The ticket agency just replied me, generically, not at all

addressing my concern. Rather, they are just asking for more money.. quite ironic huh.. -

"please notice that the confirmed time is write on the voucher and you can do the visit on that time.

Changes to confirmed visits can be made, depending on availability, but please notice that there is an extra fee per each ticket change, requested by museums (Euro 7.75 for the Uffizi Gallery, Euro 7.00 for the Accademia Gallery, Euro 6.00 for the rest of the museums). If you are interested, please let us know so we can send you the link for the online payment of the penalty fee."

If these agencies are legit (as kindly advised by fellow tripadvisor members), that means I was just paying a higher booking fee, but will get my tickets. I guess I will just settle at this.

Disputing it was what I was going to do and I already called the bank, but the bank was not too helpful, saying they need 60 days to investigate. Indeed the agency has already provideD the service to me (which is sending me the vouchers, as sydneynick rightly pointed out ) so it will be quite hard to dispute.

Sydneynick - If only I knew "uffizi" is just an ordinary Italian term meaning office! I guess it is always a big advantage to know the language of the place you are visiting! :)

Another clue: official websites in Italy tend to end in .it, not .com. This is not always true, but when you see a website that ends in .com, do a little more investigating.

Can anyone tell me what the official website is for purchasing museum tickets in Florence?

this is an internet blight that affects all sorts of reservations -- we caught by one of these middlemen when booking a hotel on the road last summer in Indiana -- I thought I had booked with the official site (got the phone number on line while traveling and called to make the reservation) when we got to the hotel (the only one anywhere near that took pets and we were mid-move from one city to another with our cat) they had no record and it was a major hassle to get it sorted out. we were lucky that the clerk at the hotel was very laid back, considerate and patient and let us take the room without paying while we finally got the confirmation from the jobber -- it was of course more expensive than if we had just walked in that day.

because search engines allow these creeps to buy priority, often when searching you come up with these bogus sites pretending to be the real thing while the official sites are on later pages

good alert -- it must have been very aggravating to get trapped like this

Dorothy, information on the official sites for Uffizi and Accademia is found here:

tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187893-c145508/Tusca…

It is better to phone than to book online, although it seems to me that far few people are reporting problems with the official website than were doing a year or so ago. The Uffizi and the Accademia are the only two museums that need pre-booking.

Dorothy - read this :

tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187893-c145508/Tusca…

So good they wrote it twice. :) Mea culpa.

:)

thanks for the website and advice