gigantic pyramid scheme”?

We all know by now how successful California was in shutting YTB down.

In June, the court ruled that the groups initial class action “failed to provide sufficient factual allegations” concerning those who were not Illinois residents. The group has re-filed once again and “corrected their deficiency” by amending the first filing to give it a go once more. The first filing did not have standing to sue because the plaintiffs brought their case under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act. In addition, after spending over one hundred hours pleading and arguing, counsel for the ambulance chasers realized they had framed their clients relationship and argument with YTB incorrectly. The new suit now holds claim that the relationship between YTB and RTA’s are under consumer laws, (business-to-consumer) even though the RTA-YTB relationship would typically be viewed as business-to-business.

Do words like “failed”, “corrected”, “deficiency”, “amending”, “incorrectly”, and “realized after 100 hours of arguing”, give you a warm fuzzy concerning the counsel that is representing this group?

After admitting so many errors in the first filing, it appears that Counsel is just as clueless about the Network Marketing Industry as our critics who have been yammering about pyramids and scams for years. They may have even sought advise from the likes of Robert Fitzpatrick, Jon Taylor, and heaven forbid, John Frenaye. (After Wednesday’s post, you know what a huge mistake that would be.)

The suit filed back in August of last year went after the same four executives California did, Lloyd Tomer, Scott Tomer, Kim Sorensen and Andrew Cauthen. The new filing has added a smorgasbord of other names and companies to include two former board members, Timothy Kaiser and Clay Winfield, as well as their companies, Meridian Land Company and Winfield Development. The list also includes Beryl Martin, the printing company owned by Sorensen and Tomer, and while none of the defendants have been with YTB since October 2008, our new co-CEO who just joined back in April, Robert Van Patten has also been named in this new plea.

We’ll call it what it is: a shotgun approach.

Counsel certainly didn’t get any help from the plaintiffs in this action concerning YTB’s marketing model or opportunity. When we looked at the list of Plaintiffs in the filing we found an average of eight months worth of experience with the company. Two gave up in just four months, and decided playing the role of victim was a much easier option to make the millions they were after when they signed up.

• Courtney Speed – 4 months
• Kwame Thompson – 4 months
• Grace Perry – 5 months
• John Stull – 6 months
• Faye Morrison – 11 months
• Jeff and Polly Hartman – 18 months

Surprised? Not me.

I got a call yesterday afternoon from a client who debarked in the port of Miami with his family of three. He called to tell me that I was right, a five day was too short, and he’ll be booking a seven day with me just as soon as he can. Of course, I’ve been with YTB for four years, not four months. So it’s not surprising that this group who “dabbled as a travel agent” for an average of eight months were not as productive. I think back to my first year, and remember how slow bookings were. But I was also new to the industry, and spent a considerable amount of time learning, not selling. What I did sell was from pure passion about a product I loved.

I found a couple of humorous concepts in the filing which I’d like to share with you just to show how ridiculous this new suit is.

The claim states that BandBVacations.com is not a business that sells products or services. Since YTB strictly controls my actions, they are the ones who are selling the products and services. Therefore, the call I got from my client from Miami apparently was routed through the home office and not directly to me. According to the claim, everything goes through the home office in Wood River. I couldn’t get the call, couldn’t book the cruise, and won’t be seeing the commission since I’m an “agent of the travel agency”. I don’t offer a 100,000 ton cruise ship product, YTB does. The service of an excellent vacation to the Caribbean, also YTB’s.

Poppy cock! My clients don’t even know who YTB is, but they do know Doug and Ronda with BandBVacations.com, and Illinois will have a tough time finding anyone who has a better relationship with someone at the home office over any one of our RTA’s.

As an RTA I’ve made a net profit from travel sales, but the suit claims that this is impossible for most, if not all, RTA’s. I would agree that that it would be impossible for any RTA who spends less than six months in this business. But to say it’s impossible for the 25th Largest Seller of Travel in the Nation with $425 million in gross product and services sold, and a net of $27.9 million is a farce. I know the margins in the industry stink, but that’s not because it’s an illegal pyramid. Unless of course you want to call Carnival, Pleasant Holidays, Disney, Sandals, and Holiday Inn a scam. (I will agree however with a growing number about United and American Airlines.)

I’d would assert that a number of RTA’s have figured out how to make a profit, including yours truly. Instead of complaining about it, why not find someone who is making a profit and learning how to do what they do?

