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48 replies to this topic

Try doing a search of Kiwi in the forums here on Tripadvisor, you'll find many people who book with them and don't research first. I guess that you've also used them, without doing any research first?

Why would anyone book with them when they have such obvious flaws? Who do you think regulates internet companies? It is pretty much a "free for all" there and they buyer has to do a modicum of research to see if a company is worth giving their money to.

We have over 6000 complaints about them here already. That plus the obvious stuff you found suggests that no informed shopper would ever use them. You don't tell us where you live or if you've lost money so we can't really give you advice as to what to do if you got burned but we can all nod our heads in agreement that yes, they are terrible

‘Licence to operate?’ What licence do you think they need to operate over the internet? They don’t need one. ATOL is a UK scheme, predominantly for package holidays.

You need to research first before booking with these awful online ticket floggers. Sorry but you need to take responsibility for your own actions.

“ None of their practices are legally compliant,”

What do their Terms and Conditions say?

Caveat Emptor

Kiwi is certainly still in business and it is not illegal not to belong to ATOL (if you wanted ATOL protection why did you book with Kiwi?). Chasing the cheap fare fairy rarely works out well and it sounds as it you ignored all the warnings that are out there about Kiwi and just went ahead anyway - if so WHY?

If you can establish categorically that the flight you contracted with them to book you onto doesn't exist then the answer is simple - they have not complied with their side of the contract to buy the ticket for you so get in touch with your payment card provider and ask for a chargeback on the grounds that Kiwi has not fulfilled its side of the contract

Next time do not mess around with cheap fare floggers - they offer inferior service and if you have to cancel or the airline grounds the flight completely , the OTA will charge you hefty admin fees to sort it out for you . Those fees are quite legitimate if they are mentioned in their T&CS and you have accepted them during the booking process and you cannot accept T&Cs and then complain about their contents later on

It is far better if you are just buying flights to buy them direct from the airline

'When customers book the non existent flight , they get an email, not immediately, but a few days later, that the flight is overbooked.' kiwi.com doesn't book in real time, instead the poor sods who use the website ask the site to request booking. Usually the response is the fare is no longer available but if the customer would like to pay more kiwi.com will try again. If that's not enough for a potential customer to bail I don't know what else one could ask.

'You are then offered a choice to book a more expensive flight , or opt for a refund. When you click on the refund button, you get a message in bold type NO REFUNDS.' There is no refund because a booking hasn't been made.

'None of their practices are legally compliant' Hmm. kiwi.com is a terrible company that no one should go near, but they will have ensured their terms and conditions are within legal parameters even if they are heavily weighted in their benefit (rather like some insurance policies).

'But they still operate ripping people off, day after day.' The only reason this miserable company exists is because people are willing to attempt to do business with them.

You have learned a good lesson here.

Do a search of any travel related company here and on the web before you part with a payment.

Read every word of their terms and conditions.

Pay attention to extra fees in the T&C . many things that might be free when booking direct like seat choice and baggage will cost you . This can make the flight more expensive then booking direct with the airlines .

Booking direct with the airlines is often the same price or cheaper and so much safer.

Like many shonky third parties their customer base is those that do not understand how third party floggers without live pricing work, fail to do any research and agree to terms and conditions without reading them.

All they appear to have to do is advertise a non-live price on a comparison site and hundreds if not thousands (based on the number of posts that appear here) are happy to click away with their credit card details because they are 'cheap'.

II doubt they operate illegally, they have been operating in this way for years and not been closed down.

If people were not so quick to give them money when they see a cheap advert they would not have a customer base = no income = no business...gone. Tell all your friends and colleagues and look to book directly with the airline in future...they may 'look' more expensive but their prices are real and they will sell you a flight at that price, not just suck you in then ask for more money.

There is no regulator or licencing authority. There is no licence. There is no global law covering the internet. You simply cannot make assumptions that you will be protected from yourself if you decide not to read T&C's, not to look into where a company is based, or check them out thoroughly.

They will continue operating until a sufficient number of people learn to research first, then avoid the company because of what they have found out.

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Reviews 3.8.

107,598 total

Most relevant

The travel from Milan to Atyrau…

The travel from Milan to Atyrau involved two stop over and two different air companies. The connections were very smooth nothwithstanding the narrow time between flights and the travel resulted relatively fast. Kiwi provided online check-in for the last flight and delivered a prompt notification of a small delay in one of the flights. the onboard service was more than expected on a budget travel

Date of experience : 10 June 2024

Buying tickets to transfer to a teenager.

I bought tickets to my son Arthur that is 15 and his camp staff in LA will drop him at the LAX airport with other american teenagers that are going to flight alone. Kiwi helped me because I couldn´t buy a ticket only for him, without me at other platforms. And when I made a phone call asking how to transfer the boarding pass, a I was answered. Just a pity that it didn´t work in portuguese. But a very polite guy answered in english.

Worked as expected

The tickets were booked easily. The app was clear about which step I was in before receiving the boarding passes. The passes were available as scheduled. There was no need to contact customer service so I can't speak to that.

Date of experience : 11 June 2024

I'm very happy with the Kiwi service…

I'm very happy with the Kiwi service lady who helped me to book another flight after Wizz airline completely screwed me with a fight hour change (pardon my language). She is the best !!

My experience in Bursa!

My personal guided tours through old Bursa, the story of the Ottoman Empire was very informative. It's great to have a one on one guide, because you might have questions that you'd like to have answers to and I found that it made the connection as friends, even though I only spent a day together.

Date of experience : 08 June 2024

Horrifying. I used autofill on their website and my name came up 1 letter different to passport... I didn't think it was a problem as I've done before. I get to airport and virgin can't fix it. Kiwi has had me on the phone for 2 hours and won't fix the mistake. A $1800.00 international ticket ruined and my annual holiday and international business trip both lost. Their customer support refused to help even though it was within their power to do so. I swear to never use them again. Their supervisor won't even talk to me. Avoid!!!!

Date of experience : 12 June 2024

Reply from Kiwi.com

Dear Customer, Thank you for leaving your review regarding your experience with Kiwi.com. Please be assured that we take all feedback seriously and that we will be investigating the issues you have raised in your review. Please allow us some time to proceed with a thorough investigation, and we will contact you with the outcome as soon as possible. Yours sincerely, Customer Advocacy Team

I’m a direct with airline or Expedia traveler, until now

I’m a direct with airline, or Expedia. This time after a few fails I gave it a go with kiwi, and so far I’m thankful!!! The cost is a bit less than the other options and the layover facilitates a bit of exploring (even at a minimum) will share feedback once travel is done! Oh… customer service is phenomenal, sent the message and within minutes I got a reply.

Date of experience : 07 June 2024

Kiwi provided me with an excellent deal…

Kiwi provided me with an excellent deal and the purchasing process was very easy. When I had some doubts, their customer service support was fast and great.

Date of experience : 09 June 2024

very bad planning and very expensive…

very bad planning and very expensive price... Travel from Basel to Istanbul the price was extremely expensive, service quality is so poor, telephone call is just ignoring. Do not book your ticket in the site of the flight company, so when you will go the airport with just confirmation from Kiwi, mainly your ticked is not booked in system of Flight company so you are without ticket.... Just very annoying situation and company. Please run out.

Date of experience : 13 March 2024

Dear Customer, We appreciate your review of your recent experience with Kiwi.com and are sorry to hear it did not meet your expectations. To help resolve the issue, kindly provide a response to our request with your booking number and the email address used for the reservation. We will then ensure prompt assistance and a resolution. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, Customer Advocacy Team

Great Customer Support

The staff who assisted me is the best at his job. He's polite and calm during the call and willing to suggest and answer any questions from me. Also, he waited in the line for me to put the passenger details in the reservation. I really appreciated his services.

Dear Ronnadech, Thank you for your positive review of Kiwi.com! We're thrilled to hear that our staff provided you with excellent service and assistance. We're always here to answer your questions and suggest the best options for your trip. Safe travels! Customer Advocacy Team

I had booked flights under the…

I had booked flights under the incorrect email address and was finding it hard to update and amend. I got through to your customer service team and spoke to Joel. Joel respectfully listened, helped and resolved my concerns immediately. Thank you so much Joel for not treating like a number, your customer service skills in resolving my issue was amazing. Huge thank you and I hope your senior team know the great work you do!

Kiwi.com took my money and gave no flight in return.

Absolutely dismal. Kiwi.com took my money and gave no flights in return, "due to a technical error". I was offered to use the "credit" towards an alternative journey (the prices of which were a LOT more expensive and much more inconvenient (early takeoffs, late landings, more stopovers). If I wanted a refund instead, I would have to wait up to 10 working days. I'm now stranded abroad with a small child and no money to book another flight!

Dear Customer, We appreciate your review and feedback regarding your recent experience with us. Rest assured that your feedback is of utmost importance to us, and we are committed to thoroughly investigating the concerns you have raised. Our dedicated team is already working on a detailed analysis, and we will reach out to you promptly with the results of our investigation. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We will take the necessary steps to address any issues and improve our services. Sincerely, Customer Advocacy Team

Absolutely Appalling Service from Kiwi.com

I trusted Kiwi.com to manage my entire journey from Dortmund to Cairo, but they failed me completely. When Wizz Air rescheduled my flight, Kiwi.com left me stranded with an absurd suggestion to travel only to Budapest and sort out the rest myself. They refused to provide a full refund or a suitable alternative, shirking their responsibility and leaving me to deal with the airline directly. Their so-called "exceptional offer" was a joke and a clear attempt to dodge accountability. Kiwi.com's lack of support and customer care is disgraceful. Despite multiple requests, they refused to take any meaningful action to resolve the issue. This experience has been nothing short of a nightmare, and I strongly advise against using Kiwi.com. They will abandon you when things go wrong, leaving you to pick up the pieces. Avoid Kiwi.com at all costs if you value your time, money, and peace of mind.

Dear Customer, After trying several times to locate your booking with us, we were unable to connect your feedback with any of the bookings we currently made. We would like nothing more than to help you, and that is why we sent you an email asking for further information in order to be able to locate your booking. Once we locate it, we will start working on it right away and we will contact you once the booking is investigated by our specialists. Yours sincerely, Customer Advocacy Team

Very clear result

Very clear result, very good customer service and I got my answers quick. 10/10 experience when I was a bit stressed about my flight.

Failed to book a flight and return my money

I booked a flight and Kiwi.com wasn't able to book it because of some technical issue. There were 2 tickets left so I couldn't wait for them to proceed risking my plans. So I canceled my reservation and asked for a refund. They game me some of the "credits" instead and refuse to give my money back. Horrible service, do not recommend at all. Looks like a scam.

Dear Customer, Thank you greatly for making the effort to leave feedback regarding your booking with Kiwi.com. Regarding your reservation, right now it is already in our backlog and one of our agents will conduct a thorough investigation on it and will contact you shortly. Our first priority is to bring suitable solutions for our customers. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we work on your case. Yours sincerely, Customer Advocacy Team

Happy Kiwi Customer

I paid the fee for reserved seating on the Kiwi site since I was traveling with a young child. My situation was getting no results fast, my situation was giving to Vaishnavi for resolution. He understood my situation and was very professional and prompt in bringing resolution to my situation. He communicated with me every step of the way. Now I am a happy Kiwi customer. I wish more companies had reps like Vaishnavi, who go above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks Vaishnavi!

Dear Joseph Irving, Thank you for sharing your experience with us at Kiwi.com. We are delighted to hear that Vaishnavi provided excellent service and resolved your situation promptly. We'll make sure to pass along your feedback to Vaishnavi. Thank you for choosing Kiwi.com, and we look forward to helping you with your future travel plans. Best regards, Customer Advocacy Team

Online check in method

There were some problems, that were taken care of properly. However, those problems were created by something I believe isn't properly efficient, which is the way we make check ins online in certain companies. I managed it with time, bit someone who could only try the check in closer to the flight hours, would have been in trouble.

Date of experience : 06 June 2024

No problems

Everything went well, the Ryanair transfer website didn't load but i confirmed with support that everything is good.

Customer service answered in literally 2 rings. She was very patient with me trying to figure out why I couldn’t find my booking. I have had nothing but a great experience with Kiwi so far. I have a crazy booking with self transfers and stuff but the app makes it so easy to organize everything I’m heavily considering using Kiwi for life.

KIWI.COM IS VERY DECIETFUL.

This booking site is so useless, deceitful and dishonest.There are so many hidden payments. Their costumer rerpresentative is not helpful at all. When you get a refund, theyll use as a credit instead of sending to ur bank acct. I refunded 4 bookings and wasted all the amount as nothing was sent back yo me at all. I will NEVER EVER BOOK ON THIS SITE EVER AGAIN and i will encourage people and friends to NOT BOOK AT ALL WITH THEM.

Dear Customer, Thank you for leaving your review regarding your experience with Kiwi.com. Unfortunately, we could not find your reservation in our system due to the missing reference number. In order to assist you with your claim, we ask you to please provide us with your booking number and the e-mail address connected to your booking. Thank you for your cooperation. Best regards, Customer Advocacy Team

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Table of Contents

Is Kiwi legit?

What is kiwi, when should i use kiwi for a flight booking, are there downsides to kiwi, key takeaways of our kiwi review.

Kiwi is a tool for finding cheap flight pairings and other savings on transit.

You'll have to pay extra to get protection if your flight is delayed or canceled.

Say you see a great flight deal to Europe, but you don’t live anywhere near the departing city. Optimistically, you search for flights out of your home airport, but the price is more than double that of the flight deal you found. Rather than throwing in the towel and letting another travel dream pass you by, consider this:

There's a way you can combine another flight, train or bus with that specific flight deal to get you where you want to go at a good price. It's called Kiwi , and it's an online travel agency with precisely this idea in mind.

While Kiwi isn't the best online travel agency for every trip, it can be a tool to find bookings for unique and specific situations. Since it’s hard to pass up cheap flights, here's a look at how Kiwi works and when it’s most useful to book transportation through its site and warnings you should be aware of.

There are a myriad of poor reviews and concerning customer feedback surrounding Kiwi. This includes a one-star customer review rating on the Better Business Bureau website and 1.5 stars from over 60,000 reviews on TrustPilot, an online review platform. Customer complaints cover a range of issues from long-delays on refund requests to improperly booked tickets. It is recommended you proceed with caution using Kiwi.

Kiwi is an online travel agency, based in the Czech Republic, specializing in combining flights and other forms of transportation into a single booking to get you where you need to go for a low price. Kiwi utilizes an expansive database of different flight, bus and train schedules to piece together the cheapest, fastest or overall best trip option.

At times, this can lead to overly creative and complicated itineraries that only save a few bucks. Other times, however, the service can pair a flight deal with a positioning flight, train or bus to drastically reduce your travel cost.

For most travelers, using Kiwi will be a good option if flight prices are costly for the trip you want to take, you want to book a one-way international flight, you have a last-minute emergency or if you want to find a cheap and easy way to book a complicated itinerary. Here, we dive into the merits of using Kiwi flights and other transit for each of these situations.

Saving on expensive airfares

Even if you're booking a simple round-trip flight, it can be worth checking Kiwi for a better route or price option. Perhaps you can save $150 by driving to a nearby airport. Or, Kiwi can point out an option to fly a low-cost carrier to an intermediate airport and connect to another airline from there, saving on the overall trip.

For example, let's say you want to fly from Pittsburgh to Paris sometime in April 2025. According to a Google Flights search, the cheapest one-week trip would cost $940 on United Airlines.

However, by searching through Kiwi, you can find a travel hack itinerary that costs just $911 round trip.

Booking one-way international flights

Kiwi can also come in handy when you can only fly one direction using miles and need to pay for the other flight in cash. One-way international flights can be expensive on many legacy airlines, but you might be able to find a positioning flight with a low-cost airline to book the one-way flight for a lot less.

I've used Kiwi to book a one-way trip from Papeete, Tahiti, to Atlanta, Georgia. I used American Airlines AAdvantage miles to fly to Tahiti, but I couldn't find award availability for the flight back home. United Airlines has flights on this route, but a one-way flight can cost over $1,000.

By searching on Kiwi, I found a flight option for as little as $632 that combined a French Bee flight from Tahiti to San Francisco with a Frontier Airlines flight from San Francisco to Atlanta. While you'd need to collect and recheck any baggage between the two flights, this flight option could be worth it for saving a few hundred dollars.

» Learn more: Plan your next redemption with our airline points tool

Booking multi-city trips using Kiwi Nomad

Say you want to visit London, Paris, Madrid and Rome in one grand Europe trip . You could manually try to piece together the cheapest way to visit all of these destinations. Or, to save time, you could use Kiwi's Nomad search option, which searches for the best itinerary for you.

Start by entering the airports you'd consider departing from and the date(s) you'd consider leaving. Dates can be as specific as a single day or as general as several months. Then, choose the length of your trip — from one to 60 nights.

Next, Kiwi will prompt you to add all of the destinations you want to visit and the length of stay at each one. Finally, you'll be given the option to choose whether to return home or to yet another city.

By selecting "Search journeys," Kiwi will start piecing together the most affordable options to visit the destinations on your list. In this case, you can pay just $626 per person to fly from San Francisco to Paris, Paris to Madrid, Madrid to London, London to Rome and Rome back to San Francisco.

Kiwi has bag fees covered, too, as it gives an option to include the cost of cabin or checked bags in the total trip cost. In this case, by adding a cabin bag, the lowest price option is now $813. Notice that Kiwi doesn't just add bag fees to an existing itinerary — instead, Kiwi changes the recommended route to the cheapest option that includes a bag.

You also have the option to limit the number of stops for each leg of the trip. Using the same example, if you want to fly nonstop on all flights and include a cabin bag, you can do so for $1,051. Again, Kiwi automatically reorders the itinerary to get the lowest price options.

» Learn more: Tips to avoid paying checked bag fees

Managing last-minute emergencies

The Kiwi travel agency can also be useful if you need to get across the world in a hurry. Whether it's a family emergency or an incredible new (and fast-approaching) opportunity, you probably want the quickest possible flight option. Especially with limited availability at the last minute, the fastest flight option found through a typical flight search engine may not be quick enough.

For example, say you need to depart as soon as possible to get from Istanbul to El Paso, Texas for a work opportunity. When you filter Google Flights search results for flights departing within 24 hours and sorted by duration, the platform yields flights that require an overnight layover. All one-stop options require an overnight in either Chicago or Houston and cost over $1,700.

However, by searching through Kiwi, you can find a flight itinerary that gets in the same day. In this case, Kiwi pairs a Turkish Airlines flight with either a United or American flight for around $970 one way.

While Kiwi is a helpful tool for finding and booking trips, there are some downsides to note.

It won’t always be the cheapest

For one, while Kiwi can help you save money by finding low-cost travel options, you aren't always going to surface the cheapest flight by booking through Kiwi. That's because Kiwi makes money by charging a surcharge to book flights, trains and buses all in one itinerary.

Let's circle back to that European Nomad itinerary in the example above that costs $813 with one carry-on bag. If you price out the same route and dates in Google Flights, you'll find a slightly different, mostly nonstop option for $728, including one carry-on bag.

There’s another downside to booking this Google Flights itinerary worth mentioning, though: You need to book the five separate tickets individually. Some travelers may be more than happy to pay the $85 difference with Kiwi to get all of their tickets at once (and only have to enter all of their data one time instead of five).

Protections aren’t reliable without paying extra

Another critical aspect to note is that the Kiwi flight booking service no longer protects your flight connections without the purchase of Kiwi.com Guarantee.

Say your Kiwi itinerary books you on a Spirit Airlines flight to connect to a low-cost United flight to Europe . If Spirit cancels your flight and you miss your United flight, United has no obligation to rebook you on a later flight. In United's eyes, you simply missed your flight.

You have the option to protect all of your connections by purchasing the Kiwi.com Guarantee at checkout. You'll have to decide for yourself if the price (which varies by flight) is worth it for you — or if you want to risk dealing with any issues on your own.

» Learn more: Airline change and cancellation rules in the COVID era

Kiwi is a tool for finding unique and cheap flight pairings and other ways to cut the cost of transportation when traveling. You can use Kiwi to save hundreds of dollars on flights and other transit, get where you need to go fast or book complex multi-city itineraries.

However, you'll want to carefully consider the risks of booking flights with different airlines as well as their sub-par customer reviews. When booking through Kiwi, you are essentially booking separate tickets with different airlines — and Kiwi doesn't automatically protect you in the case of cancellations or delays. You can add the Kiwi.com Guarantee at checkout to reduce your risk, but this extra cost can eat into the overall price savings.

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What are ATOL & ABTA and what do they mean for you?

• Passenger Rights

Buying a flight or holiday in this day and age is a breeze; you have an idea of where you want to go, you have a little rummage around on Google Flights, Skyscanner or a package holiday comparison site to get the best prices (maybe you’ve even joined 1,500,000 others in signing up to our free weekly flight deals newsletter), and you go ahead and book.

