bluefree0312

Hi,

I unfortunately have a MilleMiglia award ticket booked for next year that is now cancelled. Does anyone have any idea how I'm going to get my flight exchanged/refunded or even how to contact them? I've tried a bunch of their contact numbers but have had no luck with any live person picking up in the last 4 days.


thanks

fmirenzi

Good luck with this. Where are you located and what time are you calling? If you call very late at night you will get through right away. Also, while you are on hold, if the music stops and the line appears to go “dead” but you can still hear white noise on the line, don’t hang up, it means you will be connected to an agent soon.

I just spent the past 4 days trying to rebook after an Albanian agent actually made my situation worse by cancelling my flights and not refunding miles in time as promised so that I can rebook myself online since they are too incompetent to book for me.

If you speak Italian then I would advise checking availability of flights on the website first and calling MilleMiglia services in Italy +390665644. Open from 9-8 Central Europe time,

if you don’t speak Italian or, as in my situation can’t call during those hours, you are stuck with the Albanian call center instead, it doesn’t matter which number you call, all non-Italian calls are routed to the same place in Albania, and these people are RUDE and will outright refuse to assist. They are not Alitalia employees, they have no skin in the game, and they do not care about anything because after October the company they work for will just transfer them to other projects, I had the phone hung up in my face twice yesterday, and he actually said “I don’t have time to talk to you.”

Keep in mind also the Albanians either don’t see availability or will blame “the system” for something, so you’re unlikely to get the flights you want. My flights were all on Skyteam partners (Italian call center found availability but line dropped, only 1 Albanian out of the ~20 I spoke with found my flights but refused to book stating they can only book flights where connections are more than 1.5 hours — huh?) hopefully yours are operated AZ, you may have more luck than I did. However my experience in the past with them has been they don’t see AZ flights either. Their answer will be “well if you see it on the website then book it yourself.”

I do have the name of an agent that was helpful and polite, and actually made an effort to assist. Her name is Nartila, you can ask for her. I believe she works late night shifts though (morning Europe time). She actually took the time to explain the whole MilleMiglia program situation in detail (even though I already knew it, I was impressed by how knowledgeable she was, and she wasn’t afraid to admit that it’s possible people will even lose miles).

Due to them not being able to book any flight, I asked for miles recredit so I can book online myself, The miles were “guaranteed” to be refunded by the next day when the MilleMiglia office in Italy was due to open. Of course 4 days later they never arrived. Nartila even admitted to me miles refunds actually take 2 months, not 1 day, unless your case has been escalated for “quick refund” which depends on when you booked the ticket. Mine was eligible for quick refund but no one was actually doing anything about it. So do not accept any miles refund unless the offices in Italy are open at that time and they can do it right on the call while you wait.

Having first-hand knowledge of which company operates the call center that Alitalia subcontracted, I know that the only way to get any progress is to keep contacting them over and over on the same day. Multiple contacts on the same day (at least 3) gets your case “flagged” and call center management, or level 2 or 3 support (L2 and L3 should be in Italy) will get involved. After the last guy hung up in my face saying “I don’t have time to talk to you”, I reported this to Alitalia on Twitter and mentioned the name of the company that operates the call center in Albania and asked whether the agents there are on permanent contracts and thus feel they can be rude and unprofessional —- within 10 minutes of my Twitter post, I received a full refund of miles and taxes… but never any response from Alitalia’s social media team

Sciamano

Even the Italian service is outsourced and this could be the reason why you're encountering unsuccess

fmirenzi

Yes, it is, However, the call center in Italy is operated by a different company, and escalations are dealt with by the Italy call center. Best to call them directly and avoid the Albanians. The article you posted isn’t relevant to the Albanian call center, which was the source of the problem, I didn’t have any problems with the Italian agents except for the line dropping and me not being able to call back during work hours, hence needing to call the English line,

Sciamano

The Italian call centre is Almaviva, the article's related one.

fmirenzi

I know, but what does this have to do with what I wrote? LOL

Sciamano

That there's no other Italian call centre than this, so I can't see how it could be easy to get in touch or escalate if the workers are "on strike".
Or maybe I'm missing your point.

fmirenzi

Yes, you missed my point since the Almaviva strike was August 5 - 9 and there’s no indication from my interaction with the Italian agents that they are refusing to work. As I mentioned, they were the only ones who could find award availability for me, but the line dropped and I was not able to phone back because I also work during those hours, so I was stuck using the English line.

It’s not the Almaviva agents answering the phones with guns blazing, it’s the agents at Teleperformance Albania.

Sciamano

I assume OP called in the these days and the fact that Almaviva won't be the next call centre (Covisian will be the new one) is a news of this last week so nothing has to do with the 5-9 Aug strike but it has to do that the workers know they will probably lose their jobs.