Where does my money sit?
In your own bank account. Nothing on this page moves
money. The planner does arithmetic; it takes no payment, opens no
account and has no way of knowing whether you have put anything aside
at all.
Afrinkong does not operate a customer bank account or a deposit
account, and it will not. If Travel Points are ever offered, buying one
would be a purchase of travel entitlement under the terms of the
programme that issued it — a payment for something, the way any
purchase is, rather than money placed with us for safekeeping. The
difference matters and we would rather state it now than discover later
that a sentence written today had quietly stopped being true. What we give you is the arithmetic — what the
journey costs, how many months there are, and therefore what each month
would have to look like — and a calendar that tells you when your
passport needs attention. The money is yours and stays yours until the
day you decide to travel and we send you an invoice like any other
company.
If that ever changes, it will not change quietly. Holding a
customer’s money is a different undertaking with different
obligations, and it would arrive as a different agreement that you
would have to read and accept. Not as an update to this page.
What if I stop?
Nothing happens, because nothing was started. There is no schedule to
break, no charge to miss, no fee, no record anywhere of you having
stopped. You made a plan and you are no longer keeping it, which is
your business and not ours.
The plan you kept in your browser stays there until you clear it.
Nobody is emailed about it and nobody follows up.
What if I change my mind about where?
Change it. Put Namibia where Kenya was and the page recalculates: the
journey is a different length, the figure is different, the month may
move, and the colour of the page changes because the page is about the
destination rather than about the money.
Nothing is lost by changing, because nothing was committed. This is
the part most worth saying plainly: two years is a long time to be
certain about a continent you have not visited yet, and a plan you
cannot change is a plan you abandon instead.
What if the price changes before I go?
It might. The figure this page gives you is an estimate against
today’s rate card, and the rate card is a published document that
can be revised. A plan you keep records which version of it priced
your journey, so when you come back the page can tell you whether the
number moved because you changed something or because we did.
Two things are outside the estimate in either direction. Park and
conservation fees, permits, entrance and government charges are settled
by us at cost and depend on the itinerary — a gorilla
permit alone can exceed a day of the journey. And international
flights, visas, insurance, your own meals and your personal spending
are yours, as they are on every Afrinkong journey.
Not built yetWhat this page cannot do
It cannot take a payment, keep a plan across two devices, remind you
by email, or tell you how far along you are, because all of those need
an account and this version has none. What you keep is kept in this
browser.
That is a deliberate order of work rather than an unfinished feature.
The planning is useful on its own, it can be built and checked without
anybody’s money being involved, and it means the questions that
do involve money can be answered properly by people qualified to answer
them rather than quickly by us.
Then the useful next thing
None of this means much until it is about a particular journey: the
arithmetic needs a number, and the number comes from a destination.
Price one and plan toward it, or read
the questions people actually
ask before they start.
If it is the unit rather than the plan you are wondering about,
what a Travel Point is says so plainly,
including what it is not.
Afrinkong