ARC Revises Fees, Refunds Due to Agents

The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) has advised all ARC accredited locations of its revised 2008 annual location fees and quarterly transaction fees. ARC said the recent ruling of the Independent Arbitration Panel (IAP) “compels ARC to review and recalculate the 2008 annual location fee and the quarterly transaction fee originally announced in December 2007.”

What follows are the revised key components to the 2008 fees, according to ARC:

2008 Agency per location fee (all location types) will now be $160.

The 2008 Agency per transaction fee will equal $.018 (1.8 cents) and is subject to minimum/maximum transaction volumes; 2008 Minimum Count (per quarter/per location) will equal 1,000 and 2008 Maximum Count (per quarter/per location) will equal 1,875,000.

Home office locations that already paid $395 are due a refund in the amount of $235.  First quarter transaction fees will also be refunded to reflect the difference of $.020 to $.018.  Refunds were credited to agency bank accounts on August 14.

Independent, branch and STP locations that paid the annual fee amount of $150 will be charged an additional $10 per location. This amount will be debited on August 28, ARC said.

Also, on August 15, a revised second quarter transaction fee notice will be sent to entities that met or exceeded the minimum transaction count. This notice will show revised second quarter transaction fee amounts, to be drafted on Aug 28. Agencies that received a notice dated July 9 are asked to disregard that earlier notice.

In addition to the key 2008 fee elements, ARC is reinstating certain miscellaneous fees such as applications for bank account changes, training, changes of ownership, and relocations.  “These miscellaneous fees had been eliminated as individual charges and were instead bundled with the fees initially proposed by ARC for 2008— an initiative that regrettably must now be reversed.  Miscellaneous fees will not, however, be charged retroactively for the first seven months of the year,” ARC said.

Any questions regarding the debit or credit of revised 2008 fees may be directed to ARC Customer Support Center at [email protected] or 703-816-8003.

Visit www.arccorp.com.