And finally in a very strange twist, while the suit claims that we don’t sell a product or service. (In order to make it sound like a “pyramid scheme”) The suit deducts and supports it claims that it’s impossible for RTA’s to make money selling travel in the following mannor.

(You’re going to LOVE this…)

YTB Defendants marketed and sold products to the travel purchaser market generally. As of 2007, YTB was considered the 26th largest travel agency in the United States, and their market share continued to grow. YTB Defendants directed their operations at the travel purchaser market generally by marketing and selling their products and services, such as airline tickets and cruise packages, to the public at large. Moreover, YTB Defendants’ illegal pyramid scheme injured both their travel agency competitors as well as travel consumers. YTB Defendants stole market share from brick-and-mortar travel agencies, putting many out of business. Moreover, by eliminating their competition, YTB Defendants increased the cost of travel for travel consumers at large. As such, Defendants’ illegal pyramid scheme was directed at the travel consumer market generally, effected the consumer market and otherwise implicated consumer protection concerns.

Give me a second here…I have to dry my eyes.

Do you see what they’ve done here? By taking the products and services away from us, (the RTA) the suit slaps YTB Corporate with not only defrauding consumers, (our clients) but Corporate is solely responsible for Cruise Value Center closing, Liberty Travel layoffs, and the Joystar bankruptcy. They all sold a product and service that YTB not only took away, but YTB is now increasing the cost of that product or service to these consumers.

Picture Ron Head or Coach here when I say “WOW!”

Come to think of it, this IS filed with the courts now, so this idea that YTB is putting Travel Agencies out of business has to be true right? (Nah…it doesn’t cut the mustard when John Frenaye pull that stunt, so why should it with me.)

The point here folks is to show you how absolutely absurd this new filing is, and this is a second swipe at it after the first attempt needed to be amended. If you want to buy into this crap, I’d have some serious reservations about how much common sense you actually have. This entire claim is nothing more than a fishing expedition to save face for those who wouldn’t take that time to learn a craft that frankly is very easy to talk about. And because it’s easy to talk about, simply opening your mouth and telling someone that you sell travel will give you the same shot as Travelocity when they see some Roaming Gnome on TV.

And to the Plaintiffs in this case, the quote is NOT “punt”, it’s “try, try, again”.

Idiots.

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Do You ZamZuu?

YTB’s Annual Report (YTBLA.OB) came out last week with a 15% increase in total revenue for the year of $162.5 million, and an increase of more than $7 million travel commissions. This during a very difficult year not only for the company, but the entire economy. If you keep up with financial data and the Annual Reports of late, you would be hard pressed to find a company that is thriving in the current economic climate. Taking the time to look around the industry right now, (and this is just the Travel Industry) you find a net loss of $121 million for Avis/Budget, even worse for Hertz who lost $1.2 billion in Q4, the MGM Mirage lost $1.15 billion, Expedia, the third largest Agency in the country took a hit for $2.76 billion, and Joystar who is now bankrupt showed up with $535 dollars in cash.

About the only good news out there for Agencies right now is the life vest thrown their way by the new Administration with $15 billion in stimulus money in the hope that this will be enough to keep those still around alive. Unfortunately it was to little too late for Joystar, and Cruise Value Centers, while a report late last weekend documented that Liberty Travel closed 4 of it’s 7 Maryland locations, (closing 31 Liberty locations in all) Safe Harbors Travel Agency was also hit with layoffs, and AAA of the Mid-Atlantic is reducing its staff’s hours.

So with all this doom and gloom surrounding how tough things are right now, anybody want to take a stab at the reason for YTB’s $4.5 million loss?

Because it’s MLM.

I kid you not, and apparently there are people who are very serious that it’s the “flawed business model” that has placed YTB in a very vast and growing list of companies that are attempting to survive these very troubling economic times. (And some wonder why I don’t get wrapped up in all the fuss any longer.) When you’ve been reading the garbage on the internet about YTB for as long as I have, you develop an immunity to the venom thrown your way. The negative speculation never ends up the way critics predict, and I don’t see any reason why I should start now with the type of track record they have. Before YTB’s 2007 banner financial year, YTB endured criticism quarter after quarter that they wouldn’t make it into the next year…then the next year…and the next.

