This extra step involving the price quote or invoice seems unnecessary to me. It only adds more time to an already frustratingly long process. So what to do? One solution is to find the city website online and send an email asking for a price quote. If the town is not connected to the internet (and it seems that even the smallest towns now are), you can try guessing the costs and paying up front.
I’ve heard of charges ranging from 2-8 dollars. An article on the abruzzo.com website says that one should enclose 1500 lira/1 euro for each record we request. Since the author is an Italian who researches family ancestry for a living, I assume this is reliable information.
We can’t send US dollars since they are mostly useless in Italy. Postal money orders cost eight dollars (perhaps more now), no matter how much you are sending. It seems kind of silly to pay eight dollars for a two dollar payment! However, this is the only secure way, aside from a bank wire, to make payments to Italy.
Since I had quite a bit of lira in small denominations left over from my trip to Italy, I always enclosed a bit of Italian cash with my requests. With the Euro arriving shortly, this might not be so practical. The lira won’t be around much longer, so by the time your letter gets to Italy, they might not be using it! Plus, the smaller denominations of the Euro come in coin form, which is pretty unmailable.
Sending cash is also a risk. It might get lost in the mail or stolen. Since the sums are small, however, I don’t worry too much. I don’t usually send more than a few dollars and I don’t send that many requests.
This problem is only a minor one, but little details like this can affect the timeliness of a reply. Public servants the world over have quite a bit of work to do, and every extra effort you make saves them time and energy.
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