warning - Bad Rome airport transfer experience
 

Hi Fodorites - Just got back from Italy and have an unfortunate experience to warn about. I booked a central Rome apartment to FCO taxi / transfer through a website. Did the booking online. Wrote a note requesting a callback confirm.
No callback within the hour, left a phone message, then another. I should have suspected something because the voicemail sounded like a personal vm, not business. Come morning at 6:30AM, no cab. waited for ten minutes, then called, still no answer, left message. Finally hoofed it to the north end of Piazza Navona and just caught a cab and made it to FCO barely on time. e35.
The site is: http://www.rome-airport.net/transfer/
phone: +39 340 196 2556
They have some other sites which also lead to the same number, or same voicemail. Lesson learned:
1. Don't use anyone you can't call in person to book
2. Don't prepay or confirm with credit card
3. Hail a cab - it only cost E35 anyway.
4. Allow an hour during busy times to get to FCO.

Another warning to folks of another kind; Please read my forum. Hopefully, noone else will have to go through it!

I don't get it.
Britannia_c is warning people about a scam in Madrid.

Which does not really relate to feet-in-motion's hassle with booking cabs in Rome.

I can relate to the "one hour to get to FCO from Rome". It took us an hour, and our cab driver hit about 150km/hr on the feeway, while holding connversations on three separate cell phones.

Why would anyone buy tickets to a motor race - you can get the same excitement in a cab in Rome!

I realize some people are here just to doodle and diddle and talk about themselves as wanna-be writers, but some people are moved to post on travel message boards because they learned something from their travels that they feel could spare future travels a spoiled trip. I realize the first category doesn't get why the second category posts with passion and arms waving. Doodly diddly doo to you, Peter S Aus.

feets-in-motion,

Thanks for posting. I would only add for future travelers that "hailing a cab" in Rome is not really a reliable way to get to teh airport for a very early morning flight. You need to know where to find a taxi stand, and hope you will find a waiting empty taxi there, willing to go to the airport.

There are shuttle services that get good reviews from users, posted on Tripadvisor and sometimes on other message boards. For a very early morning departure, making a reservation with a well-reviewed, reliable pick up service, and confirming the night before, is probably the safest bet.

Zeppole mostly writes posts that have useful information. Which is why I don't quite understand the implications of the <Doodly diddly doo to you, Peter S Aus> comment noted above.

Ah well ...

Limoservice Rome has been used by a number of Fodorites. You do reserve online, but they are very reliable and reputable and even successfully picked me up at my hotel at 5AM for a very early morning flight out of FCO. Other than using them, as Zeppole states, the other option I'd have pursued would have been to queue up at a designated taxi stand. It's actually not legal to "hail a taxi" in Rome.

BC

thanks for the replies - i should have clarified that the three of us walked one block off the north end of of Piazza Navona, where I knew there was a taxi stand. :)

This is just a heads up.. travel smarter! From reading the forums, I've had fantastic trips with advance intelligence that you can't get from tourbooks to places like Italy, India, Japan, Germany, UK, Hong Kong, etc..... I was hoping to give back a tiny bit, given what I've learned from here..

Happy travels all!

As the OP said, <4. Allow an hour during busy times to get to FCO. >

This is good advice. While the distance is not that great, the traffic congestion getting out of Rome can be pretty ordinary. That's what we found in the middle of the day.

Hello everyone

I am the Manager of the company Rome-Airport.net. I very take care about my clients, so I'm here. :)

feetsinmotion, I would like to know your voucher code, to know what happened.
If you are entitled to a refund, you will surely receive

We are the leading company in Rome, and do many of these services. There is therefore a margin of error. If this is the case, why do not you have contacted us?

One important thing: we do not take money. The customer pays by car. The service is free for customers.

So please, feetsinmotion, let me have your voucher code.

Hope you get this ironed out.

I too am confused by Zep's doodly diddly doo-no need for this especially in view of Peter's non-confrontational post.

TDudette, that's the Zeppster that we all know and love ...