In 99 times out of 100 you’ll have a relatively hassle-free trip , with little need for any protection for your money or belongings. But what of that one time the company you’ve booked with goes out of business ( like Monarch did in 2017 ), your flights are cancelled (a daily occurrence) or you’re stranded abroad for whatever reason?

ATOL or ABTA protection can help, but what do these letters mean and what types of flights or holidays do they apply to? How do you know if you’re protected or not? How far will travel insurance get you?

Let us answer your burning questions below.

What does ATOL protected mean and what does it include?

ATOL stands for A ir T ravel O rganiser’s L icense. Every UK travel company (online travel agents, tour operators, etc) is legally required to hold an ATOL certification. If you are ATOL protected, then it ensures you will be looked after if the travel company you booked with goes out of business. In short, you’ll be flown home if you’re already on holiday and be fully compensated should your holiday be cancelled before you’ve started it.

Are flight-only bookings covered by ATOL?

Generally speaking, no. ATOL protection only tends to cover package or adventure holidays (flights + accommodation, flights + car hire or a combination of all three). Some flights may be covered, such as charter flights or flights where you pay in instalments (i.e., you don’t receive a ticket immediately after booking - some OTAs work in this manner by default). In all cases, read the small print on your airline’s T&Cs.

To quote the small print from Ryanair’s T&Cs page, flights booked directly from an airline are not ATOL protected, even if you book accommodation through a link from the airline’s website. They do, however, state that booking a flight using a credit card can offer you a degree of financial protection, so consider using one to book your flights, especially more expensive long-haul flights. Be sure to also check your credit card company’s T&Cs as well as those of your online travel agent should you book via one.

On the other hand, while BA does not provide ATOL protection for flights alone, you’ll be fully covered if you combine them with accommodation as a part of your booking, so company policy can vary.

Do I need ATOL protection for my flight or trip?

It depends on a number of factors. For example, how expensive your flights are and what you can afford to lose out on should something go wrong, as well as the size and reputation of the airline you book with. If booking with an obscure or financially struggling airline, then you are at a greater risk of losing out. More mainstream, solvent carriers shouldn’t present a problem, though. Again, using a credit card can offer an extra degree of protection here.

Note: ATOL protection has to be provided by law for holidays sold with elements such as experiences, accommodation, etc. included.

If I book with an online travel agent (OTA) and they go out of business, is my flight protected?

As stated on the CAA website , ATOL does not apply to most flights booked with online travel agents. That being said, your itinerary exists with the airline itself (your OTA will provide a reference number which you can then use to access your booking on the airline’s website). This means that, even if the OTA you booked with goes out of business before your departure or return date, you’ll still have your seat on the flight(s) as normal.

What happens if my flight is cancelled, but the airline has not gone out of business?

If a flight is cancelled it is the airline’s responsibility to ensure that you are booked onto the next available flight free of charge . If you’re flying to or from the EU you’ll be entitled to compensation in the value of your original flight, especially if it’s thrown other arrangements into disarray.

What does ABTA protected mean and what does it include?

ABTA (the A ssociation of B ritish T ravel A gents) offers broadly the same level of protection as ATOL. However, ABTA applies to holidays purchased in the UK that don’t include flights, that is to say rail, cruise and self-drive holidays. This means that if you purchase a flight to your holiday origin point separately, this will not be covered by ABTA (or, most likely, ATOL, if it’s flight-only). You will be financially compensated should anything go wrong with the land or sea-based element of your trip, but it could mean you have to pay for flights home, so do bear this in mind if combining a flight-only booking with one of the above types of holiday.

When should I take ATOL/ABTA flight-protection into consideration?

If you’re booking multi-city flights with time in between for land or sea-based adventure holiday or combining a return flight booking with a separate non-flight adventure or package holiday, then you’ll be ABTA protected for the non-flight elements but most likely not covered for the airborne parts. Book with a credit card to ensure you get some degree of financial protection.

Note: Do keep in mind that many reputable tour operators covered by ABTA will have bonds with the CAA that oversees the ATOL scheme, so ask if this is the case at the time of booking.

How do I know if I’m covered by ATOL or ABTA?

UK and European law requires all registered travel businesses to be ATOL licensed in the countries in which they operate. All licensed organisations will carry the ATOL protected logo on their website. Here are some things to look out for to ensure you’re covered:

• ATOL protected logo plus unique CAA license number (4-5 digits usually with a T at the start)
• The CAA’s ATOL checking page that highlights companies falsely claiming to hold a license. All licensed companies are registered with the CAA so can be found here.

The same applies for ABTA protection. You can search for the company you plan to book with on ABTA’s member search page to ensure that they, and more importantly you, are covered.

Do I need to take out travel insurance if I’m ATOL or ABTA protected?

If you want to be fully insured for the things that ATOL and ABTA don't cover, such as medical expenses and your personal belongings , you'll still need travel insurance on top.

Travel insurance covers these elements even for flight-only bookings. The choice, however, is yours and you’ll want to make sure you aren’t paying over the odds for something you don’t feel you’ll need.

Still have questions? Feel free to drop us a message on [email protected]   and we'll be happy to help.

Please note, while we do have links to other websites in our articles, none are affiliate links and we do not benefit from you clicking on them, we just think they are a good resource :)

Tristan is an avid traveller and Chief Flight Hacker at Jack's Flight Club. He's currently waiting on the next great deal to tour Southeast/East Asia. When he isn't on the go he lives in Glasgow, Scotland with his dog.

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The latest Flight Booking Hack – Kiwi.com in a Review (is it reliable?)

Have you ever heard of kiwi.com? Kiwi is a powerful search engine for flights.

After we published our 16 favorite winter destinations in Europe and 21 best places to visit in Europe in summer , we got so many questions about how we find our flight deals.

We realized this is still a huge topic. Therefore, we wrote up a big, detailed review of kiwi.com.

In fact, Kiwi, Hostelworld , Omio.com and HeyMondo Insurance are essential websites to for travelers. We use them always on our travels!

Important : In this genuine article we share the good, the bad and the ugly of Kiwi.com. Please read it carefuly so you get the pros and cons .

Before making your final booking, please check as well our comment section . Travelers share here their own, first-hand experience. Personally, we always use Skyscanner when looking for flights.

Check Skyscanner.com here

Did/ do you have a great or bad experience with Kiwi? We keep the comment section open for you.

We do not claim it’s the only website we use, yet it’s part of our process finding flights every single time. And yes, we book our flights with kiwi and other websites like Omio.com , Skyscanner and even direct with Emirates for instance, as well! In fact, we wrote more detailed articles:

• Omio.com in review – the best way to find flights, trains and buses
• Skyscanner in review – the easiest way to compare flight prices?
• Qatar Airways in Review
• HeyMondo Travel Insuranace – is it worth the hype?
• edreams.com in review – and why we do not recommend this website

We are pointing out the good, the bad, the ugly, why you can use it, and when to avoid Kiwi.

Our Kiwi Review covers:

• Research Process (the websites I use for flight searches)
• Search Radius
• Fly Anywhere
• Multi-city Feature
• Combining different Airlines
• Price Alert
• The Booking Process – is Kiwi cheaper?
• Kiwi Guarantee
• Cons of Kiwi
• Our own Flights and Experiences
• Get the app
• become familiar with the kiwi guarantee
• Kiwi Promo Code (5€ off your total price)
• Packing List for your Flight

Other detailed travel guides you need:

How to book your accommodation like a boss? 15 booking tips for hostels, hotels and apartments .

We also wrote a big review about Hostelworld and review about Tiqets , a website to purchase tickets to sights worldwide like the Colosseum and Eiffel Tower.

Also check out Klook.com in review for fantastic experiences across the globe. Make travel easier – book transport tickets with Omio. Here’s a genuine review of Omio to help you out. We also wrote a big review about Qatar Airways. A review for Etihad Airline is also on the way.

Your new favorite search engine for flights

Alright, let’s get started. Kiwi is the flight hacking app we have all been waiting for! It comes with extra features that improve the research and booking process.

This website will change the whole way YOU and your travel buddies look for flights on the internet.

It is a huge time saver with smart features that actually work in favor of the traveler, not the airline!

Besides collecting the worlds 5 Star Hostels and for our research for the best hostels in the world , finding cheap flights is a regular task for me at Hostelgeeks.

There are a few techniques and websites you can use to achieve good flight deals. Kiwi is one of the sites we use to FIND cheap flights and connections.

Ever since I found this website with the cute name, me and the team have been using and recommending it. There are several reasons why this is one of the best website and app to find flights. Whenever I am curious about flights, prices, connections, the first thing I do is open Kiwi.com to get an idea.

Details covered in this review

In this detailed article I will walk you through our research process for finding flights, followed by the actual booking itself. Is this Kiwi.com legit? Yes, but be careful….and I will tell you why, based on my personal experience.

I will share in detail how I found flights across Europe for only 9€ and crossed continents for a sweet price.

In a nutshell, the top features of Kiwi are the date range, the so-called radius search and the combination of airlines. But I am getting ahead of myself.

1. The Research Process

Whenever I have to catch a flight, there are several websites I check out . Without even thinking about it, I open the following websites in my browser:

• flights.google.com
• Qatarairways.com and Qatar – and other direct websites
• Emirates Airline

New : Our full review of Qatar Airways – honest & in-depth.

This is always my starting point! Over the years, these platforms have proved to be great resources. I do not open and check them in any priority, it’s mostly random.

My first steps to find flights is checking connections. Is my destination actually reachable from my out flying airport? The second issue is the price range. I prefer to know if I am going to spend 20€ or something closer to 1.000€.

When comparing Kiwi.com and Skyscanner , keep in mind, that Kiwi.com is an OTA.

Good to know : OTA stands for Online Travel Agency.

As an OTA, Kiwi issues tickets, takes care of customer support and bookings are finalized on their own website. Due to US law, not the terms and conditions for Airlines apply.

Skyscanner and Omio.com on the other hand is a so-called meta-search. It is a price comparison, gathering data from many providers and redirects you to partners websites.

Here you can see the Pros and Cons of each one:

I use them to get a general idea of rates and flights out there.

• Is there a direct flight?
• Which airlines fly to the destination?
• What is the average price?

flights.google.com and kiwi, in particular, make a big difference.

Both share the different rates in a handy calendar. It’s helpful to put the rate in context.

Maybe the next day it’s cheaper? Bear in mind, cheapest flights are normally on weekdays and outside of school holidays.

BTW this photo shows me and my backpack from Lowe Alpine in Kuala Lumpur. I included it in the ultimate hostel packing list .

I use Google Flights for:

Google Flights covers the biggest range of airlines . BUT: They also do not cover all airlines in the world. I had to take a flight from Mexico to Spain, Google Flights did not show flights with Emirates .

Not sure if this was a one-time thing. But always keep this in mind. Always compare websites!

Type in your destination and let Google Flight do the magic.

I use Skyscanner for:

Skyscanner is fast loading and I love to check it out for comparing airline rates on specific dates .

Read: My full insider guide to how to use Skyscanner

It also comes with the multi city feature. They always add new features. One of my favorite one is their inspirational map.

It shows you cheap destinations in your area. You can filter by price and set the dates yourself. An interesting tool! Of course, since then they updated and implemented more and more cool features.

Skyscanner also shows now flights from Kiwi.com. So when you check Skyscanner, you might up ending using Kiwi.com anyways.

I use Kiwi for:

I use Kiwi for finding cheaper destinations and dates to fly . It is especially handy when I am looking for inspiration. Give me a good deal to a destination I’ve never been to and I’m in!

Obviously, I use all four websites to compare the rates.

Our final booking is made with….well, this really depends! We have used Kiwi.com in the past and had no issues. But when, we have received so many horrible comments, that in fact, we do no longer use them for the final booking step.

By now, we usually use the website of the Airline and check what Skyscanner recommends. Please note, Skyscanner also recommends Kiwi.

So far we never ever used any discount websites for booking flights.

However, after comparing prices, it is the kiwi guarantee that makes it so convenient. Remember, I still check the airline directly to compare the rates. More info on the booking process here .

I use Omio.com for (update)

Since 2019, we are also using Omio.com a lot. It is a super fantastic tool to find transport, especially over Europe. So so so handy and easy!

You can compare flights, trains and buses. Pretty much any type of public transport.

I especially love the simple overview of your chosen flight. For instance, I checked a flight from Paris, France to Bangkok, Thailand.

• Your flight has a layover in Helsinki Vantaa Airport (HEL)
• Your flight is an early morning arrival to Bangkok (BKK)
• This is an overnight journey

It shows you the bullet points on important information right away. See the screenshot below.

Besides the fact that we used this engine a lot, her are the most popular routes for this meta flight search:

• Bangkok – Phuket City
• Bangkok – Chiang Mai
• Lima – Cusco
• Bogotá – Medellín
• Bogotá – Cartagena
• Krabi – Bangkok
• Mexico City – Cancún
• London – Athens
• Medellín – Cartagena
• Istanbul – Antalya
• Paris – New York City
• Prague – London
• Los Angeles – Guadalajara
• Cusco – Lima
• Istanbul – Kayseri
• London – Barcelona
• Seoul – Tokyo
• London – Kiev
• Vienna – Palma de Mallorca

2. Features of Kiwi.com

Time to have a closer look. Here I share the features that make Kiwi such a great flight hack and time saver.

2.1 Search Radius

My absolute favorite feature is the search radius. This takes researching flights to a whole new level.

What does that mean?

Instead of typing in a fixed destination, you draw a circle on the map .

The app searches for flights in this radius. It shows you all the different destinations and the cheapest air fare in a handy way. You can filter for cheapest flights and direct connections.

It also shows you the rates of all the other destinations around your circle. Maybe you missed a good opportunity here?

So, when do you need this feature?

This is useful when you are looking for flights to a country or area , rather than a specific city.

Let’s say you want to go to South East Asia, coming from Europe.

While Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok are the main hubs to find cheap rates, there are still many others to consider. Maybe something you did not have in mind in the first place?

Ho Chi Minh City for instance or Jakarta, Indonesia are not to be underestimated.

Let us have a look.

An example:

Imagine you would like to fly from New York City to Spain – with no specific city like Barcelona or Madrid.

Select “ Spain ” as a range and kiwi will display all the options. It shows even near areas nearby your selected range in case you want to change your mind.

The screenshots below show how it works.

Update: Drawing a Circle in Kiwi

Kiwi updated their functionality. Unfortunately now it is not so easy any more to find the “radius search”.

We do not know why they removed this since this is an epic feature.

However, we found a way to use this feature of radius search still.

• Type in your destination
• Click on the same field next to your destination again
• the drop down will then show “XYZ Destination + 250km)
• Choose this one
• Now you have a circle above your desired destination
• via drag and drop you can move the radius and make it even bigger and smaller

Solved! Luckily, the circle or radius feature is still there.

We made a quick video about Kiwis Radius search and how you can activate this again.

2.2 Fly Anywhere

For inspiration, Kiwi is my go-to website.

Just type in your departure airport and set the destination to “anywhere” . You can set the date to a fixed one or select a date range, for instance March and April.

In fact, “ Anywhere ” is the default destination.

Hit the search button and see what comes out. This helps us to get an idea of cheaper destinations out there.

It puts destinations on your map that you may not have considered beforehand.

2.3 Multi-city Feature

Another feature I always miss with the many flight search engines out there. Choose multiple cities and go around the world.

World-hopping if you will!

Kiwi combines different airlines and schedules which makes it so easy for a world traveler to travel from A to B to C and D.

Again, this is very, very important: they combined several airlines. You can book several airlines with 1 click !

You can select exact dates or even a date range. You can even spot the cheapest prices on the calendar while you are choosing the dates.

It is 100% flexible!

They even guarantee that you will get your connecting flight. If not, there is always the Kiwi Guarantee. Personally, I would not rely on this guarantee. There has been too many complaints about not honoured flights connections, luggage lost and more.

Please, please please, even if they guarantee the connections, use your head before booking. Do not choose any connection flights with tight connections ( We do recommend 3 hours between flights minimum). The kiwi guarantee might cover your lost flight, but it is much better to avoid tight connections.

Another option here is also comparing different destinations. Or even combining your fight with other transport.

As an example : you could land in Napoli. Rent a car , visit the famous Amalfi coast, impressive Pompeii… and drive to Rome. Then continue traveling from Rome.

You are not sure which destination you wanna fly? Maybe the price will help you to decide.

Now it is not necessary to have 4 different windows with the destinations you would like.

E.g.: You are not sure about going to London or Germany after Paris?

Just compare the prices between them. kiwi will let you know all the options. Simple as that.

2.4 Combining Different Airlines

The Multicity Feature in particular requires booking with different airlines. Kiwi combines them for you.

They look for the cheapest flight combinations out there, no matter what.

They cover the major airlines around the world such as

• Qatar (read our full review )
• Turkish Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• All Nippon Airways
• Etihad Airways

The list is actually endless.

That being said, Kiwi does not include all the airlines in the world. The smaller ones in South East Asia and in Europe for instance are not included.

In our section of cons I give you more details.

2.5 Date Range

One of the golden rules to score cheap flights?

Be flexible with your dates.

Yet again, weekdays are cheaper than weekends and of course skip the holidays.

This is why this date range feature is a true gem. You can choose from

• Specific date (e.g. 15th June)
• date range (e.g. all May and June)

“anytime” and “specific date” do not require any explanation, so let’s have a look at date range.

It is really that simple: you choose a date range, for instance all February. The App will then instantly filter by dates and give you the cheapest dates to take your flight.

Super simple!

2.6 Cheap Price Alert

The cheap price alert is brilliant. Same as with Skyscanner I set my price alerts. How can you do that?

Setup an airport or radius as your departure point and select the area or radius you want to travel to. To activate the cheap-price alert, simply hit the button below the search fields.

Here you’ve got to include a maximum price. That’s it. Your Price Alert has been created and Kiwi will let you know when the price is right.

They will send you an email like this one.

If you have the App installed on your smartphone, you will receive a pop-up message as well.

This feature is especially great when you have a fixed time window to travel.

Let’s say you have vacation from the 1st February until 14th February, but you still don’t know where to go.

Setup your starting point, your destination as “anywhere” and edit the time-range to 1st February to 14th February.

I also recommend signing up for their newsletter.

Talking about newsletter…in our 17 booking hacks for hostels I recommend signing up for hostel and airline newsletters.

You will be surprised what kind of offers will land in your inbox.

You can sign up for newsletters at booking portals like

• Booking.com,

and airlines like

Why is it a good idea to sign up for newsletters?

You receive exclusive discounts and you are the first one being informed on new offers.

I recently got this newsletter below by RyanAir. Since I wanted to travel anyway, guess what I did?

BTW : Sign up for our newsletter , we always share exclusive hostel discounts , including discounts for Hostelworld .

3. The Booking Process – is Kiwi OK to book?

Is this website is legit? Is Kiwi reliable and safe? We all want to score the cheapest flights out there.

As mentioned in the beginning, so many users claim Kiwi to be a scam, to be fraud, unreliable, you name it. There’s a lot of bad reviews about Kiwi. More in our cons section.

While we take these complaints serious and publish them here in the comments too (if language allows), we can only  share here our own experience. Again, we actually booked our flights with Kiwi too – NOT ONLY with kiwi, but we did use them . I am adding below our confirmation email of one of our first flights with kiwi from 2016 and 2021 even.

We are not just saying this. We actually used them in the past and still use them! But, be aware, it is one of many we use. It is not the only one !!! As I also pointed out, I would not rely on the kiwi guarantee.

The 1 Million Dollar Question : Is Kiwi.com a scam?

Answer : No, Kiwi is not a scam; that’s just too much to state. They do have a lot of happy customers. Even Skyscanner links you to Kiwi.

However, Kiwi.com is not a very reliable website with a perfect customer service. So, if there is a problem with your booking/ flight, it’s not good. If your flight has no issues, you will love Kiwi.

Back to the website; it is quite rare to be willing to pay more just because the app or website looks cool. Right?!

So, let’s talk about the elephant in the room:

• Is it cheaper?
• And is it trustworthy?
• is Kiwi ok and safe to book with?

As mentioned at the beginning, I compare different airlines and booking portals. Always. The websites I compare are:

• skyscanner.com
• the airlines directly on the website like Emirates

The chances of finding cheaper flights with Kiwi are quite high. However, airlines websites could be even cheaper right?!

Always compare as there is no generic rule. Some hostels are cheaper on Hostelworld.com, others are cheaper on Booking.com. the same really goes for flights.

Almost every booking engine has their own agreement with the airlines.

Some of them can give you a better price, sometimes there are special offers. I don’t know the background, and it doesn’t matter to a traveler.

All I want: a cheaper flight!

On our flight from Sri Lanka to Munich I used kiwi.com. Before hitting the book-button, I compared the airline’s rate.

