Book a trip through a Kansas City travel agency, from the first note to a held reservation

To book a trip through a Kansas City travel agency the way this one is set up, you send a note naming a departure from every departure on the board and the weeks you could realistically leave. At that stage you have asked a question and that is all. This office reads it, puts your dates to the company that operates that departure, and writes back within one business day with a figure per person, the room type that figure assumes, and the list of costs that sit outside it.

The note that can be answered in one pass

Four things make a request answerable without a second round of letters. The departure, by name, off the board. The number of travelers and how they share rooms. The earliest and the latest date you could leave home. And the day you expect to be standing in the country, because the flight is your own arrangement and the ground week is built to meet it.

Add whatever would change the shape of the week: a knee that will not take a long descent, a kitchen that has to plan around a diet, two rooms rather than one, a sixteen year old in the party. A departure with one fixed date in the year can be answered only yes or no. One that starts weekly through a named month can usually be shifted a week in either direction, and one that runs most of the year can be moved a good deal further than that. what each month of the year holds shows which kind you are looking at before you write.

The request form on this site takes a note Whatever reaches the form is opened in the order it landed, and an answer goes back inside one working day., and a note left at two in the morning is read in the same order as one left at noon.

Where the money first moves, and to whom

The first payment in this sequence goes from you to the operating company, on that company's own invoice, by whatever method that company accepts. It is normally a deposit against the total with the balance due some weeks ahead of the start date, and both of those dates are printed on the invoice rather than settled here.

This office takes no payment of any kind. It holds no card number, runs no checkout, and has no mechanism to charge anybody: there is no payment field on this site and none at this office either. What it is paid is a commission, and that reaches it from the operating company after you are home again. The rate is set by that company and comes out of that company's own margin. The figure quoted to you is the operator's figure, and this office has no lever on it in either direction.

That is worth stating plainly, because it decides where you stand if something goes wrong with money. Your contract for the trip is with the company that invoices you, your receipts come from that company, and any refund owed to you is owed by it. the terms for moving or cancelling sets out how a cancellation runs between the three parties, and it repays reading before the deposit rather than after.

The paper, and which company sends which piece

From this office you get one written record, in plain email: the departure and the dates, the figure per person, the room type, what stands inside that figure, what stands outside it, and the date on which the operator's own terms were sent to you. That record is not a contract. It is the account of what was asked for and what was answered, and it exists so that a later disagreement has a fixed text to argue from.

From the operating company you get the reservation confirmation, the invoice, a receipt against each payment, the joining note with the meeting place and hour for the first morning, and that company's terms and its cancellation terms. Those are the terms that govern the trip, and they are the ones to read closely.

From you the operator needs the names in the form printed on the identity document each traveler will carry, dates of birth on the forms that ask for them, and the diet or mobility note. This office passes those across word for word and keeps a copy of what it sent.

What this office does once you have gone Once a reservation is held, your file stays open here and the operating company deals with you directly, because it is the company that will be standing at the meeting point on the first morning. If a start hour moves or a road closes, that company reaches you and copies this office. If something has to change from your side, write to corrections@thirdcoastdispatch.com and it goes across to the operator inside the same working day, with the answer coming back to you in writing so that a record of it exists.

This office answers what arrives. It does not open the conversation, so nobody here will ring you or send you a text message at any point before, during or after your dates. When you are back, the operator settles the commission with this office, and that is the last movement in the file.

What this office answers for

It answers for the accuracy of what it wrote down, for putting your instructions to the operator promptly and without editing them, and for telling you what a departure covers and what it leaves you to pay before you commit money to any of it. Where this office gets one of those wrong, that is ours, and we correct it in writing and say what the correction changes.

The trip itself is the operating company's obligation under the terms that company sent you. Third Coast Dispatch is a booking office standing between a traveler and an operator. It is not the operator, not the carrier, and not the owner of anything on the ground: there is no bed, no vehicle and no vessel anywhere on the board that belongs to it. Where a departure crosses water, the passage is held by the company licensed for that route, carried on that company's ticket and billed by that company. Insurance, entry documents and medical questions sit outside this office in every case, and the questions people actually ask answers each of them in the same words this office uses on the telephone.

You will not find a schedule of counter times anywhere on this site, and that is deliberate. Printing one would be undertaking that a particular person is in a particular chair at a particular hour, which is not something a one-room agency can honour every week of the year. The undertaking given instead is about turnaround. Whatever arrives through the form is opened in the order it landed, an answer goes back inside one working day, and on the occasions when an answer needs longer than that you are told so, and told what it is waiting on, before the day is out.

Send the departure and the dates through what to put in a request, or write to bookings@thirdcoastdispatch.com if a letter suits you better; the telephone on the card above reaches the same desk that reads the mail. Third Coast Dispatch Bookings LLC operates under the name Third Coast Dispatch, a Missouri company filed with the Missouri Secretary of State. Most people reserving from the Kansas City metro write eight or nine months ahead of a departure with one fixed date, and a good deal later for one that runs most of the year.