Is your experience, gac, that you don't give the best treatment to foreigners?

hi jazztania - so sorry about your sad loss.

something similar happened to friends of ours (the wife's sister died) and as far as i remember, their insurance refunded them. perhaps yours would?

i agree with other postings on here. write to the ceo of the airline. mark it private and personal (get his her name off the airline site or search engine). tell them what happened and say that you were too upset to discuss the matter and just very hurried to get home. say that you feel a mistake was made and would they kindly look into it for you. thank them for their time, etc. - you catch more wasps with honey than you ever will with vinegar. (i did something similar for a friend who had been treated abominably by one of the big uk airlines - he got a full refund and a voucher too, so it can work).

hope one of these or some of the others posted works.

So sorry for your loss. I hope the following adds a moment of laughter to your day. I took a flight on Alitalia
last year and was nearly slapped by a male employee,I am a female and had the
nerve to question his procedure re: last minute boarding. I am a trained psychiatric social worker, so I am used to getting physically threatened and can
react accordingly. Several other passengers and other Alitalia employees
were attempting in horror to restrain this man. My 5 complaints to Alitalia feel on deaf ears as "they got me on the
flight I wanted" I can laugh now at the
screaming in Italian and English that went on. however Alitalia has so much to be ashamed of.

Thank you all so much for your kind words and suggestions. I never thought of taking the "honey" rather than vinegar route, but I will give it a try. I will write to the CEO of Alitalia first and see what kind of response we get. And Omsbudman is a good last resort. What do we have to lose at this point?

Ironically, we had to cancel a trip to Italy last September because I broke my ankle (sucks to be me, huh?), but thankfully we took out insurance then. I thought after breaking my ankle, surely nothing else would go wrong for this vacation, so we bypassed the insurance. NEVER AGAIN.

Thank you all again. This is a great site with a lot of interesting comments.

jsmith: because socialworker made a direct criticism of me, I thought it necessary to defend myself, and to try to put my previous posting in a better context.

And it is certainly not my practice to not give foreigners the best treatment. To the contrary, I believe that foreigners should be treated with the utmost regard (and the good manners should of course be reciprocal). The notion of hospitality is an ancient one, and is reflected in classical texts as well.

Fortunately, the vast majority of Italians are indeed, in my experience, very hospitable to foreigners, including to Americans.

TO GAC--I was not making a "direct criticism of" you--I don't know you-- but rather your use of this poster's sad experience to make the point about people "opposed to the policies of the current Administration".

Many, many people fall into such a category and it does not necessarily have anything at all to do with how they treat their fellow human beings. That is why I made my observation about your making a gratuitous political comment that was especially insensitive and out of place.

When my husband had to fly from the US to Ireland for his uncle's funeral, we discovered that most airlines do not offer bereavement fares for international travels. The two that did were very expensive (about $1,500 each). Ended up stumbling across a good fare ourselves, but received very little help or sympathy from any of the airlines, and we tried them ALL.

Before moving to N. Ireland, we never took out travel insurance. Now we always do because we need the medical coverage when traveling to the US. And I will continue to buy an annual policy once we return to live in the US again.

jazztania, sorry for the loss of a loved one compounded by a huge financial loss.

Oh, jazztania, you poor dear. Your situation is awful and I feel for you.

I also dislike Alitalia very much. In the air, their employees are fine. On the ground, they simply suck. I have no doubt that no would help you. They certainly wouldn't even talk to me about a much less important situation.

I called every day from the US before I left for Italy, then tried at every airport in Italy, every ticket counter and customer service rep I could find. They wouldn't even talk about making a change for me, and it wasn't much of a change. I was willing to pay any change fee, too.

The worst of it was that every Alitalia rep we spoke with told us we had to talk to someone at the next airport, until finally, at the last departure airport, they told us it was too late to make the change. Hilarious, but not at that moment.

Alitalia has loads of disaffected and surly employees. I am all over Italy fairly often, and I can't think of a friendly or smiling or helpful Alitalia employeed that I've seen in years.

As someone above said, they used to be great. And now, they are awful to deal with. Flying with them is still ok, but any interaction is simply impossible.

Once again, I'd like to back up GAC's post as being logical and true, not some politically motivated speech. If someone from France came to the states and complained that when a customer service rep was actually rude to them when he found out they were French, I think it would be only logical for us to say, perhaps it was because a lot of Americans are upset because France didn't support us in Iraq. It's only an explanation of the "why" for it happening, just as GAC has done in this case. He has provided a very real and logical reason why these people were treated that way, and he would be remiss NOT to mention that is a logical reason.

Meanwhile I'm aghast at these problems with the fares. It's been about 18 years now since we were in France when my partner's father died. We were in Nice and went to American Airlines office the next morning. They switched our flights immediately and said there would be no charge. They offered condolences and couldn't have been nicer. The only problem was we couldn't make connections from Florida up to Ohio (it was also Memorial Day weekend) and we would miss the funeral -- so we finally gave up. Then American kindly changed our tickets back to their original -- still no charge. I think that's one of the reasons we've always been so loyal to American Airlines.