As it turns out,  I saved a sweet 56€ – by using kiwi.com!

Again, I used them for several flights as I got the best deal with them. So far I have had no issue with missed flight connections or lost baggage. Let’s hope this continues.

But…what if something happens? Delayed or cancelled flights, for instance? This is where the Kiwi Guarantee kicks in.

4. Kiwi Guarantee

Here is our best tip : Do not rely on their guarantee and check the connection you are about to book! Only book flights you can guarantee yourself you will catch them. For instance, having only 1 hour for changing flights in Kuala Lumpur will be most likely impossible!

Use your own brain to see which connection flights are doable – and which one are not. We have seen connection flights with only 1 hour and 20 minutes for transition – in London! This is pretty much impossible, too. And even if it would be possible, the stress it not worth it.

When things go well, it’s fine, obviously. When things go not as planned, then it can get complicated. And this is exactly where all these bad reviews for Kiwi are coming from.

Kiwi is quite confident when it comes to its booking service. They promise you that you will catch your connection.

After all, this is how their algorithm runs.

And if something happens, they are there for you to help you out. During our research I came across some really bad reviews. Some of them were quite harsh. And yes, you guys leave bad reviews for Kiwi here as well. We publish them if your language allows. Therefore, if you want to share your first-hand experience, please do. This helps many more travelers.

So, what was this all about?

Is there a reason to be nervous about Kiwi?

There is always a risk when booking flights with separate companies. If you miss a connection, because of the first delayed flight, well, good luck.

You have to buy a new ticket and the one you missed only serves as a bad souvenir.

Kiwi guarantees that you will catch your next flight(s). They are that confident, they made a whole page about it, promoting it heavily.

They will help you… BUT : they says they need your help! You should make yourself familiar with their service. This way, and only this way, they can help you in case something goes wrong with your flight.

They says, the guarantee protects you from:

• Flight delays
• Flight cancellations
• Schedule changes

If any of these events happen, Kiwi guarantees an alternative flight or to refund the price for the unused ticket. But, again, you have to follow their rules. Their guarantee needs your cooperation.

To quote from their website:

• Inform Kiwi as soon as you are aware of any of the situations above (delay, cancellation, schedule changes)
• Respond within 24 hours to all Kiwi offers
• Don’t make any flight changes without their approval
• If Kiwi agrees that you should buy a flight that’s not available online, they need to receive your email with proof of payment within 14 days

This is really important to remember .

Although these instructions are fairly easy, I understand it might be hard to remember in a situation of stress.

Missing a flight for instance. Nobody likes that. However, keep calm, Kiwi will help you out. Check out their full guarantee here.

That being said, we never had to claim anything in our flights . We never missed a flight we booked with Kiwi. So we never ever had to check if the guarantee will fully take care of you.

And here is thing : There is many many many complaints on the web about Kiwi not following through with their guarantee. While we have zero ways to confirm this, some stories by travelers seem legit, others sound more like it was their own “ fault “. We allow readers to leave comments below.

Update : Travelgenio and travel2be are also travel agents you should not rely on. Read this reddit conversation between customers.

Update: Food on flights (vegetarian options etc)

This is where we share our personal bad experience with Kiwi.com

This section is important to everyone with special requests for their food. When I booked one of my flight to Germany, I forgot to mention that I am Vegetarian. To be honest, to me it’s normal in a way and I always find vegetarian options.

Well, not so on a plane. And again, it was my own fault for not mentioning this when booking the flight.

I did not notice it until 1 day before departure. I could not change anything at this point which was dissapointing.They told me, I could have said something until 3 days before departure. The problem is that Kiwi is the middle-man and changing for them something also takes time to be processed. Well, again, it was dissapointing.

On the flight, I was served some chicken and I had to give it back. Again, I simply forgot to add this to my booking – my fault. The stewardess brought me some fruits they still had, that was at least something.

Therefore, pay attention and leave a comment with your booking about any special requests like being vegetarian, glutenfree etc.

This helps to stay not hungry. Since I knew this was gonna happen, I ate beforehand at the Airport. Lucky enough, the stewardess helped out with the fruit and I buy always a sandwich or something similar for my flights. That helped….

5. Cons of Kiwi.com

As you have already noticed, Kiwi is a good website to do research, but not to book your final flight. I do not claim this is the best freaking website out there and pretend there are now CONS. Without them, this review would not be complete and certainly not honest.

Keep on reading:

5.1 Not all airlines are covered

Same as with the big Skyscanner, the small airlines around South East Asia are not included at the moment. This is not really surprising , considering you can buy some airline tickets in the supermarket!

No, I am not kidding.

I reserved our latest flight from Bali to Labuan Bajo and had to go to the supermarket to pay in cash.

“ Hey there, one coke and one flight to Labuan Bajo, please! ”

I am sure they will add more local airlines over time and as soon as it is technically possible.

However, I check flights.google.com to see if there are other local airlines around.

It is also worth it to know, I also could not find any Emirates flights from Mexico to Europe on Kiwi. I am not sure why this happens, but it is important to remember.

Keep an eye on other options out there to find flights and connections.

Note: flights.google.com does not include all local airlines neither.

5.2 Customer service

Update March 2020 : There are many complaints abut using this website. When it comes to refunds, the website does not seem to be pro-active. This update is not based on our own experience, but on many comments and feedback we receive from Kiwi-users. Please refer to the comments section below to read more first-hand experiences.

Around the web you find many bad and horrible reviews of kiwi.com. While the majority are great , the bad ones are a tough read. People lost thousands of dollars due to Kiwi, and they had to rebook other flights.

I took the time to read through the reviews before actually using them the first time. And again before writing this article. I would not trust their customer service, anymore. Simply put, only book with Kiwi safe flights.

If you have a closer look, it seems like there were some errors made from various ends.

Either way, it seems to have changed. Yet again, you have to be familiar with the Kiwi guarantee. This way, kiwi has no excuse and they won’t need it, since they will stick to their promise as many reviews showed as well!

This is a good idea : In case something happens, it’s a good idea to stay calm and not start insulting the customer service agent. I mean, who really wants to help out when they are insulted?

5.3 Slow loading time

flights.google.com and Skyscanner always loaded faster than the Kiwi App.

In order to use Kiwi properly, you should be patient and not click around while the app is still pulling its data from the backend. Now, I make it sound like it’s really slow. It actually works ok, it’s just that most websites pull up faster.

First world problem…okay, okay, I know, guilty!!

Update : This improved already!

5.4 Missed Connections Flights Complain

Many of the online complaints about Kiwi seem to be about missed connection flights. To stay absolutely safe, make sure you only book flights with a proper amount of time to change planes.

When there’s immigration and a visa involved, and you only have 45 minutes to change the terminal, that is in no way enough.

Sure, there is always the Kiwi guarantee. But yet again, most people seem to complain about exactly that issue. If you plan to book with Kiwi.com, be smart about it and avoid such a situation.

Please do not ignore physics! You cannot change a flight in less than 5 minutes with luggage, immigration and having dinner in-between.

5.5  Booking Issue (our own experience and others)

In this section I want to share an unfortunate experience we had with Kiwi. We booked a flight from Bogotá, Colombia to Cancún, Mexico.

When finalizing the booking, we noticed the booking date changed to exactly 1 week / 7 days before we actually wanted the flight.

Now, we were confident we did not change the date at all. Such a weird experience. So we got in touch with the customer support.

First reaction : It was our fault, they cannot do anything except giving us a 20€ voucher for Kiwi. We insisted more and the next day, we were told they will check with the airline.

They contacted the airline directly. The airline permitted a change of dates for an extra fee of $74. We had to cover this cost and they could change our flight.

Okay, deal, done.

So, here we are. We finally experienced first-hand the customer service. The first agent in Spanish language did not help at all – and offered us a joke in form of $20 compensation of having a wrong flight. The English speaking customer service could help us out after we insisted.

Passport Numbers mixed up

Traveler Victoria left a comment, sharing her experience of her passport number totally mixed up. Here is what she wrote:

“I myself was cheated out of a few hundred dollars – not much by Kiwi dot com standards – when I purchased a ticket, to find the ticket had the wrong passport number on it. A mishmash of my actual passport number . Meaning, my ticket was invalid and I would have been refused travel.”

Our point of view : Obviously we cannot know what happened, we were not involved. However, no one really mixes up the own passport number entirely. Sure, having two numbers the wrong way…yes, that is possible. But, let’s face it, writing the whole passport number wrong and mishmashed, this sounds very unlikely.

Again, we do not have any more information than this comment. But, it sounds like a technical bug on Kiwi.com. This is only guess-work, really.

To have this review complete, we think it is important to share this too.

6. Our First Flights with Kiwi – 1st hand great experience

So, when did I start using kiwi.com? Back in 2016.

I used Kiwi for several flights. So here is my experience to give you a better understanding from my 1st hand experience.

BUT, I did not use them for all our flights I took during the last 4-5 years.

I always check the mentioned four websites and more. I used them for instance to travel from Barcelona to Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands .

I scored a 9€ flight thanks to kiwi.com .

Another big win was the flight for 15€ from London to Barcelona .

The latest flight I booked was from South East Asia to Europe. This is where the search radius played an important part.

All I wanted: A good flight from Sri Lanka to Europe . We arrived in Germany and we will take it from there.

I only paid 255.50€ per person. And it was not a low cost airline.

We had meals on board and luggage was sent directly to the destination. There you have it, I used Kiwi for several flights. I have not had any issues so far with luggage, delays or cancelled flights. Fingers crossed! We now had an issue of wrong dates. Read more under cons .

Therefore: Yes, it is okay to book with Kiwi! As long as you book a flight with no issues and you do not want to change flight details .

It is reliable, fair, trustworthy, fast, easy to use and again, the Kiwi guarantee is a big plus!

As a proof that I booked with Kiwi, I uploaded here our booking confirmation. It is in Spanish, you will understand the most important parts nevertheless.

7. How to get started?

After using this website now for a while, there are some basic recommendations I want to share. Before I wrap it up, here is our recommendation on setting things up.

1. Sign up – NOW!

It is definitely a good idea to sign up with Kiwi. It is free! Make sure you sign up with your “good email”.

(Meaning, your real email, not the spammy one. C’mon, everybody does that!)

After all, you may receive your flight confirmation here one day.

Signing up also gives you the opportunity to set up the cheap price alert.

This is how the price alert looks like:

2. Get the App

Download the app to your smartphone. Both Android and iOs are available. Sign in with your account.

If you already created a price alert , you will receive this alert on your phone in the form of a pop-up message. I know, I mentioned this earlier. I just think, it’s a killer-feature, don’t miss it.

Here are three screenshots I took from the app.

3. Set Price Alert to your currency ($, €, £ …)

After signing up, this is something I would do instantly. Check your bucket list, talk to your travel buddies.

Where would you like to go next?

Read : 16 favorite winter destinations in Europe .

That is actually the article that made us write this huge review here.

Read : 21 best places to visit in Europe in Summer

Even though you don’t have any fixed plan yet, maybe not even any vacation days, I would set up price alerts to your dream destinations.

You will receive automatic notifications once the price drops or is in your preferred price range.

You can also setup the “ inspiration mode ”.

This means setting the destination to “ anywhere ”, the date to “ anytime ” and choose the maximum price you want to pay.

You will then receive emails with all destinations that are cheaper than your chosen price.

4. Become familiar with the Kiwi Guarantee

We already walked you through the Kiwi Guarantee.

And yet again, I mention it. And I cannot believe how many people actually skip this step.

Although I have never had to use it as the flights ran smoothly, it is recommended important to be familiar with the service. In case something goes wrong, it is the only way to find a solution without paying more and starting to hate Kiwi.

Personally , however, I would not rely on this guarantee.

8. New Kiwi Promo Code (*expired)

Update : Unfortunately the discount code below already expired. This promo code for kiwi was valid for purchases between 24th August – 2nd September 2020.

20€ discount for Kiwi (only for our readers)

The coupon code is

LASTMINUTEFLY

The code is valid for tickets over 200€.

How to apply?

• Visit Kiwi.com
• choose your date and destination
• apply the discount

That’s it! =)

Condition : The voucher is valid for every booking over 200€ in total price. Please take this into account.

Expired Promo Code

Update : Unfortunately the discount code below already expired. This promo code for kiwi was valid for purchases made before 7th January 2019:

5€ discount for Kiwi (only for our readers)

WINTERGEEKS

EXPIRED – it was valid from 07.12.2018 until 07.01.2019

Where to apply the discount at Kiwi?

This is not as obvious. First you have to type in your name, and the insurance you pick. Then you click “Next”, choose your “Extras” like sports luggage and then “Next” again.

Below the Overview, the Invoice Details and BEFORE the payment details you will find a small boxes.

The box says “Redeem Promo Code”.

Here you are. just open this box and you can redeem your kiwi promo code.

Is Kiwi OK to book with?

You have an extended explanation in our booking process . We also spoke about the cons of Kiwi .

Can I trust Kiwi blindly?

I would never ever recommend you to trust anyone online blindly. Do not do that! Use your own sense and actually read on what you are about to book. Do not just assume that it covers luggage, for instance.

Is Kiwi.com a scam?

No, Kiwi is not a scam. Famous Skyscanner even links to them. It is a legit website. However, getting a refund from Kiwi.com is not easy.

A few times it happened to us that users send us over a photo of their credit card, because they wanted to buy our ebook, before it was even launched. Seriously, we are touched for the trust you have in us, but come on: don’t do this, it’s dangerous . Of course we would not do anything, but there is a photo of your credit card in someones email. Not a good idea.

Back to Kiwi, make sure you read through the terms and conditions and make yourself familiar with what you are booking. You cannot book something and then claim you didn’t know about a cancellation fee and so on.

10. Packing for your flight (the hand luggage)

There are a few gadgets that makes flying always easier and more comfortable.

I recommend a travel pillow to sleep better, an eye mask and finally noise cancelling headphones.

Before checking in your luggage, make sure you have all the things you need in your hand luggage. I recommend

• a sweater (it can be cold in an airplane)
• noise cancelling headphones
• a good book
• a portable movie player
• your phone (we have the iPhone X )
• the camera – so it does not break in the luggage! (we use the Fujifilm XT 20 Mirrorless )

Many airlines offer complimentary headphones (that means free!).

But, truth be told, they are not comfortable at all and I ALWAYS end up using my own ones.

That’s less trash for the airline and more comfortable for me.

Good to know : Always check the policies for hand luggage. This is a topic always changing.

Especially when choosing budget airlines like Ryanair, Wizzair or Hong Kong Express, make sure you read carefully! If you bring too much luggage, you will need to pay an extra luggage fee.

Plus : I actually have noise cancelling headphones .

I can’t hear the noise of the plane itself and even if I don’t put music on (or the movie), it’s more comfy to sleep!

Find my full packing list here .

(Here you find my NO-GO packing list )

Buying on Amazon?

You can receive your orders faster when you sign up for the PRIME membership . With this link, you can test the PRIME membership for 30 days for free.

The prime membership also unlocks cool movie deals , see below.

Movies to watch

I like to bring my on movies to watch on a plane. With Amazon you can download the movies and enjoy them on the fly. You can sign up for their PRIME for FREE with this link here .

You can test it for 30 days for free, and then decide if you want to continue.

Watch : 33 BEST Wanderlust and Travel Movies

UPDATE August 2018:

Back in August 2018, I checked flights for getting to Chiang Mai, Thailand.

There was a super sweet deal with Qatar from Barcelona . However, I checked the airline website, where I also found the great price (with kiwi a bit cheaper).

When I read through the details, it stated: You can only bring a small hand-luggage, nothing else.

This is why I mentioned in this article that it’s important to compare more websites.

Kiwi would have been my choice for the booking since it’s cheaper. Yet, the airline itself was not convincing me, although it is the fantastic Qatar. In this case, it was a special offer, missing a few services like luggage and such.

Do not jump on every flight offer you find in the internet, read before you take out your credit card!

11. Summary Kiwi com review

kiwi.com is the ultimate flight hacking tool. Yes, we do love it and use it.

For the first time ever, I got the feeling that this app was seriously built for the traveler instead of for selling flights in a smart, aesthetically pleasing way. It is THE flight hack we have all been waiting for.

A time saver, a fun way to explore new destinations and a safe way to get your confirmed ticket to your inbox. I also recommend to read our guide on Skyscanner and how to use it. Combine Skyscanner with Kiwi.com and you will have a good time hunting flights deals.

• How to book hostels like a boss? Our essential booking guide for hostels and hotels
• The BEST hostels in Europe and the world: the 5 Star Hostels and how to book them
• Review of Get Your Guide.com – is it reliable?
• 🧘 Yoga in Mexico : best yoga retreats in Mexico
• Sort out your iVisa and Onward Ticket before you book a flight

pint it for later

Last important details:

I was not paid to write and share this article! As always, Hostelgeeks aims to help our community to find smarter ways to book, stay at better hostels and travel safely.

This is a full review and insight into our flight research process! After using kiwi.com, we teamed up with them. Please use this link for your flight bookings.

Hostelgeeks will receive a small commission on these bookings at NO EXTRA COST for you. As every experienced traveler knows, these kind of websites change very frequently.

We are no longer partners of Kiwi.com

We try to keep this article up to date. I wrote this article to the best of our knowledge. If you have any input, please leave us a comment below.

Once you have your cheap flight, complete your trip with a budget-friendly stylish accommodation, a stunning 5 Star hostel. You can check all 5 Star Hostels here .

Over to you: any questions?

I would love to have this article as useful as possible. Therefore, please leave your comments, doubts, questions below.

Every single question helps me to write more details and I see what I must have missed in this review.

Therefore, do not be shy.

Update : Please please please read the article before leaving a comment!

Update: Official Statement by Kiwi

We at Hostelgeeks received positive but also negative comments about this service. Since we care deeply about our readers and community, we reached out to Kiwi team, to get an official statement on that negative feedback some unsatisfied customers left here.

Statement by Kiwi

Hey guys! Thanks for the review. We want to bring the best service to our customers by offering affordable travel to everyone.  We are sorry for anyone´s bad experience and will do our best to resolve any issue with our Customer Support team. Please contact  [email protected] .

Statement by Hostelgeeks

We only showcase great tools that help you to plan your trip better and in the best case, even let’s you save quite a lot of money. Kiwi com does exactly this and it is a service we and all our team uses on a regular basis. This review states our honest opinion and helps you to find better flight deals, and it is a step-by-step guide.

We are 100% Independent: Some links on Hostelgeeks are so-called affiliate links. If you decide to book through these links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you . Your support allows us to keep producing high-quality, independent content free of influence from hostels or external advertisers. Learn more here . 🙏

✏️ Read our Editorial Guidelines

We arrived in Manila at 3:15 with 50 minutes left until the boarding deadline of 4:05. The plane was delayed for 10 minutes, but 50 minutes is not enough time for international flight procedures and movement within Manila Airport.

I contacted them once to request a refund under the warranty, but within an hour I was told that they would not be able to respond.

I then posted a public review on trustpilot.com and was contacted to say they would reconsider.

I also feel angry at the way they responded out of fear of negative reviews.

I will list the facts regarding delays and support. In order to prevent damage to users, I feel that it is necessary to send out more accurate reviews on SNS etc.

Because we paid a lot of money, spent a lot of time, and had a very difficult experience at the airport that you can’t even imagine. I couldn’t actually get on the plane. This story is not fiction.

We are not volunteers. And we traveled for work. We did not invest in a kiwi company.

We lost a lot of time and money. I am requesting a refund only for the flight ticket. We are not asking for accommodation fees.

Is it possible to complete an international flight connection in 50 minutes, including 20 minutes between terminals at Manila Airport? Even if there were no flight delays? Airports are usually crowded with people.

This was my first visit to Manila. I had no choice but to trust kiwi’s transit method. Why couldn’t they come up with a more generous plan?

Even though I carried heavy luggage, ran at full speed, and negotiated with all the staff and passengers in the line to give me my turn, I still couldn’t make it in time.

There is a warranty, but the warranty is meaningless as they do not accept refunds.

Kiwi presents a travel plan that is impossible for humans, and the only reason they say they don’t honor the guarantee is “the airline’s decision.”

Even though it was kiwi that presented the plan.

Kiwi.com is the worst company ever, They are unreliable and just out t make money. I booked a ticked through them with Ryanair air and also paid for kiwi.com guarantee.

I booked a separate flight with Ryaniar for other dates.The carrier cancelled all flights and I got a voucher from Ryanair for another time. The flight booked through Kiwi, I was told by them that they cant get a refund from the carrier and they wont give me a refund, I asked them why sell kiwi.com guarantee, to which I got no answer. I also asked how come the carrier is not giving them a refund for a cancelled flight when I already got a refund, again no answer from them. I would suggest paying a bit more and through another company because Kiwi is just a a company of thieves

the worst travel agency you can imagine. booked a return flight to Kutaisi at a time convenient to me and my partner, they sent me an email changing my return alone to leave 10 hours earlier with no offer of alternative as per their policies, called to ask to change to another flight and pay the difference, denied me any rights, and stated, Go to your lawyer, live with it, that’s it!!!!!

