What this office collects when you send a request

Everything described here comes out of one form and one mailbox. The form sits at the foot of every page on this site, including this one, and it is the only place where you are asked for anything at all.

What the form asks for

Three things about you, and the rest about the trip. About you: a name, an email address, and a telephone number if you choose to leave one. About the trip: which of the twenty seven trips you have in mind, set out in order on the whole ladder, top to bottom, how much of it you want run for you, which is what the five rungs on the five rungs side by side describe, roughly when you want to travel, how many people are going, and whatever you write in the open box.

The open box is where people put the most, so it is worth saying what happens to it. A person in this office reads it. It is not scanned by anything, scored by anything or fed into any list. Parts of it reach the company that runs your trip only when those parts are needed to hold the booking, and that is described further down.

There is no field for your home address, your date of birth, your employer or your card, and no second form anywhere on this site that asks for more.

The telephone number

If you leave a number, it stays with your request and goes when your request goes. This office places no calls and sends no text messages, so nothing is dialed from here. The number is kept so that a person who calls +1 (504) 832-6194 can be matched to what they already wrote. Leave the field blank and the request is answered the same way, in writing, within one business day.

Why this office never sees a card number

This office takes no payment at any stage and in any amount, so the form holds no card number, no bank detail and no stored method of paying. The company that operates your trip bills you directly and collects for that itself, under its own arrangements with you. This office is releases the commission to this office when you are back again. That money moves between two companies. The order of it is laid out on how a request becomes a reservation.

Who else ever sees a request

One company, and only after you have said to go ahead: the operator of the trip you picked. What that company receives is what it needs to hold the reservation, which is the names as they will appear, the dates, the number of people, and anything you said that changes a room, a vehicle, a permit or how far you will be walking. What it does not receive is your open box in full, a note about a different trip you also asked about, or your telephone number if you asked for that to stay here.

Past that operator, nobody. What you tell this office is not sold, rented or handed to anyone else for their own use. There is no broker in this, no swapped list, no arrangement with a third company of any kind. The only other person who could ever see a request is an accountant, if a commission is ever questioned, working to the same terms as this office.

What the site itself records

Two things, both dull. The server keeps a line for every page fetched: the network address the request came from, the time, the page and the browser string. Those lines last thirty days and are then overwritten. Separately, if you begin filling in the form and close the tab, what you typed is held inside your own browser so the fields are still there when you come back. That copy never leaves your machine, is never sent anywhere, and clearing your browser data removes it.

The life of a request, from arrival to deletion

Twelve months is roughly the gap between a first question about one of the harder rungs and the month people actually go. Ask in March, write again in January about the same trip, and what you said is still here. After that it goes.

What you can ask this office to do

Four things, all of them in writing to corrections@thepinegazette.com. Ask for a copy of everything held about you, and it comes back as plain text rather than a form. Ask for a correction, and it is made. Ask for the record to be removed, and it is removed. Ask what was sent to an operator on your behalf, and you are told field by field what left this office and when. All four are answered within one business day, the same deadline that every other request here carries.

One limit on the third of those, stated plainly. Once a reservation has been placed in your name, the operating company holds its own copy of what it was given, under its own terms with you. Removing your record here does not reach into theirs and does not cancel anything. Cancelling is a separate act with its own conditions, and those are on the cancellation terms in full.

Mail from this office

You hear from this office when you have written to it, and at no other time. There is nothing to join, nothing to subscribe to, and no message that lands because a season came round. If you want to be told when a particular trip has dates again, say so in the open box; that is written down as an instruction with your permission attached to it, and one line to bookings@thepinegazette.com withdraws it.

Two questions this raises

The first: what happens to what you say about your knees, your diet or how far you can walk in a day. It is held in the words you used, for as long as the request lives, and the relevant part reaches the operator, who is the one putting you in a room and on a path.

The second: whether you can ask about a trip without leaving anything behind. You can. Call +1 (504) 832-6194 and ask, and if you take it no further nothing is written down. Writing is only needed at the point where you want a figure worked out for your dates and your party, which is what request a trip quote 24/7 is for.

The company behind the site

Pine Gazette Bookings LLC runs this office in the New Orleans metro and is filed with Louisiana Secretary of State. Written questions about any of the above can go to 2450 Severn Avenue, Suite 312, Metairie, Louisiana 70001, and are answered on the same deadline as everything else. When this page changes, the change appears here; a shorter form of several of these answers sits on the questions this office is asked most.