Jazztania: so sorry for your loss - I had a similar situation last year; however it was a trip to Central America on American Airlines. I ended up writing a letter, enlosing copies of my airline ticket receipts, my father's death certificate and my credit card statement. I was told American does not offer bereavement fares to that country - however, I still got a fairly large credit from them in compensation. Give it a try by writing Alitalia. You have nothing to lose.

EVIL THOUGHT: why doesn't everyone responding to/reading this thread email alitalia and ask them what their policy is in relation to such a situation arising if they had to get home urgently before their booked return flight? but of course NOT until after jazztania comes back and tells us if she had any success. might make them at leas THINK about what caused the onslaught of emails. (NOT mentioning this or any other forum of course - just a general enquiry sort of thing).

welovedonegal, I think your suggestion is brilliant. What would anyone have to lose?

As a last ditch effort, why not? I am all ready to help someone if I can. Let's make the world a little less cold and lonely. There is a community here, and we are a part of it.

Bully for you.

I just read this morning (on Yahoo/Italy) that Alitalia and Italy are having more problems with the EU because the EU rules are a country can only bail their national airline out once, and the Italian government has already done this. And now Alitalia needs another bailout. The other European airlines are evidently screaming bloody murder about this.

So the once proud and wonderful Alialia IMHO is a loss cause. But I, like all of us sure wish jazztania the best of luck. ((*))

To Patrick--I know you to be an intelligent person. Therefore, I know you must understand the difference between hypothesis/speculation--ie an opinion on something--vs an idea that has the status of "being logical and true". A "logical" explanation of an occurence does not equate to truth. Opinions are just that--opinions--and my point continues to be that GAC's opinion suggesting that someone who does not support the current Administration would, of necessity, be unkind to another is *only* his opinion and not only was misplaced on this thread, but even worse perpetuates an us vs them idea of the world that I would hope not to find on a forum devoted to European travel.

I won't respond to such a suggestion. You are right of course. It would be equally wrong to suggest that perhaps the person was rude to them because he had a cold that day or had personal problems bothering him. Speculation is always just that, and despite the odds of what would cause a person to react a certain way, it is probably best not to speculate regardless of the probability of cause.

Besides we should also not "speculate" that the many people in the US who were so upset that they had to call French Fries -- Freedom Fries, would have probably greeted every Frenchman they came into contact with, with open arms. And it would be totally wrong of us to suggest if some American was rude to a Frenchman for no reason that it was possibly due to the political "hatred" they had for France. You are right of course. It would only be speculation.

I guess my main mistake was not recognizing that the following original statement made by GAC was suggested to be factual or as you say it "the truth". I read it as a suggestion of what was possible or "speculation" not a statement of fact. I guess we just read things differently. You and I apparently have different interpretations of the phrase "I suspect. . ."


"I suspect that you happened upon an Alitalia employee who was very angry at Americans in general, opposed to the policies of the current Administration, etc. (perhaps a member of a certain political party which shall remain nameless)."

Thank you for the support...I very much appreciate it. I'll keep you posted of any progress with Alitalia.

One thing that I don't understand and I hope I don't sound ignorant, but even though I have traveled somewhat, I'm not familiar with airline regulations.

This whole issue made me realize how unfair the airline industry is. The fact that most people on a particular flight pay a different price for their small economy seat and then lose that price to a much higher one if they need to change is outrageous.

To me it's like eating at a restaurant and being charged a different price for the same steak...depending on what day you made your reservation...or a premium if you were a walk in, etc. Maybe it's a silly comparison, but I don't understand how airlines get away with this disparity. I know this is the norm...but since experiencing it first hand, I feel bad that consumers are so powerless against these practices. We simply go along with whatever rules they impose on any given day.

My comment was intended merely to be rank speculation, not an expression of "truth" or of "fact." As such, I determined to withdraw it.

As an aside, I do know, as a matter of established "fact", and based on long personal observation, that a fair amount of anti-Americanism in Italy is indeed politically motivated (and not all necessarily from the extreme left). That is not to say that every anti-American sentiment will invariably result in rude conduct, nor that every incident of rudeness is the product of anti-Americanism.

Having said this, and in view of my previously having withdrawn my earlier statement concerning the Alitalia employee, I would suggest that this is an appropriate time to call a halt to this discourse, so as not to clutter up this thread with largely irrelevant opinions.

I think you probably were taken advantage of. Posted below is directly from Alitalia's website according to their "restrictive fare" policy. It seems that they wave all charges when a family member dies. You need to call and ask them to send you a copy of the "fare code/policy" that you were booked in.


"TICKET IS NON-REFUNDABLE.
WAIVED FOR ILLNESS OR DEATH OF PASSENGER OR FAMILY
MEMBER.
NOTE -
PENALTY DOES NOT APPLY TO INFANTS UNDER 2 NOT
OCCUPYING A SEAT.
1. ILLNESS/DEATH WAIVER MUST BE SUBSTAINED BY
VALID MEDICAL/DEATH CERTIFICATE. "

I don't know if this link will work, but try it:

http://www.alitaliausa.com/booking/f...NR=T&SEG=1