If you have any issues with your booking or flights, the agents are so unhelpful! They give you a generic scripted answer without even listening to the issue or trying to come up with a solution, they falsely require you to confirm outdated regulations around covid and will not take any accountability for errors or cancel flights if you cancel (more than 4) days in advance. They will take your money and you will be left without any options! Stay away!

Booking #427845671

Kiwi has requested additional details and I have provided it to them several days ago. I’ve also followed up almost everyday on the original support request. This will be my first and last experience with this horrible third party.

I was scammed by Kiwi. I have never been so angry. They told me the airline that I was trying to book through them increased their price and I needed to pay more than what Kiwi advertised. I booked. What a mistake. I then dealt with the airline and found there was no price increase. Kiwi took it upon themselves to upgrade my class which cost a lot more. They never disclosed any of that information. They just did not tell me this. Then when I called them on this, I found they were only giving me the lower class ticket, and keeping the money for the higher class. They told me it wasn’t their “policy” to allow a cancellation or refund even though the airline said by the amount of the higher class ticket I bought that I should have been allowed all or its benefits including the seating it allowed, the luggage, and cancellation with full refund. It was strange. Even one of the Kiwi employees admitted that I had been overbooked. This was all refused by other Kiwi representatives. I will never, never, never use this unethical company again. I guess I am riding coach at a ticket price that far exceeds this. How sad that they are keeping the money.

I booked an air ticket through Kiwi.com and had to cancel due to bad weather. Kiwi support team did not help at all and the air line was kind enough to issue me a voucher for the amount I paid. The voucher details were copied to kiwi as they were the issuing party of the ticket. When I tried to book a flight using the voucher it was already used. After so many emails and calls with air line and kiwi agents, kiwi agreed that it was used by their travel agent. Now it is already 6 months passed and they are still saying it is under investigation. I did not receive my money or the voucher back.

I booked a flight itinerary with Kiwi.com on 12th July 2023. This included 3 flights. I paid in GBP with Mastercard via Paypal. I got nervous after reading bad reviews and I cancelled the same evening. By the next morning, the full cost had been refunded to my credit card via PayPal. I have no complaints.

Whatever you do, DO NOT book your flights with KIWI.COM. They will take your cash and they will not deliver valid tickets. Refunds are only available with their own “kiwi-currency”, even though it clearly says otherwise on their platforms.

The company commits fraud. They cancelled my flights twice but the aircompany originally did not cancel the flight, the departure was only 3 hours late. But Kiwi considered this change as a ‘cancellation’. Needless to say that I am waiting for the refund till now

Absolute scammers! They advertise that you can cancel and rebook your airfares up to 48 hours before the flight, but do not disclose that the refund amount is only 2% of the fare. Customer service know exactly what they’re doing, but they play dumb and are very unhelpful. They insist that you were ‘well informed’ of the refund policy and then stuff you around until you give up. On your booking, when you click on ‘refunds and cancellations’ the popup that comes up is blank, it doesn’t state that only 2% is refunded. Even in the refund terms and conditions it doesn’t say that refund amount is only 2%. They are scam artists.

If I could give no stars I would, I have had a horrible experience with Kiwi.com booking flights. The booking numbers and reference numbers are invalid with the airline carrier, I’ve contacted the airline directly 3 times and they tell me they have no booking reference under our names, they checked the date of travel our birth dates and the e ticket number I was given and say all not valid. I’ve called and discussed my concern with Kiwi.com several times and they refuse to give me proof from the actual airline that my booking is valid and also refuse to give me a full refund DO NOT TRUST THEM!!!!!

Kiwi is NOT transparent in costs – hidden fees: Kiwi does a terrible job of integrating potential cost increases up front. Like sure it’ll show you the lowest cost flight up front, but backed behind that are SO many hidden fees that they do not warn you of. Not to mention their documents and emails are not user friendly. Again, not transparent in warnings and reminders. For example, I booked a flight that is typically just 3 hours direct. Kiwi booked two direct flights to my destination and one flight back. Entire thing = $143 – fine sounds reasonable. Come to find out, all flights were Frontier Airlines AND you cannot update baggage on their site once the purchase is made. So, I ended paying in total $278 dollars MORE in just CARRY-ON luggage, a high cost fee for EACH of the flights – 3 total. That is MORE than the original flight tag itself. So total for this whole thing I actually spent $421. Ridiculous. Highly do not recommend using them.

Thanks for sharing, LD!

I have now filed a complaint with the FBI online fraud division for Kiwi representatives’ attempts to get ME to send money to THEM — or at least to their “administrator” in Kenya — before they will refund me the equivalent amount, which they had indicated they would reimburse … but which they “could not” return to my credit card because the card charge, they stated, was still “in dispute” … notwithstanding my informing them that my bank had provided me documentation that that dispute had been closed some weeks ago (with Kiwi refusing to make the reimbursement).

(This user cannot share comments on this website anymore.)

Never book with KIWI.com Despite the airline canceling the flight (which kiwi wasn’t aware of before i called) and the need to cancel and rebook the whole flight due to no other option being provided by the original carrier till the next day, kiwi would not refund the full ticket amount.

Awful customer service and 4+ months in constant follow-up to get any resolution.

NEVER USE KIWI.COM: The most horrible travel experience in 30 years traveling. A couple of weeks back we booked our first retour flights with kiwi.com for direct flights from Brussels to Narvik for a holiday in the Lofoten (Norway). The evening before our departure we got a simple e-mail from kiwi that they made a mistake and can not get us on the flights but propose an alternative route with 2 connections taking more then 23 hours and a return 2 days after the initial return (Monday instead of Saturday): “Take it or leave it”. Calling them was like talking with robots repeating the same sentences that nothing could be done. We had to cancel our whole trip with costs for rental car, house rental and some of the activities. Obviously kiwi.com couldn’t help us there either. This is the first time this happened to me in 30 years traveling and while doing around 50 flights per year (business + pleasure) this is the first time I have been treated this way. So based on this I can only advice everybody to not use kiwi.com ever.

Kiwi.com is a scam. Don’t book with Kiwi.com or you will end up like me loosing all my money and stranded on an international airport. I booked a connecting flight and paid for their premium replacement guarantee services for them to provide a alternate flight as there was a family medical emergency and I did not want to take any chances and was willing to pay extra. The first flight got cancelled and they never informed me. Upon calling them they told that the airline did not inform them. I went to the airport anyway. And called them to provide the alternate connecting flight as the first flight was delayed and we will not reach the transit airport in time. They made me wait on the call for over 30 minutes while I was at the airport. They said “You have to reach the transit airport and call us back before we can give you another option”. They were asking me to go to a transit airport(which requires visa) without knowing if I can get a connecting flight or not. When I called them, they hung up on me and did not even call back. I called them back and demanded a full refund. They said they cannot refund as per their process and I will have to voluntarily request for cancellation. The staff named “Mike”, not sure if this was his original name was rude and took advantage of my situation. I asked them to pass the call to their superior and they made me wait for 10 minutes with the same person “Mike” with the same argument. I ended up booking a direct flight from a different agent. I applied for cancellation and they they not return anything. Horrible experience. Total scam.

I made a mistaken purchase through Kiwi in October (I put the departure and arrival cities in the wrong order). Kiwi told me to re-submit the purchase for the correct itinerary and they would reimburse my mistake.

That was a lie.

When my bank tried to enter a dispute process with Kiwi, Kiwi refused to proceed, and the bank closed the dispute.

Kiwi now tells me they cannot reimburse me, because they remain in that dispute negotiation with my bank.

My bank informs me that is untrue.

Today Kiwi invite ME to send THEM money — to someone in Kenya — so that they can them reimburse me for the flight purchase.

That invitation came from Kiwi.com’s twitter account. I called Kiwi to inform them that the twitter account appears to be running a scam. Their representative told me they do not have a twitter account … but then instructed me to send money to the same individual, in Kenya, in order for me to receive the reimbursement … while they read to me from the exchange I’d had with their representative on their twitter account … which they had just told me does not exist.

Utterly outrageous.

I had a similar experience. It is the absolute worst of the worst app ever. I was traveling for a medical emergency as well. They give complicated itineraries with self transfers which makes our travel more difficult and requires visa at every layover. And if any of the flights delay, the rest of the itinerary becomes unusable and they don’t give refund or any other options that are affordable. They ask us for the full price of tickets and they will keep the refunds that they receive. Which doubles our cost of travel when we opted it to be cheap. Worst customer service. Each time a different person talks, and we have to repeat ourselves and they will still get something wrong. Absolutely hated it. It’s better to book from the airlines directly

Never again. I booked flights to Australia in May, costing £3378.37. I cancelled them within 10 hours, as the flight times were not suitable. I tried to contact them via live chat and was told, it was being processed by the accounts department. I paid with PayPal. I could see on my PayPal account the amount had been refunded. After no response from kiwi I rang PayPal who advised, due to me cancelling the flights myself, they couldn’t issue a refund. At this point, 7 moths of anguish is being to take its toll on me Looking at their trust pilots reviews . … I only wish I had done my searches before using them !!! I put this comment on the kiwi Facebook page. An agent advised myself to contact their customer services.

I contacted customer service as Michael advised. I have still had no response. This making me so stressed. It’s a huge amount of money and it is taking over my life. No one should have to beg for what is theirs!!!! I truly don’t know what to do next?

Kiwi failed me on multiple occasions on a recent trip to Cancun. First, they did not inform me of the check-in window (72-24 hours prior to departure). They then sent me a message to check-in at the airport. When my family and I arrived, we learned that our seats had been given away. I rebooked with the airline for the next day cutting our vacation short and making me rebook my car and hotel in Cancun. The worst part is that I informed Kiwi multiple times about their failures. Each time I respond, a new person takes the complaint and claims I have not given them the right information or checked the correct boxes on their forms. I’ve tried them all and they are still giving me the run-around. I do not recommend going with Kiwi. Book directly with the airline, or follow other recommendations above, and cut out the middleman.

Thanks for your feedback, Kevin!

Kiwi scammed me also. I paid for check-in baggage and when I checked in, British Airways told me nothing was indicated in their system that I had paid for it because the travel agency (Kiwi) didn’t update the booking correctly.

I had to pay for check-in baggage twice, first with Kiwi and then again with British Airways. Kiwi has refused to refund me. Don’t trust these scam artists!

Thanks for your feedback, Adam!

I had a terrible experience with Kiwi. They informed they couldn’t book my flight when there was less than 24 h to the flight, didn’t offer me another flight option. Now I don’t have a flight ticket and I have to travel today. What a nightmare.

Refused to get me to my destination unless i paid another 500EUR because my flight was delayed Booked a flight with them in a single package using two carriers. The first flight was delayed by two hours so missed the connection. Kiwi.com told me to take the fight anyway so I was stranded in a third city in another country. Then Kiwi.com’s only solution was to make me buy another ticket at a higher price than the original ticket [in the range 450-650 euros]. The airline returned me to my home city so I could book a much cheaper flight, but Kiwi.com then said that this invalidated my return ticket too. I am at home having now had to spend over three times what I paid Kiwi.com, and Kiwi.com are so far refusing to refund me even though they did not get me to the destination I paid for at the agreed price. I am also out of pocket for accomodation and a tour I booked.

DON’T RISK USING BOOKING.COM. Fraudulent company!

kiwi.com is consumer antagonistic to the barest legal edge of fraudulence and I sincerely hope you reconsider your partnership with them.

I have a flight delayed due to weather, the airline wanted to reschedule my flight for the next day at no cost. kiwi blocked them from doing so presumably in the hopes of squeezing extra undeserved cash from me for doing literally nothing. Disgusting behaviour.

Lack of any respect for the customer, really bad services I bought 8 flights at a time, 4 flights one way going to Bali, 4 flights return home; I payed also an insurance and a tax for getting special help from Kiwi if I need it; after the first flight, I already had a situation because of it I could not catch the other 3 flights; I tried to ask for any kind of solution – changing flights, cancelling flights, anything and all I got as an answer was “it is your fault, nothing can ne done”; everybody knows there are a lot of solution, you can change flights, cancel, get refunds and so on. They even told me it is my job to talk with every airline involved… When I asked to talk with a supervisor…after waiting for another 5 minutes, sudenly, the call ended… Please don’t make the same mistake I did, choose any other option of booking your planes. Date of experience: December 22, 2022

For a long-haul flight from Saudi Arabia to Japan, I paid $1,500 for a return flight. On the final leg of my flight from Bangkok, Thailand to Fukuoka, Japan, I discovered my ticket did not include a check-in allowance with Thai Viet Jet. I was charged $39 for 7kg by the airline.

Upon contacting Kiwi.com about the issue they put the responsibility solely upon me because I did not request check-in baggage allowance.

Since when does the passenger/customer not receive a minimum check-in allowance for a long-haul flight?

Avoid Kiwi.com at all costs.

I detest Kiwi. I booked my flights for a wedding. Less than 24 hours after booking, my flights were changed. Since the flights were changed by less than 24 hours (even though they would now cause me to miss the entire wedding), Kiwi would do nothing to help.

I was supposed to fly in on Friday morning and fly out on Saturday night. Now I’m supposed to fly out on Friday night?! The entire point of the trip is to attend this wedding.

The only “solution” Kiwi offered me was purchasing another flight, however the “other flight” I can purchase is almost identical to the flight that was changed- it leaves 3 minutes after my original flight. This is appalling and Kiwi refuses to help.

Booking #273 299 510 Only use Kiwi.com as a search engine and go directly to the airline website. The “Kiwi guarantee” is an added fee and I bought it and it did absolutely nothing to help me. If your airline changed your flight the airline won’t help you because you booked it through kiwi.com, and kiwi.com won’t help you or change your flight at all. They claim if you buy the “kiwi guarantee” that you will be protected but it does nothing to help. 5 of my friend and myself all had to book completely new flights and used the airline’s website and not kiwi because kiwi.com considers a change to a completely different day a “minor change” if it’s under 24 hours. We were stranded with no where to stay and if we had originally booked on the airline website we would have been not only given options to change but also a hotel credit for overnight. Kiwi.com just absolutely does not care about you as a customer.

Thanks a lot for sharing, Amy!!

Do not use this KIWI SCAM ! These are rude scammers using tricks ! They book me twice and charged me twice for the same name and flight and they do not have any customer service you can call to correct or ask for corrections! (review reduced due to inappropriate wording)

The exact same thing happened to me. I bought insured tickets and they decided to cancel all my flights because of a problem with one of the connecting flights. Out of about 400 euros, they returned 30… Scamers!

We have had the exact same experience. CRIMINAL

I have to agree with years of complaints here. my wife bought a ticket with insurance and cancelled prior to it being booked; they gave her only a $10 refund. look in BBB to see they are rated ‘f’ and they list complaints of them pocketing the refund from the airlines instead. I can’t understand why there is yet no class action suit!

First review that I really had the need to write in my life so far. DON’T BOOK TICKETS WITH KIWI – WORST EXPERIENCE EVER WITH A COMPANY Let me share this ongoing, terrible experience with Kiwi, a company in which you don’t want to spent not even 1 dollar for sure: 1. I’ve made a reservation (I thought I did, at least) via Kiwi, in a total of 2.363,69€ 2. Day before the flight, received an email from Kiwi saying that it was impossible to do the check in online. Therefore, I should do so in the airport 3. Arrived at the airport and the airline company was not able to find any detail about my reservation: employees from the airline tried everything (kiwi reservation number, names), but it was useless – I didn’t have a set in that airplane 4. Contacted Kiwi customer service right away. After explaining the issue, waited 20 minutes for a new call to try to solve the situation 5. Kiwi customer support talked with someone from the airline company. In the end, the employee from the airline company told me that the ticket reservation had been suspended 6. From Kiwi, until this day, I’m still waiting for a justification on what happened 7. Worse than waiting for the justification, is waiting for the refund (that I obviously have the right to receive): I’ve explained the issue in point number 4; in multiple interactions in Kiwi chat; via email with Kiwi claims’ team and THEY NEVER KNOW what’s the issue (tremendous LACK OF COORDINATION), systematically asking me for e.g. proof of check in fees (EXPLAINED SO MANY TIMES I WAS NOT ABLE TO CHECK IN)

I am living the same nightmare as you right now. Going to my moms 90 and Kiwi booked me on a connecting flight to Jamaica that did not exist. No one was even at airline counter for the whole day to even help Because there was never even a flight scheduled to leave for Miami airport to Kingston. Spoke to 12 people at Kiwi and it was the same script each time about team working on it and they would call me back and then the phone hung up. So mind you I was traveling with two young children and stuck at airport from 10am until we left the airport to stay at a hotel that I had to pay for and then had to buy 4 tickets with American to to make it to Kingston. The crazy thing is Kiwi’s website is showing the the flight never existed actually made it to Kingston. (review reduced due to inappropriate wording)

There is an FB page called “I got screwed by Kiwi” with about 400+ members. That says how many people it has been screwing around. I have been waiting for my kiwi refund for 6+ months and when contacted they are rude to say they wont show any proof that they have applied for refund with the airline company. So, beware before booking with Kiwi. Goodluck

Kiwi has some serious operational problems. See my review from 12.06.2022. However, Matt from Hostelgeeks escalated this situation within Kiwi, and Luis from Kiwi customer service was able to issue a refund. I sincerely appreciate it, Matt and Luis!

Very glad your refund has been resolved by Kiwi! Happy I was able to put some of our users in a direct contact here and their refund/booking issue has been resolved.

Safe travels, Matt

I recently took my first trip with Kiwi.com. I booked a trip with one checked bag throughout. At the counter for the first flight, they informed me that no bag was included with the ticket, so I paid and submitted the receipt to Kiwi.com. While waiting for the flight, I was told that the claim would be processed, and I’d have my refund soon. They then declined the refund, claiming that a bag was included with the flight.

I’ve since spoken with the airline to confirm that the bag was not included on the flight, and discussed this many times with Kiw.com’s support. They repeatedly put me on hold and otherwise give me the run-around, before telling me it’s with the group that investigates these things (who you can’t speak with), and that they’ll call me back soon.

They then decline the claim through their in-app messaging service and I have to call back in to repeat the cycle.

Their website had a “glitch” and I was charged for 2 “non-refundable” tickets for myself on the same flight! Despite their obvious error, I was only offered a $9 refund, which I never got. When I reported the scam to my credit card company, Capital One, they too refused to withhold payment to Kiwi.

I had a very negative experience with Kiwi, but from reading other people’s reviews it seems I got off lightly. In my experience, they’re a nasty, unhelpful company who want to take your money and screw you over. My flight was cancelled, so they put me on one that was 12 hours earlier, which ruined my holiday plans. If you take someone’s money for a service, you either provide that service or give the money back. They were unable to provide the flight I paid them for and they refused to give my money back. They also refused to change my flight. If you’re considering booking a trip through them, be warned, they make their policies so they can mess you around to their advantage. They will change your flight and if the change is less than 24 hours, they consider it “minor”. With “minor” changes they won’t adhere to any requests to change and if you want to cancel the flight they won’t refund you because they have the audacity to call it a “voluntary” cancellation. My advice is don’t book with them. Most businesses aim to make a profit, but they do so by providing something positive to their customers. Kiwi do it by screwing their customers and not providing the service you pay them for and not giving a refund. Have a nice day

A company definitely NOT RECOMMENDED My son booked trip to Bangkok from Manchester left yesterday afternoon his flight was delayed one and a half hours hence missing his connection in Budapest. He is still there after 17 hours !! Being offered 4 replacement flights from Kiwi he accepted these only each time when queuing for boarding to be told the flight was full and his name was not on the passenger list! His next alternative was offered the 1.20pm (following day) but no guarantee this would have availability. This could go on for days!!! He has been offered a choice of “Assisted refund” to try to recoup money from the airlines in question, but no guarantee. Or, told could buy another ticket and send them the receipt – this option sounds too good to be true. But he has no option, of being STRANDED in a foreign country. My advice is being very wary this company is dodgy to say the least, how can they provide an alternative with no availability surely this is fraud!

Kiwi is the worst company ever. This is the worst company I have ever dealt with. I wish I could give it 0 stars. I was not notified of my flight cancellation and when I requested a refund, they REFUSED to refund it. Not only that, customer service is vague and plays completely dumn, gaslighting facts and trying to exhaust you until you give up talking to walls. It definitely looks like every employee goes through training to be the most ineffective and idle possible.