And apparently all eyes are on YTB as we’re at it again via the direction of a “going concern” letter that was issued by YTB’s Auditors in it’s Annual Report. Would it surprise you that “going concern” letters are becoming more commonplace with companies like DayStar Technologies, and General Motors, with others to follow according to Greg Milmoe, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom? That’s not to say that a company that gets a “going concern” letter is doomed to bankruptcy. Sanyo turned things around late last year, along with Eddie Bauer who worked through the doubts and stigma associated with such an opinion.

A letter such as this is part of an Auditors job, to provide it’s professional opinion on the health and viability of company, and it’s up to the company to follow that direction if they want to remain solvent and in business. We’ve seen a number of changes in the way YTB has done business with drastic cuts in spending with the illumination of CRTA Trainings and opting for First Class On-line Training. Another notable absence this year was Coach’s Birthday Bash in which expenses usually sore into the millions. The company has also shored up capital reserves, evidenced by major cutbacks in the second half of the year, such as a halt to the building project at the Home Office.

Other changes involved the elimination of non-current inventory, which resulted in one time losses of $3.0 million due to the legal issues the company is facing at this time. But the word “pyramid scheme” keeps popping up even with a company statement that has been in front of everyone viewing YTB for the last couple of years that you pay for a Travel Agency (the product) not the opportunity to recruit as a Rep. There are those who either aren’t intelligent enough or simply want to ignore this fact of two separate companies. Personally, it’s hard to ignore the separation when you’ve received two separate 1099′s since the very beginning to hand over to your CPA come tax time. One 1099 is for the travel you sold, and one for the team building you’ve done.

Yet the spin is to mesh the two together, and that everyone is paying money to recruit, recruit, recruit, because there’s a phobia about building a team of people to work with that’s reserved only for the Direct Sales model.

Direct Sales is a model the founders of the company know very well, and have been successful in for close to 30 years. It’s amazing how failures that are more than 3 decades old come to the surface in an attempt to prove some point that Coach isn’t all that smart or can’t be trusted as a business man. It’s as if the mentoring by A.L. Williams in the early 80′s never existed as a lesson on how to build a successful business that produced a team of agents with annual sales of $2.5 billion during a 20 year career with what is now known as Primerica. It’s hard to fathom how anyone can skip over two decades of success, but we are talking about MLM here, and for critics you never focus on the successes, only the failures in order to keep everyone in line with their own perception of reality.

Over the last week I’ve seen a number of comments that “the writing is on the wall”. Oddly enough, none of the writing documents the 20 years with A.L. Williams, the Travel Weekly Power List, the membership with the DSA, the investments into both SAP and Convergentware, cruise sales with both Carnival and now Princess later this week, (be on the lookout here about Princess here later this week) and a the new print on demand site with Mailpound that was announced at Red Carpet Day last week, in front of 1500 passionate TSO’s.

Maybe because what they call “writing” is nothing more than graffiti designed to cover up what I’m actually experiencing with the company right now. That’s what graffiti is designed to do, to show evidence of decline.

We certainly have our work cut out for us in cleaning up the graffiti all over the internet right now. It’s time consuming, it’s uncomfortable, and one always needs a shower after dealing with such toxins. That’s why I don’t like to get wrapped up in it any longer. Like everything else that the company has had to deal with, time and natural progression will wash much of it away when you take the right steps and make the right choices.

In these tough economic times, only the strong will survive. With so many eyes and focus right now ONLY on YTB, it’s hard for some to take the blinders off and see the entire picture. Challenges come in many different forms and YTB has certainly had it’s share of challenges. It’s what you learn and how you adapt to the challenges that can make a person and a company stronger. When you take the proper steps to answer the chanllenges, there is very little anyone can do to when you reach the other side.

I know it’s hard for some to see that other side because the end is near according to some. Stuck in a forest of trees that keep falling all around them.

Me, I just keep my eye on the light I see off in the distance because that’s what I’ve been taught by every mentor I’ve ever come accross in my years of this experiance we call life.

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Do You ZamZuu?

After looking around the internet the last few days, I’ve come to the conclusion that not much has changed since I went off on my Super Bowl run. While it was nice to get away, move off in another direction, take a break and actually enjoy myself, I see that some are still stuck in a rut. While there is always something going on in this industry, there are certain people you can count on for dragging their feet, kicking and screaming bantering about the same ol’ same old.

