Sometimes the Internet is Not Great

Most of the time we have found the internet a great tool for planning our trip. It has allowed us to check things out in great detail; everything from transportation schedules, to things to see in specific locations, to reviews of accommodations. Most of the time when I have booked accommodation or transportation or purchased tickets over the interenet things have gone very smoothly. But there have been exceptions to that, most recently our frustration with purchasing a train ticket in Italy. Actually I have my train ticket, I've been trying to purchase one for Beth. Here's the story:

The day after we arrive in Europe we will be heading from Rome to Milan in order to take in an opera at La Scala. After reading some cautions about the Italian Rail Website not always accepting non-Italian credit cards we decided to try booking through that site anyway, simply because we could get 60% the price of a regular ticket that way (by purchasing our tickets at least 30 days in advance). When going through the system it wouldn't let me by two tickets at the 60% off rate, so I thought I would buy one, then do the process again and buy a second. I put in the information for myself, and then the credit card info, and was pleased to discover that everything went through. Excellent, I thought! Then I tried to purchase a ticket for Beth, but when I got to the credit card stage it rejected my purchase. I tried later, same thing. I tried a different card, same thing. I waited until the next day and tried again, same thing. I tried from a different computer, same thing. In the end I've tried pretty well everything I can think of, and so far nothing has worked out. If you've been following this closely you will realize that what this means is that so far I'm the only one with a train ticket to Milan!

I even tried submitting a question through the customer service portion of the Italian Rail site, but the online complaint form wouldn't allow me to post (partly because it was in Italian and I must not have been filling in something correctly). The final insult in this story is that I decided to simply phone the telephone number given for ticket purchases from abroad... and even that didn't work! Instead I got an automated message that said it did not recognize the number I was calling from and then it hung up. This whole scenario has been one of endless frustration. We have one more attempt, this will be using a different brand of credit card (Visa versus MasterCard) hoping that the change in brand might finally work. If worse comes to worse we will need to purchase a ticket for full price at the train station in Rome (and probably sit apart on the trip to Milan and back). To add a postscript to the story, I even tried to cancel my ticket - but because of the restrictions with this 60% off special I couldn't even do that.

We had a similar experience with trying to purchase tickets to the jazz festival in Kongsberg, Norway. Fortunately through the help of the Jazz Festival folks there and a customer service person at Billettservice (the Norwegian equivalent of TicketMaster) we were able to get that problem sorted out eventually.

Besides these frustrations (which probably have more to do with trying to use a domestic credit card internationally) the other problem with the internet is that sometimes you get too much information. For example in doing some research about getting around in Rome I came across some websites that talked about how the taxi drivers in Rome are notorious for ripping off tourists (by overcharging them, or by taking longer than necessary routes to get to destinations). On this one site I read story after story of taxi extortion. Probably the reality is that once and a while a few bad eggs in the taxi industry in Rome cause these problems, but the majority of the time things are fine. But ever since I came across this site I find myself worried about taking taxis in Rome (even though we will probably need to do so at some point). Had I not come across the website I wouldn't have any of these extra worries heading into our trip. On the one hand, it's good to be informed, but on the other hand, it's often only the negative stuff that people tend to report on the internet and that skews the perspective to being overly pessimistic.

We've had to read online reviews of accommodations with a grain of salt as well, realizing that some people will find something, anything, to complain about, no matter where they're staying. If fact some of the negative reviews have actually been entertaining, they are so obviously the result of a personality issue, rather than the actual experience or accommodation.

So for all its advantages, there is also a downside to the internet. But rather than focusing on the negative, let me end this post with a positive comment about the internet. One of the things we look forward to while on our trip, is the ability to be in touch with folks back home while we travel. To be able to post updates to our Blog, to send and receive emails, and even to check on the scores of the Roughrider games while we are in Europe will be a very nice benefit of the internet. To enable this international communication to happen as easily as possible we decided last month to purchase a mini-laptop. Last week our little Dell Inspiron Mini showed up. It is tiny in size (and price) but has built in wireless and thus will be very handy to have with us. We have discovered that most of the transportation (trains, ferries and buses) in Europe have WiFi capability, thus we will be able to connect with the internet even as we travel around. So in the end we are far more grateful for the internet than frustrated by it, and we look forward to using it to enable you, the readers of our blog, to join us in our journey.