Last night I was returning from Milan to Venice, where I am spending two weeks' vacation, on your train Frecciarossa #9757. The direct road was blocked by your police, who had the brilliant idea to investigate an accident for hours without any regard for the fact that the trains need to go through. Train #9757 was then rerouted via Bologna, which was an acceptable solution to me (second only to my preferred solution of abolishing the state, including the police and your state run railroad, and introducing Anarcho-Capitalism, with the trains going through being prioritized over any investigations by the then private security companies, no matter what accident or crime remains unsolved, but I digress).
At Bologna, the conductor of train #9757 (hereinafter conductor #1) had the brilliant idea to tell her passengers to Padua and Venice to "forget tickets" and to transfer to train Frecciarossa #9434, which was going directly to Padua, bypassing Verona, so we'd get back with an hour less delay. I was in no hurry to return to Venice, as long as I got back at some point last night. In hindsight, I should have stayed on train #9757, where at least I had an assigned seat, but I figured the conductor knew what she was doing and took her advice. Of course, giving adequate information in Italian and in English was difficult in the hurry, but conductor #1 at least should have warned me that in return for getting home faster, I'd be literally treated like cattle.
In retrospect, it's never going to end well if a petty official tells you to forget your documented rights. They're not going to give you anything extra. They'll only take away what you had.
Train #9434 turned out to be moderately crowded already, so there weren't enough seats for all the newcomers. I ended up finding a vacant seat in the executive car.
I should add that your executive seats are nothing to write home about. Granted, they recline and swivel, but otherwise they are, if anything, less comfortable than your business class seats, probably because they need to be adjusted, which I didn't bother to figure out under the circumstances and because I didn't want to interfere with your equipment any more than necessary, as I hadn't paid for its use. I had considered booking executive for my trip to Milan, but for some reason business was the highest class your system offered me for both outward and return. Maybe they were all booked, or maybe one needs to have special connections to be allowed to book one of those sacred seats of yours? The behavior of the conductor of train #9434 (hereinafter conductor #2) certainly seemed to suggest that much. Are they reserved for the pope and President Trump, or something? Anyway, the only real benefit appears to be the extra space, so other passengers can't sneeze and cough at you as badly and infect you with their respiratory diseases.
Back to the main story, when I entered the executive car, there was an American couple with I think two kids and a baby, a young American lady, and a young Italian gentleman. The young lady and the kids seemed to be particularly enjoying lounging in their executive seats. She was like, "Yay, we get to ride in executive!"
At that point your conductor #2 had the chance to become the hero of the night by making up for the misconduct of your police. We'd have gotten a free upgrade to executive, we'd have all but forgotten the delay caused by the misconduct of your police, and we'd have had nothing but good things to say about your railroad. All she had to do was nothing. Instead, she chose to defend the sanctity of her executive car against us business class bums with all her petty powers.
I offered to pay for executive by credit card or trade the compensation we were owed for the delay for upgrades, but conductor #2 flatly refused all offers. Now, I get it that the root cause is your primitive booking system, which apparently doesn't have a miscellaneous category for selling ad-hoc upgrades. That reflects poorly enough on your railroad, but the real problem is the insulting way your conductor #2 handled the situation.
She claimed she was doing us a favor by letting us on "her" train at all. Obviously, she considers "her" train her private property, her own miniature railroad, where she gets to hand out favors to passengers of other trains. Well, I paid a fare to Trenitalia, not to an individual conductor, and getting me to my destination as efficiently as possible under the circumstances is the responsibility of all Trenitalia (my auto correct now wants to call your railroad Genitalia) staff. The concept of staff doing a customer a favor is an impossibility. Anything staff does for a customer should be done happily. The customer is king.
She said she was unable to sell us upgrades to executive as "Your tickets aren't valid on this train," as if we we were fare dodgers. She should have said, "You weren't originally booked on this train."
The worst part, however, was that she kept saying, "You're business class passengers" in a tone as if a business class passenger were something she just found under her shoe.
