ACTA -CSTAR et IATA : les embrouilles du dossier BSPLink

La rivalité entre l'ACTA et CSTAR vient à nouveau faire les manchettes avec la publication par l'ACTA d'une lettre adressée à Bruce Bishins, président de CSTAR par Michael Feldman, directeur, Passagers à l'IATA (Genève) et dont l'ACTA a obtenu copie. Bruce Bishins et Michael Feldman participaient récemment à une réunion à Montréal concernant les irritants du BSPlink notamment les "debit memo"(ADM).

Suite à cette réunion, à laquelle l'ACTA ne participait pas, Bruce Bishins avait émis un communiqué faisant état de nombreux gains pour les agents de voyages dans le dossier.

Mais il semble qu'à la lecture de ce communiqué, Michael Feldman d'IATA n'a pas reconnu les ententes passées durant la réunion et il a donc fait part, dans une lettre, à Bruce Bishins, des "erreurs" que ce dernier aurait commises dans son communiqué.

L'ACTA ayant obtenu copie de la lettre en question, l'a publiée dans son communiqué hebdomadaire "Scoop", au grand déplaisir de CSTAR, qui émettait à son tour, ce matin, un document signé par un de ses membres, David Miller, qui avait également participé à la réunion avec l'IATA.

Dans ce communiqué, David Miller assure que la version de Michael Feldman, d'IATA, n'est pas correcte et cela est dû, pense-t-il, au fait que M. Feldman a quité la réunion une heure avant qu'elle se termine. D'autre part, David Miller reproche à l'ACTA de ne pas avoir communiqué avec CSTAR avant de publier la lettre. Des deux côtés, ACTA et CSTAR on fait état des nombreuses démarches entreprises pour régler le dossier BSPlink.

On peut se réjouir en tous cas du fait que les problèmes du BSPLink sont à l'orde du jour de beaucoup de monde en ce moment.

IMPORTANT - Mise au point sur la rencontre entre CSTAR et IATA sur le BSP

En tant que représentante de la majorité des agences accréditées par l'IATA, l'ACTA vient de recevoir copie d'une lettre addressée à Bruce Bishins par Michael Feldman, directeur, Passagers à l'IATA, Genève. Cette lettre apporte corrections et démentis à plusieurs conclusions qu'avaient tirées le président de CSTAR suite à sa rencontre avec l'IATA, telles que rapportées dans son communiqué de presse émis au lendemain de la rencontre.

M. Feldman donne ici l'heure juste quant aux correctifs que l'IATA s'est engagé à apporter au programme de BSP et cela concorde avec les discussions que nous avons à ce jour avec ces mêmes autorités, tant ici à Montréal qu'à Genève en collaboration étroite avec le WTAAA.

L'ACTA en profite pour redire à ses membres qu'elle a fait à ce jour de nombreuses démarches auprès de l'IATA en vue de s'assurer que les agences de voyages ne soient pas pénalisées par cette migration, apportant à leur attention toute erreur et tout processus non conforme et qu'elle entend continuer à le faire.

Nous vous invitons donc à continuer à porter à notre attention, toute erreur, irritant et processus qui, vous jugez, pénalise les agences de voyages et nous en discuterons avec l'IATA.

Voici la lettre de M. Feldman :

Dear Bruce,

I have had the opportunity to review your press release reporting on our recent meeting in Montreal. I believe there are some misunderstandings in the document. For the sake of completeness I would like to correct these. I assume that you will ensure this correction is made available to the industry via your website.

• IATA will contact all carriers in BSP Canada and require that Agency Debit Memo (ADM) policies be clearly published for each carrier.
No... IATA cannot enforce this action . What we agreed was we would remind airlines of their responsibility.

• IATA will review the pre-notification process which under Resolution 850m requires carriers to submit ADMs to agencies with 14 days advance notice before the ADM is submitted to BSP. IATA agreed that Resolution 850m requires the 14 days advance notice before the 30 day latency period for disputes starts. It appeared that this requirement was overlooked in BSP Canada.
Not exactly. The 14 day period is the minimum agents will be given to dispute during which time the ADM will not be presented in the billing.

• IATA agreed to contact carriers which have not invoked dispute facilities in BSPlink to activate this functionality.
No... we advised you that the dispute mechanism is not available to all airlines using BSPLink and IATA can not require airlines to make the required system enhancements to accept disputes from agents using this system.

• IATA agreed that it will not debit ADMs for carriers which either have no dispute facility in BSPlink or which have not responded to a travel agent ADM dispute via BSPlink.
No... we did not agree to this.

