As we've informed in previous email, we sent you claim to Artesia, the railway company responsible for your transportation. Therefore we did not receive a reply yet.
You can send you complaint direct to Artesia using the form:
http://www.artesia.eu/english/eng_se...rticuliers.php

LutherJim is way out of order IMO - he has a fundamental misunderstanding of what he purchased - a ticket from Artesia, a joint venture of French and Italian Railways I believe - and this is not the first time I have heard of horrible experiences on Artesia trains - my friends went once in a hot summer and the AC failed and they thought they were going to suffocate as the windows could not even open. a train ride from Hell they said.

This train once was billed as a hotel train but agents selling it, like EuroRailways got a message from RailEurope, who wholesales these tickets in the U.S. to stop billing it as a hotel train but just a regular night train.

kybourbon, I did see all those nifty configurations on the Artesia website. What I couldn't find was an easy to access timetable or information on how long various journeys were. I did think it a not very useful website, unless one wants to see exactly what kind of fairly awful way one will be traveling.

Night trains are not for me. Just wanted to know what "normal" time would be.

Normal time and night train times have little correlation often as night trains may not even take the same route as day trains and typically IME of hundreds of night trains, stop a lot, ofter for mysteriously long periods - perhaps being timed to arrive at a decent hour and not 4am

Thanks for your response kybourbon. I am very much aware of that. As far as I'm concerned I paid Eurorailways so my contract is with them.>

You need to read the contract next time before spouting nonsense IMO - does your 'contract' say the agent is responsible for the actual service or does it indeed have the usual disclaimer about the seller only being an agent.

What does your contract say - the 'my contract' as you put it? Read it!

Thirdly the "First Class" cabins are nothing like the ones advertised on the website. They're more like third world economy class cabins so you definitely don't get the service and quality you expect from the amount you pay.>

You were the victim of a strike of train cleaning personnel in Italy - a strike that is not expected to be resolved until December or so - basically there are two different unions that clean the first-class private compartments and 2nd class ones and the other union cleaning the couchette cars - this one is not on strike but the former is

As a result all Italian night trains I understand, including Artesia ones, have eliminated sleeper cars - the private compartments and have substituted couchette wagons in their place and thus private doubles now are really couchette compartments with just two beds made up - thus they are not the much more luxurious private compartments normally used and presumably pictured in EuroRailways web site - perhaps the OP bought the tickets before the strike started - RailEurope indeed now posts on their site the current info about couchette cars being used to dim expectations.

And the other service snafus OP describes is probably also a result of the strike of cleaning personnel and operating personnel.

Anyone taking an overnight train in Italy currently should expect many problems arising from this union action of strikes and slow downs in services.

<i>Are you honestly saying that if you went on line and booked a hotel room -- let's say at a Holiday Inn -- through Hotels.Com and you found the hotel dirty and the service lousy, you would be telling people not to book a hotel through Hotels.Com as the dirty room and horrible service was THEIR fault and not the fault of the hotel itself?</i>

Most of the blame lies with the hotel. However, the broker gets money either from the price paid by the client or by getting a fee from the listed hotels, or even indirectly from the ads that appear on its web site--and the more listings, the more fees collected one way or the other. It has in my mind a certain responsibility in the condition of the rooms and the quality of service.

So in other words, Michael, I guess you're saying NO ONE should EVER book with any agency, since every agency can and will represent hotels that will have rooms and service that will disappoint? Or can you suggest an agency that will not represent any hotel with inadequate service or occasional dirty rooms?

I honestly think you are being naive to suggest that there is anything a booking agency can do to guarantee the condition of rooms in the hotels in books. If they removed every hotel that ever had a complaint about the rooms, they would no longer represent any hotels at all.

NeoPatrick,

I had bad luck with hotels.com in Italy, and will try other options before resorting to their services; and I will try to avoid general booking services. Orbitz is not responsible for flight schedules, but will send upgrade notices of flight changes or delays. Gites de France apparently keeps a tight rein on the B&Bs on its list. I do not think that one should let brokers off the hook that easily.

This totally reminds me of an overnight train some 15 years ago between Paris and Rome. We were travelling with our 4 year old and had been old that there would be a "play lounge" on the train, a restaurant, etc. Friends in Paris actually went down to the station and made our reservations for us so there was no failure to communicate. We got on to six plastic bunkbeds already pulled down and four being occupied. No "play lounge", no restaurant, no vending machines. Halfway through the trip, no water. Over 20 hours, no AC (this was in July). The four year old survived on a little bottled water and the kindness of strangers offering him food they had brought on board at various stations along the way. I remember that we finally arrived in Rome and quickly blew our budget by getting in a cab and taking it to the Hilton Hotel where there was a swimming pool.

Michael, I didn't mean to imply that brokers shouldn't try to do something if there is a problem, and people should be particularly grateful when a broker does step forward and offer to make amends.

But the point remains that if a train ride is bad, has rude service, and is a total bust -- it is really the train, and not the person who sold you the ticket who is to blame. The same with hotels. It just seems to me that the OP should have been suggesting never to take this train -- not 'never to use the broker than sold him the ticket for it'. Sorry, but the original complaint just seemed totally misdirected to me.

Michael needs to take Contracts 101 in Law School to understand very basic ideas of what an agent is and what an agent, with the ubiquitous disclaimer, is responsible for and which the buyer agrees to when buying.

I'm too old to take contract law, I'll just take my business elsewhere. As I already pointed out, some brokers do follow up.