If you’ve been following the industry with me, we know how much turmoil is going on in the industry right now. Sure the economy has a lot to do with some of the issues going on and only the strong will survive. (Some might even thrive in this environment.) Back in November Liberty Travel decided to close a number of it’s poor producing Agencies, and while it’s CEO is adamant about leaving on her own terms, Cathy Pelaez will resign at the end of the week. Mid November Cruise Value Center closed it’s doors overnight, leaving cruise customers without a lifeboat to rescue them. And Friday will also be the last day of full operation for TripTailor and Vacation 59, as Sabre closes it’s wholesaling business.

US Airways posts a $220 million loss, Continental reported a loss of $96 Million, and JetBlue lost $49 million. Car Rental companies are being sued after filing bankruptcy and with the credit crunch slashing new car orders. Royal Caribbeans profits fall 98%, and Starwood drops by 46%.

Joystar is yet another black eye in the industry these days after it’s Agents file a petition for “involuntary bankruptcy”, and cruise lines have to fight courts in order to switch bookings to other Agencies so the agents can actually get paid. And while both myself and Travel Weekly wrote about an agent who broke into IHG system, stealing more than $163K in hotel bookings, we find yet another North Carolina Agent who stole some $512k from NCL, and $70k in chargebacks from Blue Sky Tours.

So what’s the problem you might ask?

Isn’t it obvious, it’s MLM.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people can be so obsessed about an issue that they can’t gain a proper perspective of the entire industry. MLM is the only model that has any type of issues like we have referenced above and if they rid the industry of this pariah, everything will be hunky dory once again. Depending on their mood, or possibly what position suits them at the time, they will either proudly accept or deny the role of “MLM Expert”. If challenged or called out by someone such as myself about how little they know, they deny it, as referenced in the comment section of my ariticle concerning IHG last week.

“I never professed to be an expert except in my own travel business.”

I have no idea who John is trying to kid here. He’s been attempting to tell me how things are since October 2007 here on this blog, while both myself and time has now shown that his comments some 16 months ago were certainly proven wrong. Along the way, we’ve seen posts like “Black Gold”, and one of my favorites from the industry itself, “The Cookie Jar”. And through it all, he just keeps coming back for more embarrassing moments while his followers hold him up in honor and appear to be proud of his antics of flipping the bird to Christians, and having links to other blogs with explicit titles and a niche subject matter concerning animal intercourse.

Pure class if you ask me.

What’s even more astounding is how blind the industry is concerning how clueless, foul and dirty this man is. As sad as it is, the industry does consider him an expert. I have not yet decided or figured out if the industry is either proud of his antics, or just so desperate about their own situation, that they simply look the other way whey he strays out of bounds like he does. (Based on what I’ve come to know about cynics and zealots, I tend to favor the latter.)

I’m only aware of one blog, board, or forum that John doesn’t have something to say about either YTB or MLM. That one forum would be WAHM and based on the subject of Work at Home Mom’s, I’m thankful that he at least knows his sexual orientation. However, the rest of the internet is fair game for this snake as he slithers all day long from site to site, and posting and promoting his hideous blog. This promotional tactic of linking back to his blog he uses, is ridiculed as sleazy when someone like myself would do the same, but for him, he’s obviously above reproach since his cause if more important than mine or YTB’s.

And now, oddly enough, just after denying his self proclaimed expertise, he’s elevated his own mind to writing about the MLM model in both TRO and getting his buddy George Dooley to post an article in Travel Agent Central. The basis of the article is not an actual warning about supporting MLM’s but the “hidden costs” of dealing with MLM’s.

It’s a been a topic of conversation for some time and try as they may they keep on promoting this bogus notion that YTB costs them money. The problem with this idea is that one of the sheep that follow John actually works with a supplier that’s offered on YTB’s booking engine. What’s comical about this relationship is that the employee that works for Pleasant Holidays calls himself “No Moron Here” but he keeps on contradicting what John is attempting to promote. It’s fun to read and I wrote about what his employer has told him in the past about his own misconceptions and fears about our company. We got a glimpse of what suppliers are actually saying behind closed doors some time ago. For as much whining this guy does about MLM’s he was told point blank that he didn’t have a say in who his employer does business with.

“The MLMs don’t bring in enough business to worry about them.”
“We don’t treat them the same way as our traditional agencies.”
“We will take their bookings (money) and supply them our product.”
“Stop worrying about them.”
“You are not to discuss the MLMs with the agents or agencies.”