I was so disappointed. I went through the long process of selecting and filling in, waited for a confirmation email (expecting the booking to be done within minutes, as it always has when I’ve booked online- not via Kiwi.com) and instead got told my booking was “in progress” and “could take up to 24 hours”. By 12 hours I was panicking- knowing if they hadn’t booked it yet, I might lose it- and what about my money?! By 24 I was talking to their Chatbot, which made me feel no better as “he” almost immediately offered refund options. I told “him” I wanted flights not a refund and a human update on why it was taking so long. He said to “wait for an email”. 36 hours after I “booked” I got an sms and email that they’d not been able to book and the tickets had sold out. I was offered Kiwi Credit or a refund to my card (which could take up to 10 days, meaning I probably won’t be able to afford the increased fares to book again for the dates I needed). I chose that method anyway, having lost all faith in Kiwi’s ability to do the job they claim to be good for- booking flights. So disappointing.

UPDATE – Full refund received today along with a clear and polite explanation and apology for the failure from Kiwi.com. The personal contact was facilitated by Matt (thanks!), otherwise, I was getting nothing but “Bot” talk and unreplied-to emails. I’ll be honest in that I’ve lost a bit of confidence in booking through online agents, as there’s no guarantee this won’t happen again, but I do also see how it can happen with any agent and one experience doesn’t mean it would happen again with Kiwi.com.

That seems to be a common experience, you can get a bot to offer you a refund of 1% of your purchase price or ask you to pay more money to process your refund application.

It’s great that Matt was able to get you the refund that you are entitled to, but I doubt he can do anything about the thousands of others who are in the same situation.

You are right, Ben. I wish I could, but it is certainly not my job to follow up with Kiwi’s guarantee. Either way, the comment section is open for travelers leaving their first-hand reviews.

I recently booked a ticket from stockholm to cologne on a eurowings flight. They never sent me the eurowings confirmation, and the kiwi online check-in failed, so I had to wait in-line to check-in, hoping I did in fact have a real ticket. I did, it worked, but I won’t ever use them again.

I think if you are a backpacker who is really money conscious and who is not going to cancel or miss their flights or make multi-flight trips, it might be a good option. But for most everyday people, kiwi is really stressful and by the sounds of it a down right disaster if anything goes wrong.

Maybe kiwi is a good way to find a flight that you book directly with the airline.

Well put, Britta! Glad your case did not end in trouble! We are also very conscious when using them again. All these comments here make me happy that I never had issues with my flights, but at the time make me consider my upcoming reservations.

** This comment by Ben O’Regan is not being published as it includes insults, threats and assault **

Kiwi.com is a scam website do not book with it even if they offer better prices than carriers up front. They canceled my bags for one leg of the trip and only refunded me 15% of the amount I payed, as opposed to 50%. Even though the trip that was canceled had higher costs for bags had I booked elsewhere, which means I should have been refunded more than 50%.

Never again kiwi. It is a SCAM. They not informed me that info on India e-visa website is outdated. They could monitor this, at least using other customers. They did not provided human chat with support. I did not wanted refund. Only person that can explain what to do. If kiwi has your money, they treat you without respect. One of worst, unresponsive company, I have ever seen.

Kiwi is not an immigration agency. They clearly say on the website that it is the passenger’s responsibility to check for travel documents requirements and also provide a link for sherpa website. I’m seriously baffled by people who buy tickets without properly checking if they need a visa or not for the country where they’re flying…

I booked a flight with KIWI. Two weeks later I get a message that the flight had changed and I need to take action. I go online, ticket exchange is available if I travel there 24h later and return 12h later. I begrudgingly accepted this exchange and had to rebook hotels and change my whole itinerary, luckily the new flight still worked with my other flights. Then two more weeks pass and guess what? I get another message, now my ticket is canceled and there is no alternative flights Kiwi can offer. You would think a refund is automatic at this point. But you would be wrong. You can apply for refund and the message says:

Refund amount: as much as possible, but refunds depend on the carrier’s policies. Estimated refund time: approximately 3 months, depends on the carrier(s)

Now you are furious and you think I’ll just talk to the customer service, they will surely understand how ridiculous the situation is and correct it by issuing a full refund immediately. Well you are out of luck there because you can not call customer service unless your (canceled) flight is 14days or less away. Ok but you say there must be a way to contact the company. There is one other way, it’s an online message desk where Kiwi replies as soon as they can. It’s been two days and they haven’t replied to a single message I sent.

So to review. Kiwi sold me a ticket, then they canceled my flight, they offered no alternative flights, I am not getting any service from them any more, and it is their choice not to provide the service I paid for. What happens with the money I paid to Kiwi? They think they are entitled to keep it? Class action lawsuit anyone?

I had very nearly the same experience with Kiwi on a flight from CLE to London. They insist you follow their rules, but never work to get your refund. It’s been several months. I’m in favor of a class action.

I lost $700 on Kiwi. They are shamefully dishonest by providing misinformation on their website (regarding cancellations and rebooking of standard fare tickets), through the incompetence of their staff (making changes in a timely manner), and by being unresponsive to requests (I called back three times, each time, no action). I have lost $700 although I booked a standard fare ticket, with the opportunity to change it. When I tried to change the ticket, the website wouldn’t accept it, so I called, and a very nice representative said they would handle it manually. I would get a notice of the change on their website and I could approve it, within a four-hour window. I never received this notice, so I called back again. They said they were working on it and I would see it when it came through. I still never saw it. If they sent it, which they swear they did, then maybe they sent it the middle of night. Do they really expect their clients to stay up all night waiting for a message that might through from their system? In the morning, there was no message about my change request, rather a new message that the airline had canceled one of the legs for some other reason. Now the 48-hour advance notice window is over and there is no opportunity to change the ticket! I believe this is deliberate behavior on their part to deceive and confuse their clients from which they shamefully profit. I will never book with them again.

Thanks for sharing your first-hand experience, Karen!! Sorry you have this issue. Hope it’ll be resolved.

I lost $2000 on kiwi, for a cancelled flight by the carrier with no refund. Their customer service would not pick up the phone either.

kiwi.com is a fraud company, i booked 2 years back with kiwi.com, they cancelled my flight and till now no communication from their side. whenever is messaged them they said they are overloaded. and same happens again and again. stay away from kiwi.com and save your money.

Kiwi is the worst booking service ever…AVOID AT ALL COSTS. They “accidentally” cancelled my booked flight so I had to pay 3x the cost of the original flight at the gate. The customer service agent promised me a refund of double what I paid at the gate. I submitted a refund request with accurate receipts and Kiwi is offering a $68 refund when I paid over $150 at the gate. They still haven’t given me any refund and they haven’t followed up on the original promise of a $300 refund. They ruined my trip, caused me an incredible amount of stress, screwed me out of a lot of money (for me), and have only offered absolutely atrocious customer service. Seriously….NEVER USE THIS COMPANY

Thanks for sharing, Waverly.

Kiwi is the worst booking service ever. I lost my money in an hour by changing my flight date; there is no refund even if I got insurance bought from the same website. I advise anyone to avoid this company and look for other trusted companies online. This a frud company

This company is a scam – no other word for it. I booked a flight with them on 7th September 2021 from Vienna to Alicante via Palma Majorca, and paid them £144.55. On 19th February they notified me that the flights had been cancelled, and I paid an extra 45.15 euro for a direct flight. On 5th March they told me that this flight had been cancelled and asked me to pay another 95.23 Euro for the flight that would now be as the original one, via Palma Majorca.

Instead, I booked the flights direct with the airline at a total cost of about £81.

Kiwi is a huge scam and a fraud website. They have misleading information and incorrect information which would result in you losing out on your hard-earned money. Book directly with the Airlines and pay a couple of extra bucks rather than losing EUR 400 like me. They are fraudsters and scammers. Avoid Kiwi.com at all costs. It’s the worst service out there.

Complain about them here: https://www.bbb.org/us/fl/miami/profile/travel-agency/kiwicom-inc-0633-90562676

Even here they have a 1/5 rating. That should be enough. Trustpilot rated them 1/5.

Not everyone is dumb. Ban this company.

Booking #166 146 310 this company is a joke! I’ve purchased 2 flight tickets in September and unfortunately the flight got cancelled several days after the purchase. I’ve reached KIWI for refund and they informed me that they are waiting for the carrier to refund them. I’ve contacted carrier and learned that the money was transferred immediately back to KIWI in September. I’ve requested refund (cash) and since 13 October 2021 I haven’t received anything…I’ve contacted them several times, same bulls*it over again that there is high volume of requests etc…they have my money more than 6 months on their account without any solid response about the expected date to send me my money back….so fed up with this scam company- don’t book with them, save yourself a lot of energy…

So sorry to hear that, Maria.

It is mind-blowing to see that there are even issues with cancelled flights…

Hope you will find a solution! Matt

Thank you for post Useful Piece of Information. Keep Sharing More like this stuff.

⚠️ EXPOSING Kiwi.com – READ THIS ⚠️

2 years ago, my wife and I were planning a trip to Australia. We booked our flight before the pandemic and as the world shut down in March, we were not able to go. We booked our tickets through 2 websites… Kiwi.com for the way there and Gotogate for the return.

A few months after the shut down, I contacted both websites to get my refunds. Gotogate processed a full refund in July 2020. However it’s now been 2 years and I will haven’t got anything from Kiwi.com yet.

I followed up regularly, and I have been told that Hawaiian Airlines rejected the refund request, and that they haven’t heard back from Delta Airlines.

I eventually filed a complaint on the Department of Transporting website to sort this out as I wasn’t getting anywhere on my own.

The DOT contacted the airlines, and they both got back to me directly.

I found out Delta refunded Kiwi.com in November 2020, and Hawaiian Airlines refunded them in February 2021. Kiwi.com fed me lies for 2 years when they had MY MONEY on their account.

After complaining to them, they are offering me a partial refund as a credit of their website. What a joke, how can they expect me to use their horrible service ever again.

I have screenshots of all the messages… I will share only a couple here to show I’m telling the truth.

STAY AWAY FROM Kiwi.com. THEY ARE LIERS.

Thanks a lot for sharing this, Jeremie!!!

Little update. I eventually got a full refund from Kiwi. It took a while, despite sending them the proof they were still saying no… I told them I would expose them and sue them… and one day the refund appeared on my bank account (without any communication).

So don’t give up guys. But for sure I will never use this service again.

My flight was canceled and Kiwi refuse to refund the flight. How is that even possible? There can be no discussion if a flight was canceled that the money should be returned.

Hey Maarten,

100% agree. This is odd. Please check the comment above by Jeremie, maybe this helps?

Not odd, very common.

you are no longer welcome at this site. Your threatening and insulting comments will no longer be published.

You did not even read this guide before you used that website. You still have not read it, obviously. Furthermore, you are insulting other travelers, even threatening. Your behavior is unacceptable.

As soon as payment has been made, the customer is no longer relevant

My problem with ‘Kiwi.com’ started at the beginning of the Corona crisis when flight bans were imposed worldwide.

While other airlines and travel companies have been refunding airline tickets, ‘Kiwi.com’ has decided to take a different approach. Despite almost two years of dispute and more than 40 messages to the support, the company has not yet reimbursed any costs. ‘Kiwi.com’ even goes as far as trying to make even more profit from the Corona crisis.

My personal experience with the online travel portal ‘Kiwi.com’:

I booked a flight from Munich to Denver through ‘Kiwi.com’. When Corona took off in Europe and most countries closed their borders, it was clear that this flight would not take place. The flights were still active at the time, but ‘Kiwi.com’ contacted me and told me that action was needed.

The website offered me 3 options: 1. Cancellation: Since I didn’t book any of the additional packages, I would only have been offered 10% of the ticket price as a refund. 2. Rebooking: Without an additional package, you would have to pay for both the old flight and the new flight tickets. 3: Apply for a refund: Actually the only reasonable option. However, the support advised against it and stated that they did not want to assume any responsibility or liability.

I have informed myself about the legal protection of the Chamber of Labour. They recommended me to apply for a refund after the airlines canceled.

After ignoring Kiwi.com’s recommendations, both airlines also refunded.

Unfortunately, 105 euros are outstanding. At first I assumed that one of the airlines didn’t refund in full. ‘Kiwi.com’ has already marked the refund request as ‘closed’ and has not commented on it.

Only after contacting ‘Kiwi.com’ several times did the support concede that both airlines have paid back in full and that the difference of 105 euros is due to the ‘service fee’ that ‘Kiwi.com’ adds to the tickets. I would like to point out that this ‘service fee’ corresponds to approx. ⅓ of the actual ticket price!

When I asked if I could get a refund, ‘Kiwi.com’ declined. So I turned to legal protection again. They assured me that according to Austrian law Art 5 and 8 of the Passenger Rights Regulation (EG) 261/2004 applies and I am entitled to a full refund. However, the legal department added that it is a foreign company and a process is complicated and not worthwhile.

Since I am entitled to the money, I did not want to give up and sent a few messages to the support and pointed out Art 5 & 8 and explained in detail why I am entitled to the refund.

To date I have not received a cent refund from ‘Kiwi.com’ however after 8 more messages to support I was offered a voucher. I wasn’t very happy with it but I knew there was nothing more to get. When I accepted it, however, it became clear that ‘Kiwi.com’ had never thought about how I should get this voucher issued, even though several support staff had promised me it. According to support, my case is now being checked with ‘priority’, but the contact hasn’t contacted me for over a week.

Closing word:

Anyone who thinks they can save money by booking through ‘Kiwi.com’ should be warned. If there are problems, you have to expect to be left with all your costs.

Had I listened to Kiwi.com I would have been reimbursed 1/10th of my cost today and even after almost 2 years of extreme persistence and disputes with Kiwi.com I was not offered a satisfactory option.

I consider Kiwi.com to be an inept, miserable and incompetent provider and can only advise everyone against booking through this provider.

Thanks a lot for this detailed report on your experience, Harald. Super important and useful for all readers out there!

I consider myself lucky that I personally never had to go through the refund-process with them. This might be a reason why I like Kiwi, simply because I only saw the good side.

Thanks for sharing and safe travels, Matt

It would be karmic justice if you did get scammed by Kiwi after you’ve posted so many glowing endorsements.

If you book with Kiwi and the flight is cancelled (as so many were during the pandemic) you will lose your money. In addition Kiwi will contact you and ask for more money to process your refund. If you pay the processing fee, you will get scammed twice.

It is interesting how you define justice: You have this terrible experience with Kiwi and I give you here the opportunity to share your experience. I used the website, too. I had a minor bad experience and got it solved. Now you come here and throw your frustration and insults around.

Other than you, I wish you all the best with your travels. You are welcome at Hostelgeeks as long as you keep your manners. If this is not possible, there are plenty of other sites to use.

I had terrible experiences. I booked a flight, and the night before I get a message that they cannot provide the ticket. I called and they said they can refund but it would take 10 days. (the ticket was very expensive and did not trusted them. They said I could get a KIWI credit refund and try again. I did, it did not work and when I asked for the money they said they don t refund KIWI credits in money.

DO NEVER USE KIWI.COM, WORST HELPDESK POSSIBLE.

Stay away from them! They weren’t able to add the seat I ordered to my flight. They promised a refund, but it has never been sent. They deleted their email address after some communication. After four months still nothing has happened. Their helpdesk doesn’t answer. It seems they just have stolen my money. Legal action will be taken.

totally agree, DO NOT USE KIWI. They don t refund and the helpdesk is just some automatic answers that have nothing to do with your request. Once the 14 days past and you keep trying to contact them, they tell you that the legal period past.

Mate, kiwi is an absolute trash booking agency. You should not support their service and should do a little more research before posting this article. So many unhappy customers, your support just brings your legitimacy down.

They left me stranded in India during the heat of the pandemic. Their terrible service resulted in one of the most stressful weeks of my life and weeks after of trying to get my money back for the ticket they didn’t even purchase from the airline.

Such a trash service — stay away. And Matt, do so more research and consider taking this down man. The quantity of horror stories from Kiwi bring trash is overwhelming. I think it time for Kiwi to be accountable for their actions.

Thanks a lot for your feedback and sharing experience!

Yeah, I am aware of this problem and this is why I keep this comment section open for all of you. This way, you can share your first-hand experiences! I do my best to have this post up to date, and everything in this article is genuine. I used them and it was good. Furthermore, I also had an incident with them, and I share it.

So with my review and your reviews here in the comment section, we are giving fellow travelers a good overview of Kiwi.com, I would argue. Unfortunately, many travelers use them without reading this article first. Again, I would argue it helps to read this article to avoid pitfalls, e.g. I do not recommend using them for transit-flights.

Safe travels, MAtt

You need to stop defending this company. They have caused a lot of people considerable financial loss. They continue to sell flights that don’t exist and refuse to issue refunds when flights are cancelled.

“The 1 Million Dollar Question: Is Kiwi.com a scam?

Answer: No, Kiwi is not a scam; that’s just too much to state. “

As always, I appreciate your comment. You can always quote me and I will stand by it. Here is the full quote:

The 1 Million Dollar Question: Is Kiwi.com a scam?

Answer: No, Kiwi is not a scam; that’s just too much to state. They do have a lot of happy customers. Even Skyscanner links you to Kiwi. However, it is not a very reliable website with a perfect customer service. So, if there is a problem with your booking/ flight, it’s not good. If your flight has no issues, you will love Kiwi.

When you read this entire quote, it will give you a better understanding.

WARNING: KIWI.COM have a new scam. The price they charge your credit card is not the price they quote on the website. I made a booking for a flight valued at $407. When I submitted my credit card details a window popped up to say the price had increased to $897.66 and would I still like to proceed. I DECLINED THE OPTION, BUT KIWI.COM STILL TOOK THE PAYMENT OF $897.66 They have refused any refund. The price of the flight is still showing on their website as $407. They refuse to call me back or answer my questions. Don’t take the chance.

Thanks for sharing, Jason!

Hello, I have booked a continuous flight from Chennai to Bahrain to Dubai Air Gulf airline through KIWI website they took 24H to confirm the ticket by sending me two tickets (separate reservation No.) in one PDF of the same root Chennai to Bahrain in one ticket and Bahrain to Dubai in another ticket with different reservation No. At the airport, refused to check in my flight because I do not have a Bahrain visa because it’s a separate flight, not a continuous flight. I got in touch with air gulf customer service, and they said there is no root as kiwi booked, and they made it separate. Finally, this mistake by KIWI cost me the whole flight cost, and they deny the mistake, kept manipulating, fobbing, and didn’t refund or compensate for this ticket. Bad experience!

**** KIWI.com is a 3rd grade company SCAMMING consumers DAILY *** Sold me an impossible itinerary for USD 3500** Booking number 1805223XX** Booking Date Nov. 9 2021 (PT Time) ** Date of Travel Dec. 13th ** SFO to DEL and return DEL to SFO.

I booked an international trip from SFO to DEL and return with my son on Nov. 10th. We were sold a connection through TOKYO on the return that will involve change of airport from HND to NRT via All Nippon Airways (ANA). I happily bought the ticket on Nov. 9th but when I am trying to check in ANA is saying that they will not let us board in because JAPAN has a requirement for “14 day quarantine” for long time. Please note, this did not happen due to OMICRON variant.. It was the situation even before that, but KIWI.com continues to sell this impossible itinerary.

The Kiwi.com customer service is a horrible team which will offer me 10 Euros for the fraud they are committing by canceling it. I am reporting this to KAYAK, CITI and US Department of Transportation now. This must be stopped ASAP.

My humble request to people looking at Kiwi.com for international travel. Please stay AWAY from this FRAUD. You never know where in the world you may be stranded, and you will be helpless in a foreign land.

I ended up booking with kiwi, skyscanner sent me over and I didn’t give it much thought. I paid with my credit card for my direct flight NYC > LA. Now I’m a bit nervous and I hope I’ll make it home for Christmas. Should be ok, right?

Hi Olga, did you make your flight okay? I’m in the same boat.

THANKS THANKS THANKS!!! Skyscanner forwarded me to Kiwi and I saw Kiwi can be a bit messy. Found your article here and avoided the transit with them as you recommended; had to book two separate flights though as the kwiiguarantee made me nervous. It works! Now I am in NYC with my bf 😉

Thank you so much, this is encouraging. Found a deal on their site and was nervous. It is a direct flight, so not lay-overs as you mentioned here. Fingers crossed

Awesome, Dani! Please keep us in the loop!

Safe travels

Let’s be straightforward here. KIWI.COM SUCKS. I am currently in Milan airport at 8 pm, instead of being in Sardinia at 1pm. They suck big time, and that includes all the travel agents I spoke to. They sent me wrong flight details and was put to shame by check in personnel because my flight doesn’t exist. Happened twice today. This company su** at everything.

Did you get a refund? I’m guessing you didn’t.

Really helpful article! You really have a great stuff on Kiwi!

Kiwi is fantastic and they sorted out my accommodation and changed my connection flight after a delay to get to Athens! I’m, well was, horrified by those terrible reviews. Wondering if it’s just bad for refunds but reliable for their kiwi guarantee? Either way, I had a good experience. Just wanted to share this.

