Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Italy Online!
I
've included this chapter as a cautionary tale for newly arrived ex-pats and would-be
émigrés who might be tempted to use the internet to shop for products or to search for pro-
fessional services in Italy in the ways that they have done in the States for these past many
years.
Caveat emptor!
(Let the buyer beware!)
One night as I was tossing restlessly in the wee hours of the morning composing my ump-
teenth email to Customer Service, the perfect metaphor for the online experience in Italy
suddenly came to me: it's a stage set for a spaghetti Western with two-dimension buildings
thatlookrealbutaremerefacades!Insteadofrusticconstructions madeofrough-cutboards,
the facades are now made of steel and glass and cables, but when you open the online door
there's no there there. Step behind the slick, modern-looking homepage on your computer,
and you quickly find yourself back in the previous century in a room filled with clerks, tele-
phones and file boxes.
Here's how this translates in terms of first-hand experiences of
“Italy Online!
” You spend a
half-hour finding office supplies in an online catalog and then carefully enter their 10 digit
codes, including dashes, to place your order. It's worked before, but this time it hangs when
you go to pay. You can see all your items in the shopping cart, but you can't check out. So,
you log out and come back again, but still no luck. It's late in the evening, there's no one to
call. You don't want to lose the time and effort you've spent creating your order, so you send
off a quick email to customer service explaining the situation asking if they can help. They
write back the next morning to thank you for your comment and assure you that everything
appears to working as it should be. You decide that the path of least resistance is to drive
into town and look for a parking place.
One day, I try to buy a ticket online through an agency called “Poltronissima” for a special
outdoor concert: Leonard Cohen will be performing in Florence in the piazza in front of the
church of Santa Croce. I pick the perfect seats using the handy seat selection tool, I enter my
street address for ticket delivery, I enter my credit card information, I enter my Visa Verify
code and POOF everything explodes. Not just my browser window, but the other five Fire-
fox windows that I had open are all gone in a flash.
Back again online, I try to repeat the purchase but it now tells me that the seats I booked are
no longer available. Hmm… Does this mean that the purchase went through, or just that the
seats are “locked” because the system crashed? I send an email describing the situation and
asking for clarification. A few hours later I receive a one-size-fits-all reply thanking me for
notifying them of an anomaly. But they assure me that everything seems to be working just
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