Don't Use Kiwi.com or Kayak.com -- they're both scams

I had an incredible experience with two companies that really opened my eyes to the nature of online money and regulation. I want to share it with you so that you're forewarned.

First, remember that when flying, you are REQUIRED to buy your ticket online. If you actually go to the airport, you'll pay an incredible markup, as far as I know. I may be wrong, but at least searching for a flight requires one to go online.

That said, let's get started.

I bought a ticket to Europe in January. The flight was for mid-May. My search engine was Kayak.com. I clicked-through a good flight to Kiwi.com, and paid for the flight, and was basically looking forward to my trip ... until .... You guessed it! Covid-19. In March, I dusted off my flight information and went to inquire. The flight was still two months away, at this point.

Did you know that Kiwi will charge you for email support? And if you didn't pay extra, you can't be surcharged for that support? This wouldn't be bad, of course, if the phone support worked. But it doesn't. You'll get a British femme bot to tell you that, "An error has occurred, please try your call again later." In order to prove the horribleness of the Kiwi.Com business model, I called again just before writing this. Only this time, the femme bot could not match my birthdate with my flight information.

In order to defend Kiwi.com, you'll have to believe that I do not know my own birthdate, did not enter it correctly when making the booking, or did not enter it correctly just now on the phone. I assure you, none of the above are true. The truth is that they didn't want to pay operators for phone support, so they don't bother to fix bugs in the IVR. Bad customer service means that you decrease your overhead and that means more profit.

At any rate, I was unable to talk to anyone, or email anyone. I was only able to voice my complaint 'to the wind' on SiteJabber:

https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/kiwi.com

https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/kayak.com

And on TrustPilot:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kiwi.com

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kayak.com

At this point, my complaint is that I'm not able to talk or email anyone. Email replies are refusals to acknowledge any of the above. When I received any reply, it directed me to the non-working IVR system, without, of course, acknowledging the issues that system has.

Eventually, the flight got cancelled. You know ... the Covid-19. I received an email in June that said I could request a refund. They charge you almost $30 TO REQUEST YOUR OWN MONEY BE RETURNED TO YOU. You've read that a lot of CEOs are psychopaths? Maybe you should.

If the CEO who runs Kiwi.com is not a psychopath, perhaps the definition is wrong.

So I clicked the box to tip the CEO $30 for doing nothing ... THREE MONTHS AGO. Today, I dusted off the booking information again, and received the IVR bug that I mentioned.

(If you look at the TrustPilot one for kiwi, you'll see that we're all waiting for our refunds for flights cancelled due to Covid-19.)

I did write to Kayak, and they don't want to be responsible for introducing me to Kiwi.com. Believve it or not Google does filter web sites based on scammy practices. It is not too difficult to expect the same from Kayak -- to protect you from the fly-by-night booking companies that choose to hide behind international laws and regulations from American consumers.

So the question is, which is worse? Kayak? Or Kiwi? Kiwi is obviously slightly worse, but I don't use Kayak anymore. I use HotWire. If Kayak does not want to delist Kiwi, or assist me in contacting Kiwi, or even acknowledge that they understand the details of the issues I face with Kayak, then why would I ever do business with them again? Even for domestic flights, where Kayak would only direct me to airlines that operate here in the states, why would I use a company that did not care about me personally with the issues I have with Kiwi?

I'm out a grand. To me, that's not nothing.