Dear Passengers,
Thank you for flying Singapore Airlines......for us it was more a case of "Thank you, Singapore Airlines, for flying" ...........
We got to the airport around 7.45, having left at 7.15am from the apartment , our driver having agreed to come earlier. What we were totally unaware of though was that the clocks went back as the end of the Italian daylight savings period was last night. Fortunately, we use the blackberry as an alarm clock and it automatically adjusted otherwise we might have missed the flight. Why? Because we had to check in and claim VAT on our shopping purchases to get the refund. And nothing about Italian bureaucracy is simple, easy or even able to be understood.
You go to your check in counter - no problem. You get your bags tagged and boarding pass, - no problems here either but then you ask for your bags back. You then have to schlepp them to another end of the airport where customs officers then checks your receipts and claim forms and if you are lucky, they will stamp them for you. However, they can, at will, have you open up your well packed luggage and get you to show them each and every purchase you have made that reconciles with the receipts you are seeking to claim against. So you can see that this can take a while. I would hasten to add that where you are claiming a VAT refund for hand held or carry-on items, then this is a different and SEPARATE system, queue and process altogether!! And of course, we had both (stuff in cases & hand held stuff) didn't we.......
So here we were at the airport on time with ample time to participate in this bloody charade of an employment scheme. We must have earnt some kind of goodwill credits from visiting all these god places, because St Christopher, the Patron Saint of Travellers was looking after us this morning.
Not only did the customs officer not rifle through our unmentionables before a travelling collective of the world's populations, in search of proof that we were trying to single handedly bring down the Italian economy by ripping them off a coup,e of hundred euros, but he also stamped both our luggage based claims and our carry-on based claims. This small but immensely satisfying victory against bureaucracy put us in a stellar mood so that we could even ignore how vile the airport food tasted!! However, that's not the end of the process.
From there, you take your suitcases back to the check in counter, they get put on the conveyor belt and you then proceed to the international departure lounge for clearance through customs, which takes an eternity as few staff are on Sunday mornings and then you proceed to another extremity of the airport to claim your refund- only to find that the Government uses different agencies to process different claims from different stores. So you have twelve claims say and you have to queue up three times with the different agencies to get all twelve processed. And people wander why Italy is in a mess!!!!!
Thankfully we had allowed enough time to play this ridiculous game so we got our refunds but honestly folks, if we had not purchased as much as what we have, it's not worth the grief.
We are now mid flight and I am getting tired although we still have some hours remaining on our first leg. But there is a rainbow to all this - Changing Airport and Dutyfree awaits.
Well, Folks, now here at Changi Airport at 7am waiting for our next flight having learnt that Q will be back in the air starting 2pm on Monday afternoon. We are a bit tired but not too bad. Looking forward to being at home with the puppies and in our own place by tonight. May even venture outfit a flutter tomorrow!
Lots a
Kelly and Siobhan xx
Sweet dreams
Kelly & Siobhan
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