Since his misconceptions have been cast aside, he lowered himself to forming relationships with other zealots who are just as clueless, angry and bitter as he is. The problem however, is that once again, he’s given incredible insight concerning the truth about supplier and MLM relationships. Take a look down towards the bottom of the comments section and what this employee from Pleasant Holidays wrote.

I guess a buck is buck and when they don’t have to put any money into YTB, they can still scrounge a few bucks off the so few bookings you morons place.

So while John attempts to convince everyone that YTB costs suppliers money, a supplier himself provides a rather unique Freudian slip and let’s the cat out of the bag that suppliers don’t hire YTB, suppliers don’t provide Co-op advertising to YTB, and suppliers only pay YTB for what YTB produces. That’s my friends is a model that suppliers NEED in an economy such as this, and the smart suppliers that actually get that concept such as Carnival Corporation, Globus, Trafalgar, MSC Cruises, Apple Vacations, Disney, and many other preferred suppliers reap the rewards of our business model. I can’t remember the last time Pleasant Holidays was even mentioned in a Travel Compass, a training call, or at Funshine. They do sit on our site, but nobody pays any attention to them because nobody from the company is promoting their features, advantages, and benefits. In all honesty, how much would it cost the company to get on a conference call the we provide, or hop in front of a camera for a video that we produce?

But no…they would rather spend thousands with a bunch of struggling Agents who demand co-op dollars in order to promote them with no guarantees of any return of their investment, when one call, or webinar would drive traffic and sales to help thier bottom line costing them virtually nothing.

I know this type of promotion from John frustrates many of you in YTB with the false claims and misrepresentation of our company and our model. I don’t know why he does it either, but you have to take it with a grain of salt, and be thankful that the truth about our model is known by the suppliers that not only understand our model, but support us. For those who don’t, they end up on the sidelines like NCL and eventually end up looking for answers somewhere else, when the diamonds in the rough are right under their noses.

Some may never get it, but with the Convergentware upgrade released late last year, some already have and many more will realize very soon just how powerful our model really is. As YTB continues to expand this solution to cruises, tour opperators, and other offerings with direct connections, trust me, thier eyes will be wide open and there will be very little anyone can do to promote otherwise.

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Do You ZamZuu?

Remember the rumor late last year that a MAJOR supplier was going to send notice to a MAJOR MLM/Card Mill that they will be parting ways January 1?.

While a name was not mentioned, you certainly know the drill.

Who could it be?

Is the cookie starting to crumble?

Are suppliers beginning to see the light?

The same unsubstantiated and bogus claims and speculation that’s simply thrown out there to cast doubt. You would think a former journalist would know how to confirm information with a “reputable source“, but that’s not important when you need to squash a company and a business model you don’t agree with.

Turns out the rumor of a major supplier cutting someone in this industry off was true. But it wasn’t YTB.

Sorry.

If there’s any rumor or bad news going around the Travel Industry, YTB seems to always pop up as the one who it’s got to be about. If someone hears about downsizing, it’s got to be YTB, not Liberty Travel. If a company is rumored to disappear in the middle of the night without warning, it’s got to be YTB, not Cruise Value Center. If someones not paying their Agents, it’s got to be YTB, not Joystar.

While all three of these agencies have lawsuits pending in court, who is everyone is talking about?

YTB.

I guess it’s true that dogs don’t bark at parked cars.

Most recently the hope was that if a supplier is going to cut anyone off, it had to be YTB. o supplier was named a few days ago after a dot was left missing, (Omitted from a list along with dozens of other suppliers we do business with) which conveniently justified pinning the supplier where they wanted, on YTB. Even after myself and others questioned the validity, the rumor persisted, until it was finally squashed by the supplier themselves.

Now there’s a novel idea, instead of guessing, ask the source. Who knew?

News confirming the supplier/agent rumor came late afternoon first by phone, and then confirmed by a trade publication that Carnival has cut off Joystar in this absolutely hideous and embarrassing chain of events.

Because Bill Alverson has a ties to a failed MLM back in the 1990′s, you can bet your bottom dollar that this will somehow give MLM a black eye. For the record, I never considered Joystar an MLM, it’s just not the same structure, and I don’t know if anyone would be able to accept that it management that runs a company into the ground, (think Enron here) not a model.

