iapetus

Wait, wait, wait! I just reread that document. This time I looked a little closer:
So it really should just be a flat €48 rate, radiotaxi or no ... unless I'm misinterpreting what I read in Italian and in English. I take back all the above .

If anyone else takes away a different understanding, I'd be interested to hear it.

Perche

No supplement. 48 euros. Hopefully, you were in an official cab. They are all radio taxis. This just refers if you want the service to pick you up at your door rather than going to a taxi stand. For the airport, you don't want to rely on a taxi stand early in the AM or late at night because sometimes there are no taxis there, and you'd just be standing in the street. But there are no added fees for going to the airport.

KLouis

I've never paid a radio-taxi fee when calling for a cab from a hotel. The difference with your case is, however, that all times I called for a real cab I was in a different city (Na, PG, FI, PV) and the meter started running when they accepted the ride. Perhaps they charge you this fee in Rome since they have the standard fee.

Well, that tells me, when in Rome, I'm right in getting to FCO with a "limo" and from FCO in a cab (my usual hotel is "fuori le mura").

Perche

There is no radio taxi fee to and from the airport. It's included in the 48 euro fee. I'm sure of it. The only fees that I'm not sure of is additional baggage fee and 5th passenger fee, because I haven't traveled with more than just a single carry on for 12-15 years, and I've never traveled with more than one other person. Radio taxi fee is if you call a taxi to your hotel and have it drive you to a restaurant. It doesn't apply to and from either airport.

iapetus

Yes, it was an official cab. I think I've only ever once taken one in Rome that wasn't official. (The hotel called it for me, and the (rather polite) driver asked me permission to make a brief stop in an airport parking lot so that he could take care of some business of which I'm probably best off remaining forever ignorant. )

So I'm going to be generous and give the driver the benefit of the doubt. I'll just say that he must have been new and wasn't quite aware of how the airport flat fee works. Having read through the policy now, I can see how it could be a little confusing ... but, as I said, I'm being generous.


Thanks for all of your replies on the matter! ^ I will travel much more confident in my knowledge on this when I return to Rome this spring.

rove312

It's very difficult to get the €30 fixed fare from Ciampino airport honored, if this blog post from 2013 still reflects how it is.

rickg523

I read that blog back in 2013 just before my first flight into CIA. (I was doing a Google search to find the taxi fare, and the link came up on the first page).
And though I didn't find it as confrontational as the blogger (I only speak basic tourist Italian), I did end up taking the shuttle bus into town because I couldn't get an agreement on a fixed fare before getting into a cab, something I do everywhere there's a fixed fare to the airport.
This has never happened to me at FCO, and it was three years ago at Ciampino, so maybe it's gotten under control.
Btw, not so long ago taxi to Manhattan was an infamous pricing scam art JFK.

Perche

I don't fly in and out of there. It is mostly the low cost carriers, but I have to admit I've heard from others that taxis at Ciampino sometimes try to jack up the prices. Evidently, they feel that the 30 euros is way too low. It would cost about 30 euros to just get to the Aurelian walls by meter, much less drive around within them up and down one way streets, stuck in traffic in the city center. Although FCO is further away, they are both 30-40 minutes into the city center. The comune should probably do something about that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

If you have reasonable confidence in Italy and you are going within the walls, you can just get out and give the 30 euros when you get to the destination. If they give you grief, the taxi's registration number is on the side of the outside door, along with the phone number to where to report them. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle for someone not used to arguing in Italian if it's just a couple of euros.

At FCO there's a lot of international flights, including people from the USA who tip. I suspect at Ciampino where it is mostly low cost intra-European where tipping is not expected, and 30 euros is all they're going to get for waiting for a fare for hours, this is their way of making up for it.

By the way KLouis, "fuori le mura," that's pretty impressive. Italian has tons of grammatical rules and exceptions. Le mura is one of the rare exceptions that you pretty much have to speak like a native to not get wrong. "Wall" is like lips, arms, and other exceptions where the usual grammatical rules have to be broken, so are usually misspoken except by native speakers. "Wall" is so complicated that you have to use different rules if you are talking about a wall in your house, an wall around a city, or an imaginary wall as in, "He is so hurt that he built a wall around himself and won't let anyone get close to him anymore."