Some of the dialogue I attribute to conductor #2 may in fact have been said by her assistant. That, however, doesn't matter so much it's a Doesn't Matterhorn, as both were in perfect agreement on their nasty treatment of their passengers.
In the end, four other passengers and I had to spend the whole trip at a tiny conference table in the executive car, seated on what's is best described as stools, while all the executive seats remained vacant all the way to Venice Santa Lucia. So your conductor #2, in one of the dumbest businesses decisions I ever witnessed, destroyed a product (let the seats go to waste) rather than give it away as free upgrades or free samples.
I don't know if that's company policy at your railroad, or if conductor #2 was acting on her own nasty initiative, but it is an act so petty, so wasteful, and so insulting that I, for one, will never set foot on a Trenitalia train again. You could have made more than a half dozen passengers happy, turning them into loyal customers who'd have told everyone how your staff unbureaucratically solved the problem your police created, but now you have the same number of former customers who have nothing to say about you except how petty and nasty you are and how you hate your own customers (except executive, and executive apparently is sold only to your insiders). I, for one and for sure, will tell everyone and publicize everywhere what a horrible railroad Trenitalia is and how much your staff hates its passengers (except executive).
Given that all but one passenger in the executive car were foreigners, your conductor #2 also acted as a terrible, horrible, very, very very bad, no good cultural ambassador for Italy, leaving the impression that Italians are petty, nasty, and cruel. I, for one, despite having had to deal with one or two petty and nasty Italian officials before, thought that Italians in general were less rude than, for instance, Germans. That, of course, was naive, and I now have the impression that in Italy there are just as many nasty people as in every other country. I had even considered moving to your beautiful country and exploring it by train, but given that I won't do business with Trenitalia ever again and that Italo seems to serve only the major cities, that's off the table now.
The only thing I regret doing last night, in addition to changing trains in Bologna, is referring to conductor #1 as a "train captain" in my discussion with conductor #2 and her assistant. Trains don't have captains. They have conductors. Especially yours, as your conductors decidedly lack the competence and courtesy one would expect of a ship's captain. I heard that ridiculous term from the conductor of the only other Frecciarossa (funny, my auto correct turned this into "Freakarrosia," which is frankly closer to the truth) train I took before, telling me to show my ticket to the conductor of another train I had to transfer to due to a missed connection, of course on account of another delay of that so-called high speed train of yours.
Let me conclude by congratulating you on your truly Teutonic level of customer service. I have never been treated this disrespectfully outside Germany, by Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn, two (formerly?) state-owned companies legendary for their poor customer service. I bought a business class round trip ticket from your railroad. Your conductor #2 made it abundantly clear that to your railroad business (and presumably all lower) class travelers are nothing but scum. There's that old Prussian militaristic saying, "Mankind starts at the petty officer," implying that anyone who isn't at least a petty officer is subhuman. Apparently, to your railroad, anyone below an executive passenger is subhuman.
As for a possible resolution, I don't think you're going to be willing to do what it would take, simply because qua faceless government bureaucrats, some of whom are probably keeping those executive seats off the market for their own personal use, you aren't even able to understand what a level of disrespect it constitutes to force passengers to ride in basically jump seats while executive seats are available mere yards away. A mere refund of the remaining fare would only add insult to injury. The absolute minimum would be warning conductor #1 to consider the consequences of her crazy plans, firing or at the very least docking one month's pay of conductor #2 and her assistant, and a free executive ticket for a distance equivalent to Bologna to Venice Santa Lucia for every person who was booted from an executive seat last night, or if those cannot be identified, for every person who made the fateful decision to change trains at Bologna. As I doubt you have the moral fiber for that, I'll just keep telling everyone who will listen or not what a horrible, terrible, very, very, very bad, no good railroad you are. I'll keep my account open for a bit, awaiting your bedbug letter. If you don't know what a bedbug letter is, Google is your friend.
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