It has occurred to me, that if you are writing from the USA, Canada or South America, a lack of reply OR 'Not Found' notification from a Comune might be caused by the following...

Let us suppose that your request involves an 'event' (birth, death, marriage etc.) that occurred on the
11th March 1901.

You send off your request to 'X Comune' for a Birth Certificate for Great Grandfather for this event that you KNOW took place then as all his other documents give that date. So you tell them that his d.o.b. is 3.11.1901. (American date system)

So the clerk 'could' be searching in their registers/archives between 1st and (maybe) the 30th of NOVEMBER 1901 .



It therefore follows that if the event DAY you are seeking falls between the 1st and the 12th, of any given month, then an Italian clerk could easily misunderstand and be looking in registers up to eleven months away from the actual date, and of course that will result in a Not Found (Non Trovato).

So safety would dictate that when writing for documents write the date as either
11 March 1901 OR (in the Italian manner as) 11.3.1901

Good advice Carole. I know this has happened to me before too.

I thing the biggest problem with getting responce for records is your return postage. Since the price of postage has been changed to a 1.60 euro.
I bought some italian stamps and since then I m batting 100% on my return envelopes from the comunes Ive sent to because I believe they dont have to mess with IRC or anything else...........

Marty

I totally agree. They don't want IRC anymore yet people still suggest to send them. Return postage is definitely the way to go.