KLouis

Learned that back in 1979, first time in Rome and didn't speak any Italian (although I had a fight with a guard at the necropoli in Tarquinia who said, while visiting a tomb, -yes, these were the days...- that Greeks had painted all the sex-related stuff) and I visited San Paolo fuori le mura. By the way, when not knowing what to do in Rome, one should visit it: one of the most impressive churches in Italy!

PS Very complicated sentence. I should write it again in Italian

taz99

I'm seeking a dependable private car service from FCO to our Rome area hotel. What do you guys use? I've used Blacklane before, but it's 77 euros, and I found another service for 57 euros but their website isn't user friendly. I'm hoping to find one that is a good price that I know will be there to pick me up at FCO.

obscure2k

I have always had the concierge at the hotel arrange for the service. Never a problem. Always dependable.

JBD

Check this thread and specifically its wiki for car service recommendations:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/italy...ed-thread.html

Perche

They are all private owners of a car tied to an agency somewhere. You book with the agency, they call an owner of a car in the area that they have an arrangement with. Whether they show up or don't show up depends on whether the car owner is tired, hungover, too much traffic to waste his time, or another agency offered him or her a better trip.

There are almost no private car services that own cars, or at most, there may be 2-3 brothers who got into the business and have 2-3 cars, and they share the work. The most popular car agency in Rome looks like it is based in Rome, but digging deeper into the website, it's actually two brothers working in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Another very popular Rome car service is based in South Carolina.

Most of the Roman car services are based somewhere in the UK. A couple of them are in the outskirts of the city, and work out of junk yards.

Using various different names, most of them have a lot of different drivers in many different cities. The same website that promises to pick you up in Rome and take you to your hotel, if you dig into it, it is the same car service that will arrange to pick you up at your hotel in Manhattan, and the guy answering the phone is in Kansas.

With very rare exceptions (for example, I know a guy who actually has four limos in Positano, and he built a garage for them on the roof of his house, and he or one of his brothers or friends go out on jobs), you are just dealign with a central dispatcher in an apartment who is as likely to be in Viet Nam as in Rome. You are not hiring a company, just a middle man who will set you up with a driver, and that's it. Most of them are reliable, until they aren't and you get stuck.

You mentioned you used Blacklane car service before. Blacklane is a dude who works out of his apartment in Bakersfield, California. You send him a request for a pickup in Rome. He pulls out his list of drivers he knows in Rome, and sends them an SMS. That's it. There are almost no car services in Italy. Most of the time it seems to work. But you are basically contacting a guy who lives in the USA or in England who has a list of drivers in the city you are going to, and he just emails or SMS's them.

By far, no doubt or hesitation about this, the most reliable way to get from FCO to the city center of Rome is a white, city certified public taxi. They are neat and clean, not like USA taxis. It is a fixed rate of 48 euros, and that's it. If you give the driver a 50 and tell him to keep the 2 euro change, they always show a fit of gratitude because you're not supposed to tip taxis in Italy, so they go nuts when you give them the 2 euros in change.

You never have to worry if your driver is going to show up. You never have to waver if you see a store and want to stop and buy something, get a coffee or a glass of wine, because there is always a line of available, clean taxis. It's 10 times easier than finding your guy with his 6 X 10 card with your name on it, standing in the middle of 200 people, and who went back home to bed or took another call because your flight was late.

If you are really going to the center of Rome, which is off meter and a fixed 48 euro price, he can drive you around all he wants, there is nothing more reliable than a taxi, and you'll find a dozens of them just outside the door, and as a professional they'll know more about the short cuts of getting around the city than the private car driver's nephew who he loaned the car to that day.

They have no incentive to rip you off, because they get 48 euros whether it's a short or an extended ride. The price is on the door, so there is no discussion. This way, you don't have to worry about whether or not the guy in Atlantic City or Bakersfield did his job, or is even going to answer the phone. You will get nowhere trying to talk to the driver.

That said, I agree with Obscure2k said. If you absolutely must have a private car, make your hotel do it. The reason is, if there is a problem, you cannot talk to the taxi driver. All he will say is, "Look, I know nothing. This is what dispatch told me to do." You will strike out if you complain to the driver. If you ask how to get in touch with dispatch, the driver will laugh, because he will have no idea. Dispatch is probably somewhere in London or Saigon.

If your hotel arranges it and it gets screwed up, you can get face-to-face with someone and complain, and say that it's on them, and they need to fix it.