• IATA agreed to closely monitor any case where a travel agent's weekly net remit was so impacted by incorrect processing that the agency would be alleged to owe funds to IATA or not receive commission income. Agencies receive their net remit reports from BSPlink 3 days prior to the bank draft, at which point any agency so affected should immediately contact BSP Canada (bspcanada@iata.org) and report the processing problem. If BSP Canada were subsequently unable to provide immediate relief, the agency will maintain its rights to contact its bank to reject/reverse the BSP draft. BSP Canada will then work with the agency and any carriers impacted to resolve the processing errors.
No.. we agreed to review the specifics of a problem with one agent to determine why the errors and resulting ADMs occurred.

• IATA has committed to a complete review of its role as a processing facility for ADMs where the agency and the airline cannot come to an agreement over a debit matter. CSTAR pointed out to IATA that IATA must maintain an arms-length relationship in this commercial matter which is solely between the airline and the agent. IATA and BSPlink cannot remain an enforcement tool in a dispute in which IATA has no role or stake.
No... we did not agree to this.

• IATA will provide agencies, upon request, sales summary data in various electronic formats including ASCII and Excel so as to allow agencies to use this data to better reconcile their sales activity with BSP processing and the agencies' back office systems. The weekly data files will be provided at no charge to the agency. Requests for electronic BSP processing data output should be sent to bspcanada@iata.org.
No... we did not agree to this.

• IATA has agreed to remind its field auditors that agencies have certain rights and protections under Resolution 820e which provides for review by the Travel Agent Commissioner of any action taken by IATA or a carrier against an agent which might prevent the agency from continuing to act as a sales agent for a carrier or to remain an IATA-accredited agency. CSTAR has posted Resolution 820e on the CSTAR web site at: www.cstar.ca. Any eligible complaint under 820e would immediately prevent or reverse termination of an agent by a carrier or IATA, pending a full review by the Travel Agent Commissioner.
No... we did not agree to this.

• IATA has agreed to review and consider its compliance requirements under Canadian banking regulations, including the Canadian Payments Association Rule H1. IATA agreed that CSTAR brought new light to matters which it had not considered before and agreed to return quickly with an assessment of IATA's compliance levels with these regulations. CSTAR agreed to extend IATA a reasonable time frame to review this matter, but emphasized that if abusive ADMs or bad processing continues to impact agency revenues and trust accounts, that CSTAR may escalate the matter with agencies to take action against any bank draft not in full compliance with Rule H1. We agreed that we would review our legal opinion that our procedures comply with all legal requirements under Canadian law.

Happy to discuss as required. We will progress all matters that were agreed and trust we can provide satisfactory BSP services to all IATA Accredited Agents in Canada.

Kind regards,

Michael Feldman
Director, Passenger
International Air Transport Association

David Miller
Member of the Board

STATEMENT

24 July 2006

Dear Fellow Travel Agents:

As a CSTAR board member, I wish to comment on ACTA's newsletter last week which seeks to question the results of and agreements reached at the meeting CSTAR and IATA held on 13 July 2006 in Montreal. For the record, I personally attended this meeting, along with Bruce Bishins, and I can vouch for the fact that CSTAR's highly detailed press release regarding the results of the meeting was both completely accurate and a true account of IATA's commitment to fix, resolve, and study various issues relating to the BSPlink problems.

The e-mail from IATA's Michael Feldman to CSTAR's Bruce Bishins was Mr. Feldman's own version of the meeting, and CSTAR immediately replied to Mr. Feldman that his assessment was not a faithful account of the agreements reached in Montreal. I can assure you that Mr. Feldman's portrayal of the meeting results is not accurate, and this may be due to the fact that Mr. Feldman had to leave the meeting more that an hour before it came to a close with the remaining participants.

However, what is more surprising, if not entirely astonishing, is that ACTA could offer any opinion whatsoever about a meeting it did not attend, let alone accept and verify the accuracy of statements by Mr. Feldman who did not attend a significant portion of the meeting either. CSTAR is uncertain as to ACTA's motives for publishing unverified information and why it made no effort to contact CSTAR to check the facts in this matter.

CSTAR will not comment on what ACTA claims to have done to address the BSPlink issues in Canada. We believe that the record speaks for itself.

CSTAR took on this mammoth task, sought input from all agencies in Canada, addressed the issues in a transparent and open way, submitted a complaint specifically on behalf of Canadian agencies to the IATA Passenger Agency Conference, provided extensive training and assistance to the agency community to deal with these ongoing problems, and is visibly getting the job done.

CSTAR was highly complimentary of IATA's efforts at our meeting, and our press release reflected our intention to work together with IATA to resolve the open issues in this matter. We are very disappointed that the fine efforts and objectives accomplished that day are potentially put at risk by one man's inaccurate review of the events as they truly occurred.

We will continue to work with IATA, but we are now on guard to ensure that any trust we put in IATA to follow-through as promised will be trust which must be well-founded.


Sincerely yours,



David Miller
Board Member
CSTAR Board of Directors