raistlin

My colleague who is travelling with me and has zero status and is on an entirely different reservation also received the same notifications. So, no, status has nothing to do with it.

bostontraveler

Well I'm happy. Apparently something has changed only recently. Until November 15th of last year I never once received a notification of a time or flight change.

NYTA

Use Tripit pro - I get notifications on every airline from them.

alesfo

I always received notification (except for a 5 minutes schedule schange once, but that's not very surprising) even if I don't have status with AZ.

In respondse to other posters, as mentioned before the best shot at contacting AZ in my experience is the main Italian call centre +39 06 65649. I guess it can depend a little bit on who you get, but several times I got a very good service.

However lately when I call via Skype I sometimes have technical problems such as the call ending abruptely just before connecting me to the operator or being mute.

bostontraveler

That's great for you too... I never once...not once...received any notification and they had several numbers. And I'm talking about over 100 flights.

fasteddie1971

That's odd, I use Tripit Pro too, but I wasn't notified about a 20 minute schedule change on a LIN-NAP flight in May. (Received an email from Alitalia about it last week).

I agree that the AZ call centre is extremely hit and miss (in Italian....have no experience of calling in other languages). Have been fed dud information in the past on various occasions. It seems to depend on the individual you get (and perhaps whether him/her is having a bad day).

Whenever I'm surveyed about AZ, I give excellent marks for the hard product, and terrible marks for the soft product. Will I ever see the call centre and website improve in our lifetime, I wonder?!

charlesswe

Have been promised to be called back twice now, two weeks ago. Of course nothing happened.

"We'll send it to the back-office"

Yeah, right.

charlesswe

AZ strikes again!

Apparently the only way to get a refund for a ticket issued in an Alitalia airport ticket office is to physically go back to that same office!

Is this the 70s?

raistlin

I would believe this to be wrong. Unless maybe you paid in cash... and even then, it should be any ticket office anywhere. Can you elaborate?

charlesswe

Paid with credit card. I called the Italian call center and this is what I got told, they could not even tell me how much I'd get back because of the incredible complexity of having 3 different fully refundable fares combined...

NYTA

I bought a ticket on Alitalia.jp and got told by an idiot call center employee that I needed to get I changed in Japan even though I was in Italy. I suggest trying a different agent as many are just ignorant.

Muegtroll

Hey guys, I feel like sharing my experiences with the AZ call center.

My flight got cancelled and at first they gave me a phone call.
Well, it was at 2am, but I didn't pick up anyway.
Then they sent me a text message, informing me about the cancellation.

I called them back (at around 3am) at the mentioned phone number via skype (my number is displayed) and talked to someone very capable of speaking English, she spoke basically accent free.
Unfortunately we could not find a good alternative flight, so she advised me to go to the airport early and talk to the counter clerks.

At 4am I got another call from them, this time the operators English was not so good, but as I had talked to another one before this was resolved quickly, no new information.

I went to the airport fairly early and talked to the agents there. Their English was passable, but they were in AF livery. They had no idea what they could do and well, there was a lot of chaos. They actually booked me on 4 alternative flights, when I only wanted to check my possibilities.

I figured that wasn't going to get me anywhere and called the Italian call center again.
I spoke to another operator with perfect English.

At first she was confused because the AF agent had apparently booked me on a flight that had already taken off, but as I had mentioned she had booked me onto other flights as well.

My original flight was FCO-JFK, and the agent had rebooked me to FCO-CDG-LAX (which was good for me because I had another connection there). But she was unable to tell me how much the rebooking would cost me.

So I asked about that at the call center and she couldn't tell me straight away, but after being on hold for about 20-30min she told me that she had talked to her supervisor and that they would rebook me FOC.

That was great news to me and a bit surprising, but I was happy

I have to admit though, in total I was on the phone with them for about 2 hours, but it took a while to figure out what the AF colleagues had done.
Overall I have no reason to complain.

charlesswe

Seems like your service expectations are too low, rebooking you free of charge when they cancel your original flight? They are required to do this.

Muegtroll

They rebooked me to a flight to LAX instead of JFK.
My booking was to JFK only and I don't think they are required to book me onto a flight that is 4 hours longer than the originally booked one. That would mean if I book a flight to the US and it gets cancelled, can I rebook free of charge to Mexico?
I'm still new to this, but I doubt it works like this.

Paul4Travel

yeah! consider that the AZ Call center is so ....*y because az use to subcontract their c.c. services to an external company with the highest rate of ignorance, incompetence, arrogance ever.

I'm still waiting a refund of 60€ for an additional luggage i've bought from alitalia, but didn't flown the flight + airport taxes for the flight not flown; i've sent them: 4 emails, 3 faxes, 19 calls, but STILL waiting for refund.