Did you use Kiwi.com Guarantee and is it worth buying it?

Interesting!! It seems that now you have to purchase the Kiwi guarantee extra. Before, this guarantee was automatically included.

I really do not understand those bad reviews about Kiwi. I traveled so many times with kiwi and never had an issue. Was I just lucky? Again, I don’t get it. I’ll use them either way…

Terrible experience, scam artists Terrible! The worse experience I ever had, together with skyscanner. They should call them skyscammer!. Booked a trip to Montengro consisting in 3 different flights. I couldn’t check in online, not allowed, the luggage policies on their website are wrong. Ther e-ticket they provide you doesn’t inform you which tarif you have, so no way to find out until you check in at the counters. Call them few times to find out, there had no idea or they couldn’t explain. Terrible experience, end up costing me almost twice the amount advertised. I won’t recommend and I will never never use it again.

If your flight is cancelled, you will lose your money. There is no “maybe” you will definitely lose your money. Kiwi also sell flights that can’t be used like flights transiting in a country that doesn’t allow transiting. If you buy one of these flights, you automatically lose your money – there is no “maybe”.

If you are entitled to a refund, Kiwi will ask you to pay a processing fee, but if you pay, you will lose more money.

The only people who have been able to get refunds have either had their credit card company step in or the aviation authority step in.

Kiwi.com are running by Scammers, Period. So I booked a flight from JFK, New York to India. Had a Layover in Doha. So Kiwi Combined two tickets and sold it to me. When I reach the Airport, they informed me you need supplemented documents to travel via this particular ticket. I had to buy a different combination of tickets from Airport itself to travel. All I wanted if Kiwi just provided that information, but obviously they won’t take any responsibility. I ended up spending another $1500 because of my situation. When later I contacted Kiwi they asked me to email them and later rejected it all together. So NEVER remember Ever book anything through KIWI.com, it’s better you throw money in a gutter then giving your money to these blood suckers. COVID is around and Airlines are cooperating, I had to change my plans because of sudden Covid restrictions and Airlines asked me to give my details, and they will change it for free. I called Kiwi and asked them to change my ticket as Airlines are willing to do it for free, guess what Kiwi said you will have to buy a new ticket even if Airlines are willing to do it for free. People die or not, Kiwi is there to make money out of your ashes if they can. Stupid Company. Will probably take to small claim court via my credit card and fault their payments which i paid them.

Booking # 153 848 134

Kiwi.com is a scam. I never got my boarding passes. I paid for baggage on all flights through Kiwi.com and arranged for handicapped husband to get wheelchairs assistance. Neither airline received any of the baggage funds. We had to pay again and no one qgot the wheelchair messages. I was absolutely shocked that the tickets were paid for. It is not easy to request a refund through their website or app. They finally acknowledged to receiving my request and documents. But noted that refunds like this can take 3 months or longer because of volume. Boy the wood “volume” says it all. This company s doesn’t have a few customer service issues, they are unable to provide the services as described andis defined as a scam. I am in my 60’s and have traveled extensively most of my life, where in the world is this acceptable.

Thanks for sharing your first-hand experience, Mary Ann. Sorr you are going through this trouble.

Under special circumstances I recommend not to use any booking agent. Instead, I recommend always booking directly with the Airline, the accommodation, the tour provider. That is obviously not an excuse for the customer service, just general advise. I once had this case with crutches and it was great to deal with the airline directly.

All the best, Matt

NEVER NEVER EVER book with kiwi!! Worst experience ever! The customer service doesn’t exist. All my mails have been ignored. After I shared 20 bad reviews I found another email address from. Kiwi.com and I finally got a response. I will get my refund. I’m waiting for it. Will see if I really get it.

Try: [email protected]

My booking number is 128621416. My refund request has been pending since Nov 2020.

I contacted Emirates airlines regarding refund status of my ticket. They confirmed that refund request has been already processed. As per their records, refund request is processed on 22nd Jan 2021. After several phone call attempts, I could reach @kiwicom247 on phone on 17th May 2021. Their customer support as well confirmed the same i.e., refund is credited from the Etihad to Kiwi.com

It has been more than eight months since refund is credited to @kiwicom247 from carrier. Still, 1) @kiwicom247 is not passing on refund to me 2) On their site, incorrect information is shown regarding the status of refund. Currently their website shows that refund decision is with Carrier, but this is clearly wrong and cheating. 3) Now @kiwicom247 stopped answering phone calls Their automated voice tells me to raise request on their site at helpdesk. I raised message on their helpdesk, and it has been pending since four months.

Thanks for your sharing your experience, Khurana!

I am just so so so sorry I didnt look at the reviews before booking my flight in 2019. I can only hope to help at least one person. I share my experience in all my platforms and to anyone flying I warn them about Kiwi.com Booked lfight in Dec 2019. Covid hit for flight in may 2020. Still waiting for refund in Aug 2021. Now got an e-mail saying I can get some refund back. So ithought , ok these scammers need to make some profit to make a living so I let it go but when I asked for refund to be made to my form of initial payment, I was told I couldnt and they are now asking my bank swift info for bank transfer. When I tried to process that, they are not letting me do that either. The links and website they lead me to are not working. They basically left me with one option which is a Kiwi credit. Id rather give my money away than use them. That’s how horrible of a company they are.

Thanks for sharing your experience here, Anika!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but based on my experience, Kiwi.com is an absolute scam.

As the pandemic was beginning to intensify in India, the US state department called for immediate departure. To make things worse, I made the massive mistake of booking my travel home with Kiwi.com. I found myself standing at the ticket counter in Bangaluru with a booking confirmation, but no ticket. Kiwi.com never purchased my tickets home.

I then had to purchase another ticket, obviously not using Kiwi, for an incredible amount of money and then I had to convince the military to let me out of the airport and find a hotel during lockdown. I found a wonderful woman who opened up her entire hotel just for me and had to spend 4 days hoping international flights would remain open. Regardless to say, this was an incredibly expensive ordeal and one of the most stressful weeks of my life.

All because I booked with Kiwi. I have been trying to get a refund for months and haven’t received any messages from their customer service. I would not recommend Kiwi.com to anyone and would even entreat you not to book with them.

Kiwi, if you are reading this… please refund my money. 144 854 457

For the People that still haven’t received their money for so long, they all disagree including me. i haven’t got my money since october 2020, should i give them 4stars for that since their trying right, Fuck that. They better pay us back otherwise your gonna have a lot of people giving them hate.

My vacation was cancelled due to COVID-19. It has been over a year and I still have not been refunded the value of one of my tickets. Recently they have been ignoring my chats/emails and have the gall to say that they have refunded my purchase completely even though I have bank and credit card statements to prove otherwise. Their phone system does not have actual humans answering and is useless to me because my case has been “resolved” in their disreputable jalopy of a system.

If a company does not deliver a promise good or service they should at least refund the customers money – this is a basic marketplace principle. All the things you listed in your pros section a mere baubles compared to this core of honest business in the 21st century. They stole my money and lied about it.

Kiwi.com is a SCAM for sure. They emailed me that one of my flights in the itinerary is canceled. When I checked the airline website, the flight was not canceled.

Kiwi is making us fool by such false information and keeping the refund money with them.

They are definitely scammed me. Their mode of operation (the one I encountered at least) is to notify of false flight changes (I checked with the airline no changes has been made) and “provide” take alternatives so you would pay more money. I specifically asked them (after trying to contact them over w weeks) to send me the e-tickets of the so called flights but they only send me the old ones! The reason is that there were never changes happening so no new tickets ever existed! The perfect scum LOL

I hate kiwi.com!!!! It’s been a year already and until now they’re not giving back my refund. If you visit their FB page you can see that a lot of people are requesting for a refund… I’ve been trying to reach them but I only received an autobot reply. I checked their website to see the progress of my refund case but it’s not moving for more than a year!!! Damn!!! Never book to them! They’ll only get your money but no guarantee of giving it back!

Kiwi is a scam.

I first posted in 13 January 2021. It’s now been more than 5 months since my flights were cancelled and I don’t expect to get any refunds. If I do get a refund I will post a follow up, but I don’t expect it will happen.

Kiwi is a scam because they sell flights that transit in countries that don’t allow transiting. This happened to my wife who booked a flight transiting in Brunei even though it’s not permitted to transit in Brunei.

Kiwi is a scam because they book flights with no intention of issuing a refund if the flight is cancelled. There are too many people on internet forums who can’t get refunds from Kiwi long after the airlines have refunded the money to Kiwi.

Kiwi is a scam because when your flight gets cancelled, they ask for more money to expedite your refund. People who pay these fees don’t get anything for their money, they just get scammed twice.

Kiwi are in the Czech Republic and it’s too difficult for me to take legal action. Some people in the US have complained to the aviation authority which seems to get results. Unfortunately, I’m not in the US.

I really Like this information about the airline industry. This covid has brought great fluctuations in many markets.

Don’t use Kiwi.com! You stand a good chance to lose the money you pay!

I bought one-way tickets through Kiwi in Feb, 2021 to go from Barcelona to Denver. Yesterday Iberia canceled the transatlantic part of the flight. Not a peep from Kiwi. They do not have a valid customer support phone number in the United States (If you call the listed number it says that it only prioritizes contact about travel in progress, and when I entered my booking number it just hung up the call) This website (hostelgeeks) published a glowing review in spite of the horror stories from customers. Also on this site hostelgeeks posted a message from Kiwi telling anyone with problems to contact them at [email protected] . I tried that. I received an automated reply from Kiwi saying that they no longer use that email address and to contact them through the web site.

Honestly I think it is a disservice to the public for hostelgeeks to continue to publish the glowing review of a fraudulent travel company

Sorry to hear that, Peter! We publish all bad reviews you and all other readers leave here. This is one of the things we can do!

Second, this article is not a glowing review of Kiwi; please read it from top to bottom! We updated (and keep updating) a big part of this review based on the comments we have received and our own personal experience as well. In my opinion, it is a service we do for all travelers as we reflect what Kiwi is about. In our article we clearly state, the customer support is not reliable and “Important update to Covid-19: Due to the Coronavirus Crisis, we recommend booking your flights directly with the official website of the Airline like Qatarairways.com. At the moment we do not recommend using any 3rd party agents like Skyscanner, Kiwi or others. The airline itself has the absolute latest news on restrictions and cancelled flights.”

Thanks for letting us know about the email address! This is the official statement and email address we received from Kiwi, after we confronted them with the numerous bad comments we receive regarding their website/service. I will contact them again to ask for another email so we travelers have a valid contact.

I appreciate your comment and honesty, and again, sorry you have this issue with Kiwi!

Worst experience ever with me and their customer service is absolutely horrible! I booked a flight last year during COVID-19 through Qatar airways in March 2020 And the flights were cancelled So I requested a refund It’s been almost a full year now I called and emailed many times regarding refund status But they keep on closing my enquiry and saying it’s with the airline even though I called the airline and they said the issue is with them and a lot of people I know who booked directly from the airline got refunded Worst experience ever Never ever again!!

I have been trying to obtain a refund from Kiwi for flights cancelled in June 2020. I have contacted Virgin Atlantic who have stated that the refund has been paid to Kiwi but then Kiwi has denied that they have been paid and have asked me to prove that Virgin have refunded the cost of the flight. I have tried a “chargeback” and this was refused because of Kiwi’s T’s & C’s and then tried a section 75 refund which again Kiwi have argued that this does not apply as their “guarantee” does not cover a pandemic, so now waiting to see if Kiwi will actually pass on the refund from Virgin Atlantic,but after reading the reviews here I am not confident. I would urge all potential customers to avoid Kiwi.com and urge hostelgeeks to take into consideration all the negative feedback before promoting this site.

Thanks, John! We are taking this into consideration. It is all in the posts above! We are also publishing all your comments and complaints about Kiwi (when language allows).

How can you say that Kiwi is reliable, based on what? I can tell you that they stole the money from my tickets canceled by the airline (LOT Airlines sent me the proof that they refunded my tickets to Kiwi about 6 months ago), then after contacting the proposed resolution center – Checz Trade Inspection Authority I was informed that Kiwi is ignoring their request and that they always do that, and that the only binding decision to enforce them to pay you your money back can be issued by the court. So they know – Kiwi knows – that people are completely powerless to enforce refunds unless they can pay for the court, and they know that robbing thousands of people for a few hundred is a mass of money. So – excuse me, how dare you tell people to trust obvious criminals, why are you helping them continue robbing customers?

I invite you to take the time to read this complete guide. Based on your comment, it seems you did not even scan through. I have been using them for years, but certainly not exclusively! I even added my screenshots from my tickets in this article. Skyscanner is also partner of Kiwi. Sorry you are disappointed.

You can read through the comments here as well; there are facebook groups about this too. Maybe there you will find helpful tips too.

Take care, Matt

Agreed on that. I’m facing the same issue currently. Jetstar has been refunded my amount last month. I have provided all the details to them including transaction ID and Jetstar conversation but they are just ignoring it. So so disappointed.

WARNING: Do NOT use Kiwi to make reservations in German ICE high-speed trains. Kiwi does not offer the possibility to reserve a seat in the train.

So, when it is busy (and normally it often is), you might have to STAND during your entire journey. All major other train booking sites do offer the possibility to reserve a seat on high-speed trains, so be sure to book there.

@Kiwi: please do not ask me for a booking number, since this goes for _all_ train tickets on your website. Please ask your technical team to add the possibility to reserve seats on trains.

Hey Rogier,

Thanks for this information! I have never used Kiwi.com for booking train tickets, so this is very good to know for all of us. And yes, the ICE trains in Germany are usually packed; unfortunately. If I am not mistaken, the only way to book a fix seat is directly at the official train company; I have never seen any other website offering this option.

Also: for some connections and trains you simply cannot book any seat, at least in Germany. This is much better done in Spain. When you buy a train ticket from Madrid to Barcelona for instance, you get a fix seat automatically.I found this much better, more efficient and less stressful for the travelers than in Germany.

Thanks again, Rogier, very helpful for other travelers! Matt

“unfortunately. If I am not mistaken, the only way to book a fix seat is directly at the official train company; I have never seen any other website offering this option.”

Well, luckily, other sites like loco2.com, thetrainline.com, raileurope.com, onlytrain.com, happyrail.com, railbooker.com, omio.com and of course bahn.com DO give you the option to book a seat.

Only kiwi.com doesn’t…

Thanks, Roger! Big fan of Omio.com actually. Must be a new feature then, super cool! Thanks for sharing 🙂

Kiwi.com is the biggest scam site around … you “may” get flights booked and if youre extremely lucky manage to catch them but if you need a refund they will trick you into paying “refund fees” in order for them to refund something that should be done as a matter of course (canceled flights) and then give you less than half your money back if they even refund you at all.

Kiwi cancelled my flight and refused to comply with US Department of Transportation orders saying that cancelled flights are entitled to a refund. Instead, they forced me to buy new flights. This company is a profit-hungry, shady, and despicable corporation that deserves no money from any honest travelers.

I was scammed by Kiwi.com

I was very surprised to find a serious blog claiming that kiwi.com is not a scam (given the amount of traffic on the net to the contrary). I can only speak for my own experiences, but they certainly scammed me.

My wife bought tickets on kiwi.com that transit in Brunei – the only problem is, due to the covid situation, Brunei hasn’t allowed transit flights since March last year. I’m sure we will not be allowed to board the flight. I very much doubt the funds have been forwarded to the airline, it’s just a scam.

kiwi continue to offer flights which transit in Brunei on their website. Anyone buying one of these flights will not be allowed to board the plane and will lose their money.

Oh, I pressed the link to apply for a refund and kiwi generously offer $15 refund (no joke) on flights worth $3000.

so sorry to hear that! We state we do not recommend using any 3rd party at the moment. The official airline are the most reliable resource during this situation.

Shame on you for allowing that thousand of people are SCAMMED every day thanks to your promotion of kiwi.com. They stole 2671Euro from me. Do NOT order with Kiwi.com, they are scammers; they canceled 1 part of my flight that is in 3 parts and I paid 3100$; now they offer 100$ refund or pay again 3000$ and they don’t want to give me the reservation number and ticket number from the other 2parts of the flight that isn’t canceled. Looks like they never booked it at all. No response on facebook or email or website/helpdesk, just automated robot answers. Big scam!!! DO NOT use!! Lost 3100$ and even paid 210$ extra insurance.

Hi Yoga Latinos,

Sorry to hear you had this bad experience with kiwi.com. Did you take the chance to read our article before making your reservation? I clearly state you should not rely on the Kiwi guarantee and not on the customer service! Please check again our cons for using Kiwi .

And for your “Kiwi.com a scam?”. Well, even the big Skyscanner links you to Kiwi.

There’s really nothing I can do in this little article, except approving your comments. Your comment and hopefully my reply too helps all travelers. I just ask you to remain respectful.

Safe travels and wish you all the best, Matt

This company is a full on scam. They charged me in full for two separate journeys for an itinerary change. I’m a seasoned traveller and this has never happened–you normally only get charged for the difference in flight cost plus perhaps a small deposit cost.

Kiwi intentionally misleads their clients through confusing and unclear processes.

To make matters worse, when my second flight was cancelled, Kiwi only offered alternatives that were insanely out of the way and more expensive. No alternative was given for a full refund. They only guarantee 100 pounds of credit (which is laughable.)

For some demented (and illegal?) reason, they won’t reply or take calls from customers. I had to wait for 3 weeks for a reply. The phone service literally hangs up on you. I had to take my business to Expedia and book an entirely new (3rd!) journey. Thankfully, Expedia is an actual reputable company. I should have gone with them to start with.

The only reason I’m traveling across the world during a pandemic is because my father literally passed away. This company is taking advantage of vulnerable people like me. Absolute sociopaths.

They are holding onto nearly $10 GRAND of my money. They are now, after ignoring me for weeks, attempting to gaslight me. According to them, they don’t need to return any of it.

So sorry youre going thru this … same thing is happening to me. How do we stop these scammers? I want to launch a “warning” campaign across the internet so everyone knows about this and stays away. If anyone can help me with a big campaign against them let me know!

KIWI is NOT legit. My flight was cancelled, I was notified and they said they would refund, but 5–6 months later and still no refund. As soon as they flight date passed they changed the flight detail on my account from cancelled to traveled(probably to be harder for proof to dispute). Definitely did NOT travel since the flight was cancelled. Every time you call they tell you the refund is on its way, until after it is too late to dispute with the bank. Then they make your booking number inactive so that you are not able to reach them by phone any longer. ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE. They are not trustworthy.

“Hey guys! Thanks for the review. We want to bring the best service to our customers by offering affordable travel to everyone. We are sorry for anyone´s bad experience and will do our best to resolve any issue with our Customer Support team. Please contact [email protected] .”

You can find hundreds of these same solution-less comments on their Facebook page. I think it’s cool that you have had success, but thousands of people have been duped out of a refund. So I’m sorry but the official statement is straight up bogus and lacks any empathy. If they really cared about their customers and their bad experiences, they would be doing more to accommodate them. While other airlines and companies have adjusted to the current times to reimburse customers for flight canceled due to COVID, Kiwi.com has selfishly clung to their money and in some cases getting the money from the airline but not proceeding to return those funds to the buyer.

People should really stay away from this booking site. It’s the worst experience I’ve ever had.

For anyone else reading this and looking for guidance on how to take steps toward getting your refund back, I wrote a whole post with resources on what to do. https://travelbranyik.com/what-to-do-about-the-kiwi-com-refund-you-didnt-get-during-covid-19/

Thanks for your comment and your own review now! We shared it here in our guide! Take care, Matt

I’m not sure I trust hostelgeeks now…. After all, how could they give kiwi a good review when it’s obvious… on three social media’s…. How much money they have literally stolen from people!

Sorry you are disappointed. We state in this article our own experiences – plural! We cannot make it more clear than this.

Wish you all the best and safe travels, Matt

Kiwi.com are a bunch of crooks. The only time you will find a good review is if that person left a review immediately after booking a flight.

After using Fly Scanner as norm the top result came up with Kiwi.com.

There were two flights I one at 12 the other at 12:20. I realised within a minute of booking the latter that once you arrive at Heathrow you then had to travel to Standsted to get the connecting flight.. a box appeared giving me the option to cancel. I received an automated mail saying It had not worked..I had to google their number as the “package price” I paid did not include contact details right away .. I got through to this agent who had no empathy and was soo rude and stated I could rebook the other flight but I would have to pay £314 again minus £10.. I bit the bullet and organised a National Express.

Fast forward to May:

Due to corona virus my flights got cancelled. Kiwi offer you these options. 1 To chase the refund yourself 2 get a voucher 3 let them do the chasing with a fee and receive the money quicker.. 4 let them do the chasing which will take longer.