For the record, Carnival is not terminating Joystar because it’s a “card mill”, Carnival is doing what right for the Agents who booked their clients with the cruise line. Joystar has not and is not paying it’s agents their commissions owed them. Those who were with Joystar and now with another host can move future bookings, if they have not been paid in full, to the other host “upon written authorization of the traveler”.

I’m still attempting to put together a legal liability due to an involuntary bankruptcy petition that was filed on January 2nd. From what I understand the liability in this “involuntary bankruptcy” could land on Carnival if they continued to accept bookings from Joystar. If true, (and I’m still attempting to verify at the time of this writing) we could see other suppliers follow Carnivals lead terminating Joystar from future bookings. “Involuntary Bankruptcy” is not all that common and I’m sure there are links out there, but I don’t have the patience to understand “legal talk” right now.

Just don’t be surprised if you see more suppliers make this move.

Because I’ve written about Liberty, Cruise Value Center, and now Joystar issues in our industry, I’ve received both e-mails and phone calls from former Liberty Travel employees, Cruise Value Center clients, and now Joystar Agents who simply don’t know what to do. Clients with Cruise Value Center are the easiest to direct, as long as they have a booking number, but Liberty Travel and Joystar appear to be in a real quandary right now. What’s frustrating for me is that very few seem to care. These Agents, especially Joystar, have had income suddenly cut off.

Agents with Joystar have been without commissions since September and are struggling right now to come up with the money to fight for what’s owed them. If you’d like to help or if you are one of the Joystar agents that are owed commissions, you can find information here.

Maybe it’s time to start looking at and taking care of some of your own?

Author’s Edit: It appears that Norwegian Cruise Line has also ceased doing business with Joystar as just reported in TravelPulse. Effective immediately, “The company will no longer accept new reservations from Joystar or any of its affiliated agents,” an NCL spokesperson said. “NCL will continue to service existing Joystar reservations booked prior to Jan. 5, 2009.”

In another developing story, Wheel of Fortune has also gotten into the mix after a sister company of Joystar, VacationCompare.com, failed to provide the prizes to Promotion Consideration, who arranges prizes for game shows like Wheel of Fortune.

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Do You ZamZuu?

I’ve been amazed; surprised actually over the amount of traffic I’ve been getting over both the Liberty Travel layoffs and Cruise Value Center shutting down without notice. For weeks I’ve seen both these searches add up to what are now top search terms for traffic to this site. The buzz on the internet from various boards and forums has been surprising to say the least.

The Cruise Value Center abrupt closing has more clients searching for answers which shouldn’t be a shock, since there were only some 65 employees affected in this closure. The majority of people who are in panic mode right now are the thousands of clients who have booked cruises through CVC who are wondering if they’ve just been scammed.

Unfortunately, for those who recently booked a cruise with Cruise Value Center they may not have a boarding documents coming to them. A report I found said that CVC never paid $2 million to $3 million in cruise fares to the cruise lines. That’s a hefty amount of money to be…well, sunk.

Liberty Travel on the other hand is more concerned with “their own” and I can’t even begin to count the number of people who feel they’ve been wronged in this whole ordeal.

Which begs the question, what do you do when your company cuts your pay or lays you off? You file a lawsuit of course! Yep, looks like Liberty Travel has gotten themselves in more hot water. This isn’t the first time Liberty has faced charges of unfair labor standards. They’ve already settled for $2.76 million, with $413,571 awarded to 245 travel agents from Liberty Travel offices across Pennsylvania. Another Class Action suit filed on behalf of 564 Liberty Travel agents, who will receive $42,500 each as compensation for their efforts.

Now I’ve been told that the traditional arena doesn’t have these kinds of problems. Suits because you feel you’ve been ripped off or scammed don’t happen to “legitimate agencies”. (Liberty is a Top 10 Agency according to Travel Weekly by the way.) Nope, lawsuits of this nature are strictly reserved for the likes of Travel MLM’s. The Traditional arena would NEVER have someone call them a scam, or even worse, actually file a lawsuit against them.

It doesn’t take much for anyone in this country to go out and file a lawsuit. While I realize all the focus and attention for some is how the Network Marketing industry leaves people high and dry. For the “average Joe”, they want something more stable, more secure. I have to wonder how the people caught up in the following list now feel about how “secure” their jobs were.

I’d try to call them to find out and report on it, but the problem is…I just don’t know where to start.

