I'm not even in Europe yet and I'm already the dumb American...

I've run into a couple minor, but humorous, snags trying to secure the apartment in Florence. The initial booking was easy enough, but this week payment in full was required, as was a deposit of 1000 euros. It seemed simple enough. I clicked on a link and some data was requested. All of it was pretty standard. I fumbled a bit when it came to the passport number which is (hopefully) just a 9-digit number found in the back of the passport. Unfortunately, I didn't know that and was trying to figure out how to decipher the 39-digit, 4-character code in the *front* of my passport. :) Still, I persevered and all looked to be in the clear until I came upon the mysterious "Reg. N." field. I had (have) no idea what this could be. So, rather than screwing something up, I emailed the apartment company for some assistance. Perhaps the company is based in Sparta or at the very least lives by their code, because after two days my response was no response at all...which I translated into "You've got to be kidding me...you need to figure that out on your own." And figure it out I did!! ...I think...my guess was that it was my order number from back in May. Fortunately I still had the old email and I punched in the number and happily hit send. Here's where the real fun began. The deposit cleared my card, no problem. "Sweet!" I thought, "This is cake." I moved on to the rent payment. The data (including my possibly bogus "Reg. N." value) was all automatically loaded in! This left me with a quick entry for my credit card (and a completely false sense of security and accomplishment) and voila! I was done...wait...something wasn't quite right. As I stared at the two emails in my inbox it took me a second or two to figure out why they looked a little different. Short story...the rent payment was rejected! Gasp! "Crap," I thought, "I must have entered the wrong credit card number." Attempt 2...rejected. Attempt 3...rejected. "What...the...f*ck!" I exclaimed. As I began the fourth attempt I noticed another email in my inbox. The name looked familiar. "Oh crap." It was the Italian woman assigned to help me a while back with securing the apartment. I won't quote the exact email, but it very politely said basically this: "Dear Chris. I see that you're being repeatedly rejected in your attempts to pay the rent. Maybe it would be a good idea to call your credit card company rather than just submitting the charge over and over again and expecting different results. Just an idea. Best regards." As you can see, I've made a stellar first impression. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm already down two strikes with my new Italian friends. Here's to hoping they like p*nis jokes!! :D