Responding to this need, ATC, in cooperation with CSTAR, provides help desk services to assist travel agencies in more efficiently obtaining help and guidance on a variety of subjects.

Areas of Expertise

• Fare Construction Policy
• Ticketing and Documentation
• Taxation, Fees, and Charges
• BSP Reporting and Remitting
• BSPlink
• IATA Accreditation
• GDS and Back-Office Workflow
• Industry Regulations
• Provincial Consumer Protection Legislation (TICO, OPC, BPCPA)

Help Desk Access and Service Levels
The Help Desk is accessed via e-mail, however, a new web interface is being built and will be available by mid-summer 2007. Service is provided year-round, except on Canadian and U.S. holidays, weekends, and during fourteen calendared days of pre-advised maintenance and staff training time. Questions are otherwise accepted daily and written replies are provided within forty-eight hours, although most often, in less time.

Subscription Plans and Fees
A variety of monthly plans are available to accommodate all sizes, types, and needs of specific travel agencies:

Plan Level	Queries per Month	Monthly Subscription Fee
Basic Plan	10	CAD 40.00
Intermediate Plan	15	CAD 55.00
Advanced Plan	20	CAD 65.00

Monthly query allowances are for a given month, and unused queries do not carry forward to successive months. Additional Query Add-on Packs are available to supplement the monthly plan allowance:

Query Add-on Pack	Additional Queries	Query Add-on Pack Fee
QAP10	10	CAD 35.00
QAP20	20	CAD 70.00
QAP30	30	CAD 105.00

Query Add-on Packs provide additional query allowances which never expire and may always be carried forward into successive months.

CSTAR members receive a 25% discount on both the monthly plan fee and the Query Add-on Pack fee.

How to Subscribe
The Help Desk is available to Canadian travel agencies and requires no monthly commitment. Agencies may terminate the service at any time provided that a minimum of 15 days notice has been given prior to the beginning of the next billing month. Unused portions of Query Add-on Packs are non-refundable. The first month's Help Desk service is paid online during the initial subscription and enrollment. Successive months are billed to the agencies' VISA or MasterCard automatically. Query Add-on Packs are also purchased online. All fees are subject to GST and only VISA and MasterCard are accepted. We regret that the American Express card is not accepted. To enroll in the Help Desk, please use the Online Subscription box below.

Help Desk Director - Bruce Bishins, CTC
One of the most accomplished technical trainers in the travel industry, Bruce Bishins has been a respected and well-known consultant to travel agencies for over 30 years. He has held positions at Air Canada, Swissair, Air France, and Austrian Airlines, and was Manager-Travel Industry Training at Trans World Airlines for nearly eight years. He developed and implemented the travel agency training program for PARS. In 1978, he was appointed by a joint airline task force to the position of Manager-Procedures Training for the Air Traffic Conference (the predecessor to the ARC Area Settlement Plan in the U.S.). In 1981, he joined the Airline Training Council as Executive Director. In 1991, while still at ATC, he was contracted by the International Air Transport Association to provide technical support and training for travel agents and air carriers participating in the IATA Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP Canada). He managed the IATA/BSP and Air Canada agency training programs for nearly seven years.

Service Level Guarantee
ATC guarantees an answer to Help Desk queries within forty-eight hours of receipt or the query will not count against the query allowance of the monthly plan chosen or the Query Add-on Pack. Every effort is made to provide a correct, cogent, clear, and concise response to all queries made. Should ATC's response be determined to have been incorrect based on the merits and facts of the query or inconsistent with current industry policy or regulation prevailing at the time of the response, ATC's full and complete liability shall be limited to refunding any charge relating to the monthly query allowance or Query Add-on Pack.