Recovering forgotten item

If you really like the painting, pay the $75. Penance for being forgetful. If you mess around too long trying to find a non-rip-off way to get the painting, it may just go missing, the ultimate rip off.

that's just how much it costs to mail things. It's not a rip off, it's the cost of mailing your item, which you forgot, to you. The hotel might be adding something to the mailbox company's fee, which they would have every right to do, since it will take some staff member time to deal with this. Either pay it or just decide you don't care enough about the painting to have it. It's pretty simple, just a judgment of how much it's worth to you.

The oil was purchased at the Portabello Flea Market for about $52.00.

It is your fault for forgetting it. Time is money they have to go out there way to mail it to you.

I forgot something in my Rome hotel, small item, and it cost a lot to have it mailed to me. I was grateful to have it back and thankful the hotel staff was helpful and most of all, honest.

Not a ripoff at all. I mail a box back to the US from Italy every year, about €80 for 10 pounds.

Yep, not a rip-off. A few years ago, DH found a print he loved - it cost about €10. We looked into mailing costs before he bought it, luckily. For a mailing tube from Rome to the US, it was something like €60. This was 7 or 8 years ago.

Simple. Ask them to hold it until you visit in the spring.

Unless you know someone who will be there in the near future who could retrieve for you, your choices are to pay the shipping if you like the painting $125 worth, or cut your losses at $52. (i.e., Would you have paid $125 for it at your local art fair?)

Mike's idea to pick it up in the spring is likely to have you incur storage charges that would exceed the shipping they quoted.

Only other thought is to contact Fedex, etc and ask them what it would cost to have them pick it up at the hotel and package it for shipping, and send it to you to see what the cost is to determine if the hotel quote is a "ripoff" price.

I think it's just expensive to shop stuff from overseas. My wife looked into shipping clothes home, because she had overpacked, on our honeymoon in 1999. It was $140 even back then for a box that was maybe one cubic foot.

1: Pay the $75.00
2: Do this: http://tinyurl.com/ybe6t9oz
3: Enjoy your painting.

As others have stated, it is just very expensive to ship stuff from overseas. When in Rome in September, we were trying hard to "travel light" so decided to ship home some souvenirs, a few articles of clothing we didn't really need, a book, etc. Probably no more than $75 dollars worth of stuff we bought in Italy. Didn't even weigh very much. It cost us $55 to send it! It just arrived yesterday, the box was very battered, torn, but had been taped up enroute by whatever customs or postal folks had to deal with it. Nothing was missing. Would have been cheaper for us to just have bought one more small carry on bag there and paid the $25 to check it on the plane home. Live and learn I guess.

Not only is the mailing price about what you would expect, but you are also causing people at the hotel to have to futz around with it and get it to you. We can sympathize. My husband once left his good cashmere blazer on a houseboat in Amsterdam and we were very grateful that the rental company managed to locate and ship it to us. I'd be grateful rather than whining about the cost of it which has nothing at all to do with how much you paid for it at the flea market. You are lucky; often leaving things carelessly behind means you never see them again.

The price sounds high for simple mailing (see https://www.poste.it/prodotti/pacco-ordinario-estero.html) but odd-shaped items can cost more than standard boxes and tracking also costs more. Of course the handler will charge for a mailing tube and packing service.

You will pay heavily for having FedEx/UPS/etc. pack an article for you, as opposed to packing it yourself. It's not reasonable to expect hotel staff to deal with finding the right box and packing materials, so I assume the price quoted does include some sort of packing service.

Packing is always included in the price that I pay, as I recall there were a few times that there was no packing charge )specifically told this when I paid).