I chose the first option , when I called BA it was then I learned that Kiwi.com had not booked it under my name or credit card and so they refused to refund me. I called Kiwi and told them, they said they could not help me as I had chosen to take full responsibilty of chasing the refund, I said how it was not possible. After arguing for some time I was told to pose as my mother and say that i lived in Czech Republic and used a mastercard that was not mine..

In a nutshell I have finally gotten the money back from the airlines but Kiwi are keeping hold of £70 of it despite saying on their refund policy that if a flight is cancelled they will refund in full.. I have managed to get £244 ou of £314 which reading some reviews where they paid extra for Kiwi to chase the refund and still not heard anything.. I am lucky. ALSO what I have heard is that they lie to your bank so they don’t have to cough up and send you the check in details late so you have to pay a late check in fee.

Overall the worst customer service , to a point where I had to hang up on a couple of agents to try get hold of somone who was not aggressive.. will never deal with again.

I also must add the fact that Kiwi uses (with each client) some sort of credit card/Visa card and puts the card under the name of the individual they are booking for. When I called the airline who had cancelled the flight they said they would refund me the money. I asked if it would go to Kiwi or to my own credit card that I had paid with. The airline assured me (THREE different phone calls ) that it would go directly to my credit card because the card they were reimbursing has my name ! Weeks later the refund never showed up ! So I called Kiwi again and they said they had all the money but that if I picked “refund” I could get my money back to MY credit card ! So I picked refund and GUESS WHAT !!!????? I GOT NO REFUND AT ALL BC THRY LIE !!!! Instead I got points for a small amount of $ to use to rebook with kiwi again ! First of all since when does REFUND mean points ?????! I never ever would give them my business even if they promised me a million points bc all they do is lie lie lie ! I will never book with them again ! I TELL ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY TO NEVER BOOK WITH THEM but they all laugh and say,”We have never heard of Kiwi to begin with ! You’re stupid for booking with them!”.

SO sorry you have a run in with these crooks! I made sure to change it to my email address on the airline page so I received an itinary and everything the airline refunded back to Kiwi.com. This is how I know they are short changing me. I hope your bank can help you get your money back ..most Airlines hate them too they need to be stopped.

KIWI IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE and I REALLY HOPE THEY GO UNDER ASAP so that they can stop scamming people and stealing money ! I have had the worse experience with kiwi stealing my money and promising things on the phone that they never keep ! I HOPE EVERYONE STOPS USING THEM ! During Covid , booking.com was SO obliging and helpful ! There were other booking agencies that were great too ! KIWI IS A HUGE SCAM !!!!! Let’s stay as far away as possible ! As I look online I can see that millions of others share my opinion ! All I see is terrible reviews on them ! Hopefully we never have to hear their name again.

Kiwi.com are totally deplorable. Booked return flights through them with Brussels Airline from Edinburgh to Belgium, but then COVID-19 struck. Airline has now cancelled flights, but will only issue any refund to Kiwi, as I am only a 3rd party and not the direct customer. Kiwi on the other hand are ignoring all calls and email responses, when they bother to respond, saying to contact airline direct. Can’t even claim on credit card for Sec.75 protection, as the contract with Kiwi has technically been carried out, i.e. they did broker the flights.

Hopefully all these Online Travel Agents, go bust, I only lost £380 but for some it’s a lot more. In the future (if I ever do fly again) will book direct with airline, might be more expensive, but as my granny used to say “buy cheap, pay dear”.

It’s shameful that you are giving a good review to a site which has treated it’s customers so poorly. The absolute worst booking site I’ve ever used and I use a lot. During this time the airline sites are offering free re-bookings but this is not passed on. Only a $15 refund offered for unused tickets or $15 off purchasing a new ticket, and this with the Premium customer service option. It was already a more expensive option than the airline.

Kiwi.com is by far the most nightmarish experience I’ve ever had with a 3rd party travel site. My flight was cancelled due to COVID-19 (not Kiwi’s fault), but they are telling me that there is not a guarantee that I will get 100% of my money back, and that if I see anything, that it will take three months to process my refund. Three months. Are they kidding me? I called the airline directly, and since Kiwi’s Visa card was used to process the transaction, the airline cannot refund it back to me.

Why are you promoting this company? There are literally thousands of complaints from people. I am a victim. They refuse to refund my plane ticket, even though the airlines have already reimbursed my tickets, stating that I “have to get in line.” and wait for their system to pay me. This can take upwards of three months. Other people have stated it’s taking upwards of six months and they are losing 75% of their originally ticketing cost. Others are stating 100% of the ticket cost. Kiwi.com is a scam and you need to separate yourself from this airline ticketing website.

Thanks for your comment. Please read the full review; it’s really not a hurray-book-blindly-with-kiwi-article. I clearly state I would not rely on their guarantee and compare before adding my credit card details. I could write whatever I want in this article, people do not read it before booking with Kiwi, but after when there has been yet another case of an unhappy customer…there’s really nothing I can do this this little article except approving your comments.

You are very stupid to be writing such a long review on a scam Czech company! Have you seen the real picture with your glasses on! Have a look at what this company is doing and done to thousands of people, myself included. I suggest rewriting either your paid (b Kiwi.com perhaps!) review to a more REALISTIC and true review because it looks like you are working for, or at Kiwi.com, or maybe take a diploma in investigation 2020, this is a rubbish review on a very corrupt, fraudulent scam ‘online travel agent’! The CEO is a joke, along with his brother, the ‘family’ etc. Have you actually done ANY investigation? If you have when, where and what tools did you use? Your responses to many reviewers is not backing anyone other than yourself and Kiwi.com.

Like so many others I had to cancel my flight reservations due to the Covid19 Pandemic. I was scheduled to fly with Air Europe on April 11, 2020. So obviously I had to cancel. I spent a total of $793 in airfare and the only 2 options they gave was a refund of $10.75 or to buy the ticket again for the same amount only discounting $10.75 which it’s pretty unfair that the options they gave me were the same change policy they always have. Regardless that’s a very FRAUDULENT change policy of theirs. I even called them and all they said to me was that since they returned to me $10.75 they can’t do any more changes they have to stick with the same policy rules… How on earth in this crisis this company it’s staying with the same change policy??? not having a plan when a pandemic like this happening it’s very unprofessional and it’s a negligence playing with people money like this. It’s the first time having a inconvenience with an flight booking site. I will make sure everyone knows that KIWI.COM ITS FRAUDULENT AND ITS A INCOMPREHENSIBLE BOOKING SITE.. calling them a booking site even sounds short for them and it’s a shame for the others. NEVER AGAIN. If i could give them 0 I would.

Kiwi.com is a company run by the most heartless thieves on the planet. Scammed me out of €400, they refuse to answer messages, then sent a message after the flights have left stating they cannot issue refunds because the flight is done, even if I had been messaging them several days before the flight was cancelled. Cancelled by the airline, itself. If you are able, please change this article and do not recommend Kiwi. Anyone who books on there because they found your review here, and then get inevitably scammed, will blame you for it. Do the world a service and revoke your recommendation.

Stay away from Kiwi.com. They didn’t issue a refund for my MNL-DPS-MNL trip via Airasia even though Airasia is already issuing credit refund due to the pandemic.

Hope you are keeping well these crazy days. Been looking for some contact information for kiwi and came across your blog. We are dealing with kiwi.com at the moment. First of all its hard to get them and we do understand its crazy days due to this coronavirus. We have/Had a flight next week in 5 days to Europe. Czech Republic had closed its borders and No flight is going there. We are stuck here in Bali and trying to rech Kiwi for 4 days now. Tried their phone only to be on hold for hours, Their facebook, Twitter but no response. We want to change our flight dates to when its possible but their Manage My Booking gives us options to cancel the flight and get 10 Euro back for over 1000 Euro flight or change the date for a brand new price and Basically about 10 euro towards a new future flight. Why they want to charge us for a flight which will never take place? Absolutely unethical and unprofessional of them and we are not sure what to do.. Bad bad experience. we don’t think we’ll consider to use them again..

sorry to hear that. We are kind of in the same situation, getting out of Mexico back to Europe. I do not think Kiwi will be able to help out, I am afraid. I do not count on their customer service anymore since we received many complaints about them. It hurts to say, but especially these days it seems like many rules do not apply anymore…

Do you have any other option to get back? Always book now directly with the Airline, it is much much easier these days! Kiwi still shows cancelled flights, from Mexico to Europe at least.

They are pirates! They take your money and leave you hanging. They don’t care what happens with you, your reservation, or your flight. The costumer support simply doesn’t exist, they do not facilitate to have credit in their own website nor to rebook as the airlines are offering.

Please save yourself the headache and avoid this agent!

Kiwi.com a big mess, I had a flight to Manila with a stop in Rome and China, with the coronavirus issues I asked if everything was ok with my flights, and they responded yes, 4 days before my flight I bought extra baggage, they accept the payment. one day before my flights my friend check direct with the airline and our flight to China and Manila were cancelled weeks ago. I contacted Kiwi and they did not know nothing. the only option they gave me charge 20€ fee for cancel, and the baggage they will keep the money because they pay Ryanair to Rome. Still, I do not understand if the book extra baggage to the airlines they did not notice the flights were cancelled. Not happy at all!

Thanks, Maria Jose for sharing this feedback and experience!!!! Very helpful for the community! Matt

Absolutely the worst and deal with Kiwi at your own risk! Here’s my tale of woe and deception: I used Kiwi to book flight for my Egypt trip. About a week after booking and paying for the flights, I received an email from Kiwi stating that the airline had cancelled my flight and that I was being moved to an earlier flight that day. There’s no way for me to make the earlier flight so I tried to explore options on their website. I was offered just 1 choice: a button that said “I understand” I figured clicking the button would provide me alternate choices – no it was their way to lock me into the flight i cannot use. Of course trying to resolve this with their agents didn’t work as they contended that I had accepted the flight change. I briefly tried to revoke the charge with my bank but reversed the request as I wanted to work with Kiwi to resolve the issue. I wrote a review on Trustpilot and received a call from a Kiwi representative, acknowledging how the “I understand” button could be deceptive. He promised to help but made a big deal about his finance team wanting to confirm that the charge was indeed not reversed. I sent them screen shots from my account page, had them speak to a bank representative and even had the bank issue a confirmation letter that the charge was not reversed. 1.5 months later, I still don’t have resolution – they claim they’re waiting for the bank to confirm that the charge was not reversed. Based on this experience and another similar one with Kiwi, I would highly advise people to steer clear.

Hi hostelgeeks, I hope you’ll publish another article sharing some of the common problems people mention here!

I booked two flights for a trip to a wedding, and was informed a couple days later that they had to change my itinerary, and my alternatives were leaving a day earlier (which, given the rest of the trip was already booked&with other people, was not possible), or paying extra to use a different carrier with a second layover, increasing my flight time from 18 hrs to 42 (!!!).

In short- I did not receive the services I paid for, and am having difficulty getting them to refund me. Whether or not my tickets were booked as refundable is not relevant in this case- I would prefer to still take the flight I paid for (and that I have reservation code from airline and ticket&confirmation for). If they cannot provide me with the service I paid for, that is a failure to meet the conditions of the agreement- and not to mention a poor business model & unreliable company.

I don’t think you can recommend a travel company of which you cannot count on the flight that you paid for actually existing.

Just to add my thoughts, thanks,

Hi Anna and Matt,

I’ve always been an interested reader of yours, and after an incident with Kiwi.com this week I’ve been googling the company to try and find more background. Was happy to see that you have covered them but then upset to see in the comments that so many people have had similar issues to mine.

There appears to be several glitches in the Kiwi.com booking system – I’m a seasoned traveller, having worked as a travel and lifestyle journalist for more than a decade. But even I was caught off-guard when I went to print my e-tickets for two June 14th 2020 flights from the Kiwi website (the confirmation was never emailed to me) and saw that the dates booked were for June 10th 2020 instead. This is a date I would have never ever knowingly picked, especially as this is a booking for my honeymoon and both my partner and I double-checked the details.

However, after googling, it appears that this has been a problem for other people, with Kiwi.com changing dates to the “best availibility” after you’ve already selected and approved your own chosen dates. It’s a trap that as caught me, and the only option that Kiwi has given is to pay for new tickets in full (490 euros) and they will discount this by 10 euros. No refund will be given for the original tickets.

As this is a crucial stage in our honeymoon, if we can’t afford this extra cost (and we can’t afford it!), then I may have to cancel my honeymoon and lose all the money we’ve prepaid. I’m devastated that this has happened and it’s keeping me awake at night from the anxiety. Matt and Anna, if you have any contact at Kiwi.com or Air Asia who can help me with this, I’d be forever grateful. This has been a truly awful start to what should be a happy year for my family.

Hey Michaela,

so sorry to hear that! I already sent you a private email and forwarded your case to our contact at Kiwi. Here is their response:

“I checked the booking and can say there was no technical glitch on our side. We have a recording showing that the customer chose 10th of June as departure date and didn’t change it during the booking process. Maybe she searched for flights on 14th June or had several tabs open, unfortunately, I can’t know this.

And a side note, we don’t change dates to the ‘best availability’ without customers’ concern. There might be exceptions like flight sold out or schedule change but even in these scenarios we always inform them beforehand.

Anyhow, one of our agents is working on the case and going to call the customer in a couple of hours with a detailed explanation.

In the meantime, if you could tell Michaela that our agent will contact her, that would be great. Regrettably, I can’t tell what will be an outcome of the conversation with our agent as he is a decision-maker in this case.

Last but not least, you can save my contacts and contact me in case of negative comments like this one.

Kind regards, Kamila”

I hope this helps a bit! We are now in contact via email, Michaela! Matt

They are lying with the compensations and conditions. Their warranty is fake, offered me to pay extra 1000+ euros for replacing 180 Euro tickets, because one flight been delayed and next one been missed. Promissed in writing 360 Euros compensation, paid just 290

Never use kiwi.com! Big scam. I have to change my flight due to visa issue and they did not want to refund my ticket saying that its not refundable. Dont trust them at all

Thanks for your comment. Did you book a refundable flight? You are then obviously right and it should be refunded.

Cheers, Matt

Kiwi has an outstanding platform and application to work with for inspiration or to find alternatives. However, they do have the issues that seem to be common within the OTA industry. Overpricing other services or misleading information. Been using their search engine since 2017 and can confirm their luggage info are almost always incorrect, by understating the luggage allowance in order to force you to purchase luggage through Kiwi at significantly higher prices. I end up ignoring that as I just check the official sites of the airline to confirm the actual allowance for the route. Recently, I have booked a flight that was listed as direct but turned out it was not a direct flight. Customer service tried to pinpoint this as change carried out by the airline however airline has that daily flight route listed with a layover. It was frustrating as there were cheaper alternatives but I thought I was getting the direct flight. So instead of owning up to their error and misleading information and resolve with proper compensation; they just try to evade and ignore the facts.

All in all, these are just businesses and their purpose is to make money fast and quickly, especially if you are not careful to review your information thoroughly. It is too bad cause Kiwi has the opportunity to be the BEST and TRUSTWORTHY platform.

agreed! It is really a pity. And this is why we always recommend to check more than one page and make sure you read what you are booking.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, Matt

Kiwi has a bunch of people that can not make decisions. They lied about Delta making a name change. I spent 14 hours on a simple mistake and was repearely told false info.

Hey Robert,

uff, not cool! Where was this flight to? What happened? More details would be fantastic for all of us. Sending you an email now! Matt

Kiwi CHEATED ME ON MONEY!!!I fly every week and I know how to book flights exactly. I got on this site through Google as my Father flight was cancelled and i had urgent to find a new one. I booked today made his name as a passenger one way ticket and my name as a contact. What arrived was flight not on 10.01 but on 20.02 and I was a passenger there. I started to cancel all this immediately before it was all confirmed, They have sent me tickets after this and refused to give money back all what they gave me is 10$.

STAY AWAY!!! Kiwi.com is a truly terrible company. They are dishonest in their pricing and especially in their policies. In the US it is required by law to allow customers to cancel bookings within 24 hours of purchasing ( transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/refunds ), but Kiwi specifically does not allow you to cancel a booking unless you buy a premium ticket. This is NOT clearly indicated on their website. I can only conclude it is a scam. Reading the above comments I’m not at all surprised.

Thanks for your comment and feedback, this is always useful for all travelers and readers.

OK so here’s my review for you guys, this will be the first and last time I ever buy a ticket with Kiwi. The day that I got my ticket I wanted to cancel it and get a refund but they didn’t promise a total refund and also wanted me to pay a fee? I’ve cancel with a lot other companies and they always do a total refund if is with in the first 24hours. So at the end I decided to keep it. I bought my ticket originally with 2 stops… out of no where they canceled 1 of my flights and got me the worst long stop in Mexico. I tried talking to them. They wasted all my afternoon and didn’t offer any better I even talk to the manager I think Chris was his name, who told me he’d sent me so information if I wanted a refund, which he never send.

At the end I was so frustrated and tired that I decided to take the long stop and guess what? After offering that flight for free now they wanted me to pay more for taking that after debating they got me that one with no extra cost. My trip was horrible, every flight was delay, so yes at list I’m never booking a flight with them.

1 they won’t refund the whole total of your trip even if you wanna cancel 24h after buying it 2 your trip might be change and do not expect a better timing and they might charge you more and 3 they charge for pretty much any change that you want to make, even for changing you document number like your passport which I’ve never pay in any other booking company, so if you wanna do yourself and your trip a favor, do not book with them.

Hi Claudia,

Thanks a lot for your comment. A pity to hear you had this issue, this is very frustrating! Thanks for sharing this feedback and experience!!!! Very helpful for the community! Take care, Matt

I’ve booked three trips with Kiwi and never faced issues with the actual flights. But, on my most recent trip I discovered that Kiwi tells false info about baggage requirements for airlines and then charges the customer outlandish prices for checked bags. For my most recent flights back to America, Kiwi said that I could only bring a 10kg carry on and no checked bags. I felt that this was false and looked up my booking on Virgin Atlantic airlines website. Turns out that they don’t charge a fee for a checked bag. I was able to check a bag with no issue. For my third flight of the journey, the Delta website says that only a 10kg bag is allowed (which I presume is how Kiwi determined the baggage requirements). However, paying to check a bag only costs $30 through the airline the day of check in. Kiwi charges around $180 and says that it’s “cheaper” to pay for a checked bag in advance through them rather than the airline. This is a complete lie. Because of this misleading baggage info, I will be cautious of using kiwi for future trips.

Thanks a lot for this information, this is very interesting! On all my flights with Kiwi I had either all luggage included or only hand-luggage. I never was facing the situation of booking extra luggage, I am afraid. Wondering why they do this?! Seems very misleading!! I will drop the an email and ask for details!

Thanks again, Nina! Very appreciated! Matt

I reached out to Kiwi, I wanted to know that this is about! Again, I never had this case and this price is obviously a NO-GO! I had to provide them your email address so they could have a look into it. Here is their reply:

“Please accept our apologies for this negative experience. Regrettably, the price for baggage you saw on our website was set incorrectly due to a technical glitch. For future reference, if you encounter similar issues, please call us as soon as possible so we can assist you. You can find our contact numbers on the last page of the e-ticket.”

They also offered to take of that situation for all our users! If you have any issue, please write me a comment here and I get you in touch with our contact at Kiwi! Not a single one of our readers had an issue, so I really want to keep it that way!

Thanks again, Nina! This was very helpful for everybody! Matt

Kiwi.com is not a reputable company. I had to cancel international flights due to the death of a family members. They required birth certificates of all family members involved in the travel and death certificate of my brother. I have been going back and forth with them for over a year, and they have only been stalling. They claim they will get back to me within 48hrs but they either fail to respond or send a general email response stating they are processing my request. I do not recommend using Kiwi.com at all. They are unreliable and lack integrity. They are based out of the Czech republic, so you have no recourse if anything goes wrong.

Thanks for your feedback on Kiwi! Always important to hear more stories and reviews! Matt

Unfortunately I did not have a good experience with Kiwi! Stay away from KIWI.com, they are helpless and useless. Everything is possibly fine if flights do not get cancelled. Too bad for us, that ours got cancelled and KIWI were simply useless and left us nowhere. 1) They didn’t inform us on flight cancellation short term – we were contacted directly by the airline. 2) KIWI offered us absolutely ridiculous alternative flight with Ryanair (that were more expensive that our booking, without covering the difference!! Plus the so-called alternatives, totally didn’t suit our needs and request for time restriction at destination. 3) Due to their inadequacy, we had to cancel the other leg from our journey which resulted even in further costs. 4) We filed a refund request immediately after realizing that they left us in the middle of nowhere and guess what 100 days after filing the refund request and numerous long conversations with them on the phone and emails every week we were again NOWHERE! 5) I had to reclaim the amount via my credit card company, in order to get them moving! I got the full amount back, and then they KIWI.com!!! imposed a claim on the flight we had to cancel due to their inadequacy!!!!!! Ridiculous circus that used our money over 3 months and returned only 60% back thankfully via a third party claim!

