My sister and father and I are scheduled to go to Rome March 3 on a trip booked with Italiatours. To date we have not been able to get them to send via mail or fax the invoice that needs to be signed before tickets are sent. Whenever I call it's at least 30 minutes on hold until I get a live person and then that person assures me the fax will be sent. I've confirmed my fax # with them. I've asked to speak to a supervisor but they're always too busy. The voice mailbox at the documents extension is full. This does not bode well. <BR>Anybody have any suggestions for dealing with this company? Thanks for letting me vent.

We had some unpleasant experience with them when booking a car rental. They sent us confirmation without any details such as what car, what is their cancelation policy, unlimitted milage or not, etc.. It just said "car rental." They also charged our MC $100 on a spot without telling us. We needed to give them credit card information to hold our car reservation. When we received a confirmation from them it was written in a small print that $100 is not refundable. We called them, they tried to tell us we been informed about nonrefundable deposit. We asked to talk to supervisor and told her we will inform our credit card about their unethical practices. At that moment we been told they will credit our MC. They did the same day. We rented our car directly from Hertz and it was even cheaper. I would never deal with them also for another reason. When we got our confirmation there was no a phone number only a fax #. To us it meant they don't really care if don't want people to call them. No more dealing with this company. And yes, we stayed on the line for over 1 hour to get connected to a live person. I hope your sister and father will have a great trip anyway. When did you book their trip? Did you charge to your credit card? Tell them you will inform your credit card company maybe it will work for you too.

Angela....I wish you the best of luck with Alitalia tours! We booked a tour back in November and have experienced the same type of frustrations in dealing with them. Long waits on the phone, unwilling to help when finally reaching an agent.....could not get them to fax confirmations to us no matter how many fax numbers and phone numbers we provided....it goes on and on. Our trip is scheduled for March 8th. We finally got so tired of Alitalia's runaround, that we called Air France and booked our travel with them. We cancelled our reservations with Alitalia and forfeited the $100 per passenger ($400 total). We feel much more at peace with our travel plans now and feel it was a good decision. Air fare on Air France was only $517 per person! <BR>Good luck...I hope Alitalia come thru for you!

the saga continues....the live person I got on the phone today actually tried to help--but he finally told me "my supervisors are getting annoyed with me". They told him to transfer me to a voicemail box that is of course full. He did give me the operations manager name and # but I only got voicemail there too. Of course I left a message begging for help.

Hello Angela ! <BR>I am a bit concerned as I read all of these responses to your question. I, too, am leaving on a trip to Italy in March. I am flying round trip on Alitalia. I didn't have a problem arranging the air travel portion with Alitalia, it was the car rental part that concerns me. I have had such a difficult time getting in touch with them to confirm my car rental, which, thankfully, is through Avis. I chose to go through Italiatour for the car rental because it was better than any rate I could find, even directly through Avis. My concern began when I couldn't get in touch with Italiatour when I realized that I had not received the rental confirmation in the mail which required my signature. I finally got it but the due date for my reply was the day after I received it. They had automatically charged my Visa $100.00 for the deposit and then mentioned in the letter I later received that if I didn't respond, I would be automatically charged an additional amount for insurance. I couldn't get through on their fax #. You can't get anyone on the phone. I finally had to walk the signed form over to their offices here in midtown Manhattan and hand it to them in person ! Not everyone has that convenience ! I am keeping my fingers crossed that my car rental process goes smoothly upon arrival in Rome.

Well I finally recieved the fax we've been waiting for--in the small print on the bottom it says if they don't recieve our acknowledgement by 2/14/01--TOMORROW--that our reservations will be cancelled. AACCCKKK.......I wish I had the option on going cross town to work this out.

Just to let you know how this turned out--we decided to cancel the italiatour and will fight any charges to AMEX tooth and nail based on our experience. Found a British Airways flight for 497 per person RT so we're off to a good start. Reading others experiences helped us make our decision--thanks for your input.

ttt