• CitiGroup 53,000
• Whirlpool 5,000
• Pepsi 3,300
• Xerox 3,000
• HP 25,000
• Goldman Sachs 3,260
• Chrysler 1,825
• Merck 7,200
• Sun Microsystems 6,000
• Yahoo 1,500
• Ebay 1,600
• Lehman Bros. Thousands
• Bear Sterns Thousands
• Enterprise 200
• American Express 7,000
• Circuit City Thousands Bankrupt
• DHL Express 9,500 Bankrupt
• Delta Airlines Thousands
• General Motors Thousands
• Ford Motor Co 2,260
• Starbucks 13,000
• Motorola 5,600
• Fidelity 1,300
• Mattel 11%
• Atlantis 800
• Morgan Stanley 19%
• B T Group 10,000 (Britain’s largest phone company)
• YUM Brands: (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) Hundreds
• Las Vegas Sands Casino 11,000

I’ve got to ask, does it look to you like this myth of getting a good education and finding a job to go work for look all that secure to you?

For some, this might be the first time that they’ve been cut back or laid off. They’re the lucky ones. I’ve been involved with two companies in my career that have either been shut down or gone bankrupt in the past. I’ve also seen dozens of my co-workers laid off due to downsizing or cutbacks.

And some have the gall to tell me that Network Marketing is flawed. Doomed to collapse. I’m sorry, but going back to work for someone else who can hand me a pink slip whenever they feel they need to just doesn’t feel all that secure to me. My future and my income shouldn’t be determined by someone else.

I’ll be very happy to take that responsibility on thank you.

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I hate this kind of news, I really do. Yet another Travel Retailer has bitten the dust. What’s even worse is how this all came down. I’m applaud at how cold and callus this was handled and honestly, this story sounds like something Anti-MLM critics would come up with to attack an MLM as just another example makeing a HUGE fuss about how shabby, crooked, and flawed the MLM model is all over the Internet.

But alas, since this is a “traditional business model” and not an MLM, mums the word and nobody seems to be all that concerned. Even if it was brought up, the bad economy would certainly be a leading excuse to defend such deplorable behavior in the traditional business world.

Cruise Value Center, a cruise seller in East Brunswick, N.J., suddenly closed its doors on Monday after 14 years in business. Employees were sent an email on Sunday night, informing them that they don’t have a place to come to work Monday morning.

An agent, who spoke with Travel Weekly on the condition of anonymity, said it wasn’t clear whether they would be paid commissions on sales they had already closed, or if the cruise lines were going to be paid for cruises clients had booked.

“They left us all hanging,” the anonymous agent said.

Yep, sounds like something straight out of the pages of “MLM Myths and Legends”.

Too bad it’s not an MLM company huh?

Jeff Kavit handed over the reigns to a company called Travel Holding Entity out of Michigan last year, and of course couldn’t be reached. While the Cruise Value Center web site is still up, the 800 number no longer works. What’s surprising to me at least is that Cruise Value Center did an annual sales volume of $70 million and combined with Cruises of Distinction, also owned by Travel Holding Entity, was expected to produce $100 million in sales.

Ross Spalding, general manager of Cruise Value Center also resigned from his position (although it’s not specified when) “due to the unfortunate situation at Cruise Value Center.”

Back in June we were informed that Magic Johnson Travel folded abruptly, although not like this. Late last week, Liberty Travel consolidates and lays off a segment of its offices. Now with Cruise Value Center, I’d say the traditional travel industry is a real mess.

Too bad they don’t have the Government to bail them out like American Express does.

But as usual, the focus isn’t on any of this, it’s on little ol’ YTB and our critics seem to be in a tizzy about selling off an old office building for $1.5 million that we no longer need due to a 430,000 square-foot home office. (For the record, and to clarify the St. Louis Business Journal report, the Home Office is 130,000 square-feet on a 59 acre spread to expand even more.)

But hey, what do I know about what’s really important or relevant and what isn’t right?

PS - If you're involved with YTB, sign up for our FREE Newsletter. As a Website Owner or Website Seller, we'll keep you up to date with all the latest news, acquisitions, and developments with YTB.

PPS - Subscribe to the Just Picture It Now RSS feed, (including e-mail) for all the latest posts and updates found right here!

Learn How To Become A Travel Agent

Book Your Travel & Vacations With

Do You ZamZuu?