That is the only way to do it, not by choosing the fanciest website. And it doesn't really matter how often someone used a particular website with no problems. It depends on the degree of certainty you need. 9 out of 10 times may not be good enough. I learned that when I left someone shivering in the cold in a plaza in Italy because she was supposed to meet me, but my flight was late and the driver left, but there were a hundred taxis out side.

It's OK if it works 95% of the time, but not when it doesn't work. I've been back and forth enough to be on the 5%. The worst one was when for some reason, the safe in the closet of my hotel room, where I put my passport, money, and valuable stuff, wouldn't open, and the time to my flight was getting closer. Maintenance couldn't get if open. The head of maintenance came in, and was speaking on the phone to the hotel manager who was trying to talk him through how to open it. It didn't work.

No amount of pulling and prying with screw drivers and hammers could get into the safe where I had put my two passports and money. The manager finally came in and had them unscrew the safe from the wall. Then he took me up to the roof of the hotel, and he threw the safe off of the roof, down maybe ten stories, into the alley, where he had made his staff line up.

When the safe hit the ground it blew up, and we went downstairs and his staff had everything waiting for me down to the last euro. The private car driver was, of course, long gone, so the manager put me in his car and drove me screechingly to the airport, and I made it on the flight just as doors were closing.

The next time I tried to use a private car service they were over an hour late in picking me up. I demanded to speak with the boss for some consideration. The driver speed dialed me to his boss, and it was clear from the country and area code and the guy's accent, that I was speaking to someone in London. I asked the driver who it was, and he said he had no idea, it's just, "dispatch." He said he was late because "dispatch" just gave him the call 10 minutes ago.

Taxis and trains in Italy are a world apart from the USA. We tend to think they will be the same horrible experience, but they are not. Taxis and trains in Italy work in an enviable manner compared to the USA. Buses, not so much. I do whatever I can to avoid taking a bus, but in my own opinion, when I arrive to FCO, I don't like to worry about whether or not I can find my driver, or whether or not my driver can find me because my plane arrived 3 hours late (they won't find you, they'll be back in bed).

One time my flight was 6 hours late, and the driver wasn't there. When i could finally get my phone to get an international connection by buying a phone card in a tobacco shop, the dude in London, the biggest car service in all of Rome, told me that it was my fault, the driver had been waiting, and he had just left waiting at the arrivals area because he had to use the urinal, and that's why he wasn't there.

BS on all of that. I like to stop, get a bite to eat, have a glass of prosecco, a coffee, whatever, use the bathroom, even sometimes take a shower, and walk outside to the line with 50 certified white taxis 24/7, all of which have the same sign on the door: Rome city center 48 euros fixed cost. It keeps things simple.

nux

Blacklane is run out of an apartment in Bakersfield, California?
Do you have a source for this?

Perche

It looks like they moved since I last checked. I just called the number on their website to ask them and I got to a guy named Adam in area code 919, which is in Raleigh, North Carolina. The point is, there's no such thing as a Roman car company. Perhaps there are one or two, but almost always you are just going through a broker in another country who calls someone who has a car. The problem with drivers is that if it doesn't work out, there is no physical presence where you can go knock on the door and speak to the manager. They are only websites in foreign countries that link you to a driver.

Here are the contact numbers for Blacklane from their own website.

US +1 415 429 1027
UK +44 20 3318 5249
DE +49 30 2016 3020
CA +1 438 800 1127

I called the 415 area code because that's in San Francisco where I live, but it routed me to Germany, even though their website says the company was started simultaneously in New York City and Majorca. I then called the 438 area code number, which is in Montreal, Canada.

I asked them to connect me to the office in Rome. They said they don't have any offices in Rome. I then asked them to connect me to their Italian office, wherever it is in Italy. They said, "We don't have any offices in Italy, but we do have several drivers we can call and arrange to pick you up in Rome."

As I said, there is really no such thing as a Roman car service. There are just people who have a website and work out of wherever, who have a contact list of guys who own a car in different cities. You think you're booking a Roman car service, but only has a phone number in San Francisco, Montreal, the UK, and Germany. if you dial the San Francisco number or the Canada number, you no longer get connected to Bakersfield, you get connected to Berlin. That doesn't make me feel very comfortable. I don't see how they can insure that the driver is licensed, insured, or regulated, or even that the driver is who he says he is, and didn't feel too tired that day, and is sending his nephew to pick you up. I mean, they don't have an office in Italy, so how would the people in Raleigh, or Berlin have any idea what's going on?

https://www.blacklane.com/en/contact