I have a fraudulent charge posted to my debit card from Trenitalia for over $230. I've never been to Italy nor have I ever been to their website or purchased tickets through a third party. Since the company is overseas, my bank cannot contact them through a phone call to verify the charges. My debit card is now useless and I will have to wait 7-10 days until I get a replacement. Also, since my debit card was used, those funds will not be available to me for 5 days or so. What a mess!

trenitalia complaint ref 2008/881 FAO elosaI wish to write a letter to trenitali but the relevant page is in Italian, can you please advise what action to take
Also I am sending an e mail about my recent visit to your country and the experiences I had


With reference to my recent visit I am writing to complain at the treatment that we received
My wife is a fulltime wheelchair user and diabetic, I am her carer and we thought we would have a few days in your country
When we arrived at malpensa air port at 4.55 we were transported to the shuttle bus stop
1 ½ hours later we were still there. They then told us that there is only one bus in there fleet that has an entrance that lowers so that wheelchairs can board. This however was broken down.
We were then taken round to terminal one where we were told to get the metro to cordona station where we could get another train to Milan central.
On arrival at cordona we found that none of the lifts worked and my wife had to be manhandled to the next platform. again on arrival at the station for centrale again the lifts weren’t working and 6 workers had to manhandle my wife in the wheelchair up two long flights of stairs.
We then crossed the road and entered the station where we bought the train tickets for bologna at a cost of 32 Euros. We were told to go to platform 9 and validate our ticket and proceed down the platform to carriage 4. We got down to the carriage and the guard was very unpleasant and wouldn’t let us on to the train and told us to go the customer care office. When we asked what we had to do and we were told to come back in the morning as the ticket was valid for a month. We already had our hotel booked in bologna and I wasn’t about to pay another 700 Euros for a hotel room in Milan always assuming we could find one. We were told that we should have booked 24hours in advance for a lift to get the chair on to the train.
There is two arguments against this.
1) is that nowhere on any website we checked when booking and before travelling was any mention of pre booking a lift for wheelchair passengers
2) is even if we had booked the hoist, we would have missed the train because who would have imagined that it would take over four hours to get from the airport to central station.
They also said we could get a refund on the unused ticket the following morning with no problem either at bologna or Milan.
We therefore had no option but to get a taxi at a cost of 350 Euros which I paid with credit card on which I will be paying unnecessary interest that I can’t afford as we had had nothing to eat since 5.00am that morning and you can imagine what that was doing to my wifes sugar level.it was taking me all my time to stop her having a hypo attack. Causing extra stress and trauma to both of us
The following day when we booked our return rail ticket at bologna station they said they couldn’t give me a refund and I had to fill a complaint form and I could expect word in about 8 weeks time, which I think is outrageous
Also I would like to mention that on my return trip we arrived at Milan central station and came outside into the square we couldn’t see a taxi rank the only people we saw to ask were a crowd of policemen. They were all standing around smoking and with their hands in their pockets. when we asked about a taxi we were greeted with a cursory grunt and a nod in the direction of a rank .
Whilst there were some friendly people most of the people we encountered were ill-mannered and made us feel as if we were in there way, pushing and shoving us out of their way. The traffic also didn’t stop even when we were crossing the road via zebra crossing
The kerbs are far too high for a self propelled wheelchair user cross the road from one pavement to the other
Taxi drivers also charge an additional baggage for the wheelchair which I find very distasteful. one taxi driver was going to assault me because I questioned this
I look forward to hearing from you and your thoughts
Without prejudice
Ian Blackey