Honestly, the actual ride on the train was totally fine. We had booked business class, and the…read moreseats were comfortable and roomy, there was room above us to put a full size suitcase, and the bathrooms all worked. But that is not what this one star review is about.
Absolutely less than zero customers service. Negative customer service. As in, I wonder why even bother to have people working a desk if they are going to be of absolutely zero help, or have no power to help, or no desire to help. In other words, unless your journey goes completely smoothly and normal, expect anything requiring an employee intervention to fail, because they won't try.
In my case, when getting off the train in Rome, because many people are not tall like me, or strong enough to lift a 50 pound suitcase over their heads, I was assisting a lot of fellow travelers get their luggage down. Just being a good person, hoping my good karma would protect me. In the ensuing rush and confusion to get off the train, while I got my suitcase, my smaller carry on bag got left on the train. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until 15 minutes later and the train had already moved on to its final destination of Salerno.
I realize that it is ultimately my fault I left a bag. But I would bet anyone a hundred bucks that in the United States, there would have been a relatively simply protocol in place, and I would have gotten my bag back later (even if it was at my own expense). Or at least someone would have attempted to help.
Italo has absolutely no desire, or real process in place, to help you.
I immediately go to their station office in Rome, which I would assume would be one of the largest ones, and most able to help. The woman who sits there and "helps" me speaks and understands english perfectly, so there was no misunderstanding. I tell her the situation, I show her my ticket, and explain I left a very easy to recognize bag in that specific seat, and can name all the contents in it, describe it, blah blah blah.
She refuses to help. She won't contact the train, send a message, take my information, give me a form to fill out, absolutely nothing. She just basically says "Oh we can't help with that. Here is a completely useless crowdsourced website that isn't even owned by us, that if ANOTHER PERSON finds your bag, and deigns to even know about this stupid website, and goes through the trouble to post on said website, and you are able to find your bag on useless website, you may have a 1 in 10000 chance of ever getting it back."
Getting my bag back would have been as simple as contacting the on-train staff and saying "there is a bag in or near seat X, looks like X, if you see it will you pull it off to the side and the customer will come get it in Salerno, or it can be brought back to Rome on your return trip."
They wouldn't do it. I couldn't even pay or bribe them to do it. No amount of pleading about the importance of the items in that bag, some medical, would change this woman's expression.
'We got your money, and you'll get nothing else from us." is the attitude, and I would hope that regardless of cultural differences, people would at least want to help other people... especially if that is their job. They should be ashamed of their callousness.