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Originally Posted by frequentraveller
I'm Italian-born but have lived in South Africa for many years. I travel regularly around the world with my partner and although I have travelled with many airlines that are seriously lacking in many aspects I have yet to find one that is so severely deficient in so many ways. I am ashamed that this is Italy's national airline and is in the front line in making that first impression to visitors of our beautiful country.
After losing our luggage at Xmas when travelling to Sicily and making it available four days later, I am still waiting for the reimbursement of the expenses incurred to buy a few toiletries and some clothes to tide us over until our cases were found. I have submitted our documents several times, by fax and by email. I have phoned. Family in Italy have phoned. No success.
Last week I returned from another trip after having attended a family wedding. Alitalia cancelled our flight at the time it was supposed to be taking off. They gave priority on other flights to passengers according to criteria known only to themselves. I subsequently missed my on-flights to Spain and South Africa and had to buy a new ticket on a different airline via another country. Alitalia washed their hands of responsibility, they said their "contract" with me was to get me to Rome, which they did. The fact that it was 2 hours too late and that I "chose to travel with another airline" was not their problem. They also lost my suitcase which I had to collect today, 7 days later, from my city's airport (they could not be bothered to have it delivered to my home). Also no courtesy calls to let me know where it was. I had to phone regularly to Rome for news on its progress.
The staff is mostly extremely rude and unhelpful which is a common complaint about both Alitalia air, ground and callcentre staff. Don't even try to get assistance from any information or ticketing counter staff at Italian airports (and this also counts for Italians working for foreign airlines at these airports). If you're not met with a grunted answer you have to get into a screaming fight with them. This doesn't get you anywhere either other than give you the satisfaction of having hopefully ruined their day just as they have ruined yours.
I choose not to fly with Alitalia in the future and I will make it my mission to discourage other people to do so as well.
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This is fascinating, and somehow incredibly consoling. I realised very quickly that Alitalia were going to stonewall and block any and every attempt by me to get them to return my luggage. So I decided to go public and broadcast my complaint via their Facebook page. I also invited others to contact me if they'd had similar tales of woe. I very quickly got a response from Alitalia's Facebook team, and - eventually - my suitcase. Separately, I emailed Margaret Dibben at The Observer, and, although I've not - to date - heard anything from her, I'm sure the threat of huge public embarrassment accelerated their decision to have done with me.
I'll keep people informed as to whether or not I receive a response or any kind of financial redress, but thank you for detailing your (far worse) tale of woe. It doesn't surprise me that you seem to be blacklisted now. What a pathetic way of going about things: very Berlusconi, one might say.