[Carrie towers]

The customer service is non-existent!! I received a reply to the first email I sent which told me that my request for compensation had been denied and since then I have emailed them 3 times and received no other reply!

I am well within my rights to receive compensation as a flight that I booked on October 22nd 2011 with Alitalia for my boyfriend and I to travel home on the 12th December from Florence - Rome departing at 07.10 and Rome to Athens departing at 09.15 (Reservation Code - M88H7E). I booked these particular flight times as I had also booked a flight home from Athens - Rhodes departing at 13.35 with Olympic Air again on the 12th December. (Alitalia do not fly from Athens to Rhodes so I had to book this with an alternative airline)!
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> I received a phonecall from Alitalia on Tuesday 6th December (2 days before we were set to travel to Florence) explaining that the above flight times had been changed to the evening of 12th December which meant that we would arrive in Athens after midnight hence, missing our flight back to Rhodes. Alitalia gave me the option to take the later flight time or change the flight for the next day at the same time; we chose the next day because we would've had to stay in Athens airport or get a hotel for the night in Athens which we did not want to do...

We incurred a fee from Olympic air to change the flight by 1 day and also incurred cost to stay in the hotel in florence an extra night.

I have since learned that the European Regulation states that Regulation 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the European Council of 11 February 2004 which established common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding, cancellation and long delays of flights. It repealed Regulation (EEC) No 295/91, and went into effect on 18 February 2005. It sets out the entitlements of air passengers when a flight that they intend to travel on is delayed or cancelled, or when they are denied boarding to such a flight due to overbooking, or when the airline is unable to accommodate them in the class they had booked.
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> These Regulations state that when a flight is expected to depart on the day after the original scheduled departure time, passengers are entitled to accommodation and if a flight is delayed by five hours, passengers are additionally entitled to abandon their journey and receive a refund for all unused tickets, a refund on tickets used already if the flight no longer serves any purpose in relation to their original travel plan, and, if relevant, a flight back to their original point of departure at the earliest opportunity.

I'm sending my complaint email to them every single day... and also sending it to the Italian "ombudsmen" for Italian airline customers; the "[email protected]" but they are also proving absolutely useless and I haven't received a reply to 4 emails sent to them...

we wait some more!!