Almost as quickly as it started, it ended. I thought I had written on this before, but I keep getting requests to book travel, so it appears I was mistaken. Stoddard Travel cannot currently book travel due to a contract dispute with our host agency, KHM Travel Group. At this point it looks like the dispute is not going to be resolved, so we will probably not be selling travel again in the foreseeable future.

On that note, I would encourage anybody to look into things very carefully before choosing to do business with KHM Travel group (or its parent company, KHM Consulting). I'm sure they have a lot of satisfied clients, but if they get upset at you for any reason, they'll turn vicious. Their modus operandi is as follows (based on my experience with them): First they'll inactivate your account, so that you can't access training, report sales, etc. Then they'll insist you keep paying them the monthly fee, even though you can no longer access your account to work with them. They'll become increasingly aggressive about it, threatening legal action. This will culminate in a letter from their fictitious "Legal Department," which is actually David Kramer, their billing manager, posing as a lawyer. If you complain about this, the Agency Director, Burt Kramer, will begin to hurl insults at you -- believe it or not, they stoop down to name calling -- and criticize you because you couldn't hack it. Never mind that they didn't let you even try in the first place…

If you don't feel like believing one man's bad experience, I don't blame you. But as I said, look carefully into what you're doing. I'll go over some of the warning signs that I shouldn't have ignored in the first place. First, they game Google -- not exactly the most honest way to advertise. It's not so pervasive anymore, but if you look hard enough you can still find fake travel blogs with plenty of links to KHM Travel Group. Second, their contract has plenty of oddities, including the fact that they'll report to the IRS that they paid you 20% more than you'll actually receive from them. Also note that section 22 prohibits you from making any complaints or criticisms about them -- so if they screw you over and you go to your attorney general, they'll be happy to scream breach of contract. In fact, you should review the contract carefully and compare to their advertisements. Notice that they promise you the world in their advertisements, but the contract does not explicitly state that you'll receive anything for your money.

Anyway, Caveat Emptor.