I used the Trenitalia site to book our train tickets from Levanto to Rome. According to the site, you present your confirmation number to the conductor and he issues you a paper ticket....Not true, on the train we were on....The conductor had to make a number of phone calls on his cell phone...I don't think they've really been trained on all this yet. He told me I was supposed to take the email confirmation and obtain a paper ticket from Levanto. He said this was because we needed the actual ticket to punch into the machine before you get on the train. However, I had specifically asked the ticket agent in Levanto if I needed anything more than the email paper I had and he told me that I didn't.
The conductor on the train was really very nice about it and phoned ahead to Pisa, and his friend had the tickets printed and brought them out to the train.
Perhaps if we had started our trip from a town larger than Levanto, I would not have encountered this?????

Louise

I took a train from Milan to Florence ticketless
and was never asked to get a paper ticket.I showed the receipt and that was ok.RR

Louise, do you know if your confirmation was designated as ticketless or self-service? If the latter, you are supposed to use your confirmation code to get a ticket, whether from a self-service machine or a ticket agent. If the ticket agent in Levanto said you didn't need this, it sounds like it was ticketless, but maybe there was confusion with one or another of the parties.

Louise, as a frequent train traveler and devoted ticketless user, I can assure you that no ticket and no punching are needed when you use the ticketless service: you just write down the data and show them to the conductor. Yet, a possible exoplaination is that you got a ticketless reservation than took a different train, probably a non reservation one, like an Interregionale (on this line there are many). In such a case, you need to have the ticketless reservation cancelled and a new ticket issued.

We had ticketless reservations for a trip from Rome to Venice on the Eurostar. It was most cool - the train lady punched our reservations number into her little handheld computer and then beamed something to a tiny printer. Our "ticket" came out of the printer and that was that. She actually seemed to like it - commented on our electronic ticket with a big smile.

Callie

Ticketless travel is a new phenomenon in Italy, so it's not surprising that there may be a few quirks. There are thousands of ticket agents, and not all of them may be well versed in the intricacies of ticketless travel.

Then, there is the important distinction between "ticketless" and "self-service", as Andrew correctly points out, a distinction which many newcomers may not have discerned.

Finally, there are all of the Trenitalia rules and restrictions for the different kinds of promotional tickets (all very similar but not identical), which are apt to confuse even the most expert of travellers.