Summer In ItalyReviews of summerinitaly.com

Response from Summer In ItalyMay 20, 2022

Hi Ina! Thank you so much for sharing your feedback. I have to say that I am very sorry about the issue we had with your reservation but, at the same time, I am pleased to see that the safety measures that we employ to make sure an inconvenience does not turn into a tragedy have worked. "What has worked?" you may be wondering... as you mentioned, we got back to you --> one hour later <-- to report that the property had been triple booked (triple!), with an offer for an alternative (more on that later). Such a very unusual event may happen when technology fails. Availability calendars are synced via the Internet around the globe, and, as anyone might have experienced, connections from time to time do fail. When bookings are taken through many different platforms, this might become a problem since holiday homes, unlike hotel rooms, are not "one of many", but individual properties with unique amenities. That is why at our company we double-check each and every reservation with a live human being whose job is to catch a failure as soon as possible. Can you imagine if the issue with the calendar had been discovered days later, or, even worse, at check-in? That's what we call a tragedy. This is not to say that we are happy with the way things went... it's just to let you know that we tried our best to handle an issue where a calendar update repeatedly failed while three travelers were trying to book the same house for overlapping dates through different platforms at the same time. As for the alternatives offered, we selected the two available properties that most closely matched the style and amenities of the property you had originally booked, based on our knowledge of the properties we represent. Our job is exactly one of helping travelers to choose the right place for their Italian holiday, which is a concept that might sound alien to travelers used to "self-service" platforms where you have to pick and book on your own. The staff felt that it would have been "as usual" to receive feedback on the initial selection to go deep into details, so they didn't think they should explicitly mention that you were welcome to provide any input to take advantage of what for us is exactly the service we provide. Sorry about that, this will teach us not to give it for granted and be proactive about it. The automated email were triggered as the normal course of action for a reservation. The "safety net" that caught your booking is rarely used, to be honest, and so our technicians didn't feel that they needed to wait for the reservation to clear before the onboarding procedure would get started. Your kind feedback will help us to improve on that front, too. So, dear Ina, please accept our apologies for this glitch. It was a very unfortunate situation, and we tried to deal with it as best as we could. I understand you expected more of us, and, as usual, we would like to take the opportunity given by your feedback to improve for prospective travelers who maybe reading this in the future, and to send them a message: dear friends, if you feel we are not doing enough to help you, please ask! We are a human-powered company, and as much as we try to answer questions before you ask, your input will be at times necessary, and at all times welcome!