Hey Silvia,

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience!! This does not sound good at all! Could you share as well the destinations where it happened to get a better picture? Cheers, Matt

Hi, I have a doubt about a recent reservation I’ve made with kiwi.com and was hoping you can help me clarify this. I have booked an internal flight in India for me and some of my friends. The e-ticked they’ve sent me has the image of a strange card printed on it which has the name of one of the passengers in our group on it, however my friend does not own such a card. I have used my own (different) card to pay the ticket.

Upon asking them about this, their response was:

‘I understand your concern regarding the credit used to purchase the tickets. Please be informed that the credit card used to purchase these tickets with airlines is our own. The copy of the company’s credit card used for flight purchase is being attached, as some airlines may ask for verification at the airport . Please print the E ticket and take it to you during your trip.’

I insisted because something was still not clear:

‘Thank you very much for your reply and clarification! This explains, but i just have one more question to be sure I understand correctly: my doubts is why does the copy of your company credit card have the name of one of the passengers in our group on it? Many thanks for your patient assistance!’

Their reply:

‘Thank you for choosing Kiwi.com, I am writing to you in regards to your email about the credit used to purchase the tickets. The Kiwi.com credit card that was used to book your flights is a single used card with at least one passenger’s name as this is a requirement for the airlines when verifying the payments at the airport.’

Do you know about this practice? Is it legit? What is meant by single used card? I would like to know because as far as I know Indian airlines perform thorough credit card checks.

Thank you very much for your response!

Thanks so much for your comment, this is a really good question about Kiwi actually!

The answer: Yes, this is perfectly normal! I heard about this from a friend actually, not me personally. The way Kiwi works is, they book the plane/ticket for you, and some airlines need confirmation of the credit card which was used. This is how they do this.

There was a time the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona worked the same way. You had to book with a credit card and show the credit card when you wanted to enter. This way they ensured the booking is legit etc.

So, yes, perfectly normal. Nothing to worry 🙂

Much love and safe travels, Matt

They have very unclear on baggage policy and ended up costing much more than other options in my original search in other website. However, you don’t provide any hint of this in your article.

I sent you an email already! Thanks a lot, Matt

Kiwi is the best website for travelers!

I’m shocked to read all the bad comments as I’m just in the process to mention them in my newest travel blog. I travelled from Kelowna, Canada via Calgary and London to Zurich, Switzerland for an amazing low fare and had a great experience all the way. Because of the budget airline taking me from London to Zurich, the baggage weight was restricted, but I was able to add to it online a couple of days before I travelled. When I contacted kiwi.com about it, I got an answer quickly and and all was taken care of. Honestly, I had no issues whatsoever and already planning my next trip with them.

same here, also pretty shocked of the bad reviews for Kiwi. We use them on a regular basis, always great experience, good price etc. Thanks for your feedback, Yrene. It is really appreciated 🙂

Very bad experience with them. Kiwi plus Ryanair could be a nightmare! Never again with Kiwi and even with Ryanair. However you have to be very careful and make sure to do the checkin at least 3 days before the fligh otherwise you will pay a fee that could be more expensive than the fligh like in my case. No customer service, no assistance. Futhermore the Kiwi Guarantee doesn’t exist. Please be aware.

Thanks for your comment. I am surprised you didn’t know about the check-in 3 days before. We got an email about this. Did you receive an email? Ryanair has a lot of hidden fees like priority check-in, 2nd hand luggage etc. It is really important to check their emails they sent and actually read them. Also learned this the hard way unfortunately.

Ryanair actually changed their policy about hand luggage and carry-on. It costs now extra to bring a carry-on, only a small hand luggage like laptop or small bag is still free, the rest has to be purchased extra.

Let me know about the emails!

I’m another shafted passenger…me and my family of 5 were stranded when the flight was cancelled.

They said they informed me a month before the flight but I didn’t get anything. I DID receive a confirmation a few days before the flight saying that everything was OK.

Then they refused to reimburse me for the $100 I spent on one-night in a cheap hotel for our family.

sorry to hear that. Thanks for sharing! Cheers, Matt

I though that they were wonderful too until I took a trip using their reservations! What a disaster!

They booked me on a flight that did not fly on that day! When I arrived at the airport on a Wednesday, I learned that the flight I was booked on did not fly on Wednesdays! The airline, Alaska, booked me on a later flight at no charge ( thank you Alaska!), but any professional agent should know what days particular flights don’t fly.

My complaints were ignored of course. Not ever an acknowledgement or apologee. Just total silence.

Will NEVER deal with these people again….

Hey Richard,

Thanks for sharing your experience! I really appreciate your feedback and I am glad Alaska Airline solved the issue!

Safe travels and take care, Matt

We booked two flights in indonesia with kiwi.com because most indonesian airlines did not accept our Dutch credit cards. First flight went well without any problems. But the second flight we all of a sudden had to verify that we were the legitimate card holders. Which turned out to be impossible (numbers listed in e-mails are unreachable etc). After some email contact the day before the flight we answered some questions and were told to get confirmation within 4 hours. The next day, three hours before the flight, after two extra e-mails to them they cancelled our booking out of the blue. Worst customer service we ever experienced. I find it very strange that this ‘kiwi is amazing “review”‘ is even featured on this site!

thanks for your feedback, this is very interesting to know and will help all readers! We also found we cannot use our credit card with any airline in Indonesia, and last year when we traveled around Indonesia, Kiwi didn’t even gave the chance to book these smaller airlines. Have you read through my full review? I clearly state this fact here. We had to buy our tickets later in a supermarket in cash – fun experience actually.

Anyway, please give my “kiwi is amazing” “review”, as you call it, another full read. At no point I state that Kiwi is the most freaking website on the web, but it has his big advantages but also things you cannot follow blindly. I clearly state this!

Therefore, please give it another read. Hope you enjoyed Indonesia nevertheless, it’s a magical country!

The app is amazing. I am in love with it.

I am a frequent traveler. I have booked through kiwi 4 times I think, just to save few euros on each flight and on last one I lost 200 Eur and important meeting because of them. My route Singapore-Greece-London-Latvia, when arrived in Luton, London info desk told me that I am 8 hours late. How it is possible if I had connected flight? I understand reschedules happens but Kiwi should have take full responsibility and help me to solve this problem. Instead of that they ignored my phone calls, email messages and I still have not get a response from them. It happened week ago. I will tell all my friends and other travelers not to use this. Until I will have proper answer and refund .

Thanks for sharing your experience. A pity to hear you had an issue! Cheers, Matt

I booked a flight via Kiwi(Skyscanner directed me there).An hour or so after the booking I received the E-Ticket from Kiwi. However the E-Ticket says PNR – ‘To be issued’. But their E-Ticket says the status is ‘confirmed’. Something doesn’t feel right. Even after 12 hours of purchasing the ticket it is still without the airline PNR number. I have only few more hours to board the flight. Will this be a problem or will I be OK by just showing the Kiwi E-Ticket at the counter..?

Thank you and look forward to hearing from you.

Get in touch with the team right away! There is a contact and phone number. Did you call them up?

I am still going through many reviews. Perhaps the question to ask you is what to watch out for to avoid the same problems a lot of people went through based on their reviews. How do you prevent those negative experiences from happening and enjoy a smooth travel?

My best recommendation is always make sure you know with which company and what you are booking. I had no issues with Kiwi, but some of the comments here will show there is people who have problems.

I can give the list of my destinations and look at your suggestions (airbnb) but I do not want it published. Can I email privately?

you got it! Just drop us email through our Contact form at hostelgeeks.com/contact

I have been planning to book with Kiwi where Skyscanner took me and since it’s my first time to hear or read about Kiwi and Skyscanner, I have searched and still continue to search the internet for reviews until I came to your website and your comments about Kiwi. It is really difficult to make a decision because of the many bad reviews out there but your review offers hope. My wife and I are going to 5 European cities this summer, what else can you say to ease any anxiety?

Thanks for your trust. Again, I was not paid to write a nice review on them as a company. In fact, I always use them and some other few websites to find and finally book my flights. In my review I made this very clear. But it seems I can say whatever I want, the people who had a bad experience with kiwi, will ignore this.

Now, about the bad reviews: Many readers leave bad reviews here as well, and we publish them. It is only fair to hear out the bad and negative comments as well – as long as language permits it. Please keep in mind, even the famous Skyscanner recommend Kiwi.com – not just our little blog here.

My suggestion : Give Kiwi a call! They have a service hotline. Ask them about the specific flight and they will assist you.

About Europe : What 5 destinations are you planning to visit? Happy to assist you and give you suggestions on transport, accommodation and things to do!

Stay away from this company. It’s a scam and a rip-off. I booked a flight, unfortunately, and if you want to add lugage last minute, its impossible. You can not do ANYTHING directly with the flight company, everything has to come through them. With a Minimum of 48 hours notice. So adding a suitcase the day before you leave is impossible. Same goes for upgrades, priority boarding etc. And they add extra money on top of the normal price.

Good engine to use for finding a flight, and connecting flights, but NEVER book through them, always directly with the airlines. Believe me, it is worth the extra money. If you book through these people, you are basically screwed if you want to change something. And oh… You ALWAYS have to collect your luggage and check in again if you have a connecting flight, even if it is with the same airline. If you book at the airline directly, the luggage is automatically transferred.

Thanks so much for your comment. Did you read through my whole article? Please have a close look on things I am referring to.

About adding extras : Not sure about this, since I never had to add anything. I actually read adding any extra with Kiwi can be quite a pain and you overpay. So I always skipped this from the beginning.

Thanks for your input and feedback, really appreciate! Matt

Hi again Gerard,

just remembered: Once booked a connection flight directly with the low budget airline Ryanair in Europe. I had to get the luggage and then do the check-in again. They did not do anything for me. It was a transit flight with two different companies.

Just so you know it’s not always the case. However, not sure what happened in your case, just wanted to add it!

I bought a set of flights from kiwi.com and they neglected to purchase them from the airline. I was unable to fly and was forced to buy another more expensive ticket last minute. They have NOT REFUNDED, let alone offered compensation. Booking reference number 4974824.

On the 9 February I was due to to fly with Tigerair at 0500 flight IT217 from Tokyo Haneda to Taiwan Taipei. When I went to the check-in desk, the airline was unable to find my records of my ticket through the ticket kiwi.com issued me. They were unable to find my name and any record of me having a ticket. I contacted kiwi.com via phone and the agent was extremely unhelpful. She continued to repeat the same mantra that everything was confirmed and I can get on the plane and if their was a problem it was with the airline. The airline staff also spoke to her but were unable to resolve this issue. After the stress of being refused to be allowed to get on the plane and no help from kiwi.com. I was forced to purchase more expensive flights last minute to be able to make it to my destination.

After several emails asking them to explain what happened. I finally got a some form of reply other than their usually pointless mantra.

Quote from them “We regret to inform you that we have failed to book the flight from Tokyo (HND) to Taipei (TPE) via Tigerair Taiwan and failed to inform you about it. The finance department is now working on it for you to receive a possible refund for the said flight. Please be informed also that the refund may take up to 30 days from the time that it has been submitted. Once again, please accept our apologies for the inconveniences you are having in this process. Rest assured that Kiwi.com do not wish for any of this to happen to your reservation.”

After trying to get an update from them on how my refund was going and when it was due. I keep getting replies changing the dates of when I submitted the refund application and keep pushing the dates back to when the 30 days is due. Then I also get irrelevant replies saying they are still waiting for a reply from the airline regarding the refund, so the refund may now take LONGER than 30 days now. When clearly the fault was entirely with them and had nothing to do with the airline. I have over 38 corresponding letters with kiwi.com as proof of what has happened.

It has now been over 30 days since I submitted the refund application and I have had no refund, no explanation as to why I am not entitled to a refund. The only compensation they have ever offered is a 20 euro voucher to use on their website with a 6 month expiry.

This whole experience has left me scarred and sad at humanity. I believe I have been a victim of a scam/fraudulent activity/being cheated. I would not wish this to ever happen again to anybody. So even if I have been left out of pocket and emotionally traumatised, I hope I can help others not go through the same thing.

this is not cool and a really bad experience! I will send them an email as well and ask them to clarify this issue.

good and helpful articale , thank you !!!

I’m contemplating booking from Kiwi, I have read a ton of negative reviews out there on TripAdvisor, I’m not sure.

Hi Prithvi,

Thank you so much for your comment! As I mention in my review, I read many bad reviews. At the same time, I really tested and booked my tickets with them by my own – several times – with my own money!! This article is NOT paid by Kiwi or that they took special care of our flights or anything.

Fair to say : Since we had no issues with our bookings and did not have to get hold on them to take care of a missed flight connection, we have no first hand experience.

I have no doubt that I would be incredibly disappointed and mad when I realized my $2000 flight is not taking place, and I just lost all that hard-earney money. Please always make sure you research with whom, what and where you are booking – BEFORE putting in your credit card details. If there is doubts, do not do it and go with a different agent. This goes for all directions!!

dont’t do it!

Just checked Kiwi’s lowest fairs from Burbank to Salt Lake City RT anytime in the month of March 2018. The lowest was Delta at $155 RT (but there you have to pay for baggage). The showed Southwest at $189 (where you still get two free checked bags) . When I went directly to the Southwest site I found many fares for $155.

So kiwi doesn’t always search out all the best fares.

Hi Michael,

absolutely! This is why we talk in this review about all the other options and things you have to compare. Kiwi is an awesome way to find better fares, but it is not perfect. I do not know why they do not show the cheapest rate sometimes. Always keep comparing – all prices, airlines and booking platforms!

Never book anything blindly. Hope is not a strategy.

Example: A friend of mine just booked a flight on Iberia’s official website for a flight from Barcelona to South America. Their customer service is horrible, they do not want to help since she booked with the official website a flight also with Vueling. Vueling is Iberia – and she did not even select Vueling. Anyway, complicated issue.

Thanks for your comment, Michael! Appreciate it! Matt

Stay aware from KIWI! I was looking for booking and did a huge mistake – didn’t check the site before I made the purchase. They messed up with my name and now saying, that it was my mistake… More than that, they demand additional payment to fix THEIR OWN mistake! This is ridiculous! All my flights from this booking can be cancelled at airport, because of the mistake in the name made by KIWI… DO NOT USE KIWI!

Thanks for your feedback and experience.

STAY AWAY FROM KIWI.

In a few words: I had the worst booking experience, had to deal with a very bad customer support. If you are unlucky and a problem comes up you will NEVER EVER find a solution.

Even if my reservation was immediately cancelled, I got my refund after 40 days.

I made a review at trustpilot and when they saw it, they sent me 50 euro voucher for the problems they caused me. After a couple of days they kindly asked me to erase the review. This is the reason they have 4 stars and not 2 which is what they should deserve. Of course i didnt erase neither used their voucher.

Thanks for sharing your first-hand experience! Safe travels, Matt

Can not agree more with you. This is a SCAM and I am shocked, how this is allowed in the world. They sold me an impossible itinerary and took by $3500 for an international trip.

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How to potentially save money on airfare by booking through Kiwi.com

Update : Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here .

As someone who lives near a non-hub airport , I'm used to piecing multiple flights together in order to get the perfect trip.

Though this is incredibly common when it comes to award flights, it can also be a money-saving strategy on paid trips. After all, airline pricing is a complicated and mysterious thing. It's not unheard of to save hundreds of dollars by booking two separate tickets to get to your final destination instead of one ticket all the way through.

Enter Kiwi.com . Unlike most online travel agencies, the Czech Republic-based Kiwi creatively searches flight and other transit combinations to determine if booking two or more tickets and piecing them together will save you money compared to a traditional search from one airport to another. Their back-end search engine is already set up to look at hundreds of combinations, which saves considerable time over manual searches and may save you money, too.

Let's take a closer look at booking travel with Kiwi and discuss if you should use it to book your next big adventure.

For more TPG news delivered each morning to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter .

Searching with Kiwi.com

Kiwi takes advantage of several types of travel search tricks to find you the cheapest way to get from point A to point B.

They consider everything from far riskier endeavors we don't really endorse such as hidden city ticketing or throw-away ticketing to a cool feature they refer to as "Nomad" travel. Going to Asia and want to visit Singapore , Siem Reap, Cambodia; and Ko Samui, Thailand? They'll play around with shuffling the order to find you the lowest price.

However, Kiwi.com is probably best known for its "self-transfer" flights. They'll search hundreds of air and ground transit carriers to find flight combinations that result in the lowest price. They do all the piecing together on your behalf, which may include combining airlines that don't formally partner with each other or routing you through connecting airports that don't often show in traditional searches.

They may include ground transportation options in results, too. For example, you might save big by flying into Munich and taking a train to Salzburg rather than flying to Austria directly.

Since Kiwi looks at all types of unorthodox travel options, you can expect to be bombarded with lots of search results.

I suffer from analysis paralysis all too often, but take it from me: That won't be a problem. Compared to searching manually and keeping track of a thousand options using pen and paper, Kiwi.com offers filters to narrow things down quickly. With a few clicks, you'll limit yourself to relevant options.

Don't want to ride a bus or have too much luggage to realistically consider low-cost airlines? No problem.

If you do find a transit combination that works for you, you can buy it in a single transaction on Kiwi.com, which is a huge convenience compared to going to multiple platforms to buy each ticket one at a time. It's easier for record-keeping, too, since you can see your entire itinerary in one place.

Related: Strategies for booking great award tickets from non-hub airports

What is the 'Kiwi Guarantee'?

Booking separate tickets comes with another downside on top of the hassle. Unlike through tickets, if you miss a connection on separate tickets, airlines aren't obligated to reaccommodate you. That means if weather or a mechanical issue wreaks havoc on your plans, you'll be left to figure out a new way to get to your destination on your own. Because of this, travelers stringing tickets together often add plenty of padding to their connections, hoping the extra time compensates for the extra risk.

When booking trips through Kiwi.com, though, travelers have the option of purchasing their add-on "Kiwi.com Guarantee".

According to the guarantee, they'll protect you from unexpected changes to your booking even when you self-transfer between multiple tickets. You're covered against carrier cancellations, delays and schedule changes -- if something happens, they'll find alternative transportation on your behalf or offer you a refund.

In the past, the guarantee was included with all Kiwi flight bookings (with a built-in upcharge) but now you have to opt in when you make your original purchase. Sadly, it doesn't come cheap. On my sample searches, my offers consistently came in at around 25% of the ticket price. For example, on a $200 one-way ticket to Costa Rica, the Kiwi.com Guarantee was quoted at nearly $50 and on a $638 ticket to Spain, the guarantee was $159.

TPG's Points & Miles Editor, Andrew Kunesh, used Kiwi.com to book a flight from Berlin (SXF) to Newquay, England (NQY), via Dublin (DUB) in late 2019. Ryanair operated the SXF-to-DUB leg while Aer Lingus Regional operated DUB to NQY. He ended up missing his connection in DUB due to a flight delay and immediately contacted Kiwi. In minutes, he was rebooked on a flight the next day and put up at the Radisson Blu Dublin Airport on Kiwi's dime.

Downsides of the Kiwi.com guarantee

As any traveler who's had to make travel changes on the fly already knows, reaccommodation doesn't always mean you'll get your preferred flight. Just like when an airline rebooks you, you're limited to available seats and itineraries. You'll probably still need to be flexible and you'll have to accept some delays along the way.

It's also worth noting that their disruption protection won't necessarily compensate you for troubles or hardships; their sole goal is to get you to your final destination.

Like any type of travel protection, the fine print matters. You likely won't be surprised to find out that the guarantee doesn't apply when you're at fault for missing part of your transit (for example, if you arrive at the airport too late to check in). But you also won't be covered during some times when you need it most, even if it's not your fault at all.

Force majeure situations, like the airline strikes we see in Europe every so often, means your guarantee doesn't officially apply -- though it's worth noting that Kiwi.com still promises to make their "best effort" to offer alternate transportation. Extreme weather is considered a "force majeure" situation, which could be worrisome for those traveling in the winter.

Most worrisome to me were a few details buried in the legal fine print , which you should read in full if you're contemplating tacking on this purchase. Here's what stood out to me (emphasis is mine):

• They may rebook you, but be prepared for lengthy travel delays: "We are not able to guarantee You booking of the alternate Flight(s) departing sooner than 8 hours after Your initial contact with Our customer service ..."
• For flight changes announced 48 hours or more prior to your trip, you might not have as many rebooking options as you hope: "Should We find an alternate of the price not exceeding the price You paid for all the unused Flight(s), We may offer You (an) alternate Flight(s) or other means of transportation to Your Destination at no additional cost to You."

I'm great at searching for last-minute alternatives and have a stash of miles that I can use for last-minute rebooking emergencies if that's what it comes down to. As TPG readers, that might apply to you, too. In that case, this guarantee may have limited value.

Despite the limitations, this extra protection could still come in handy, especially while the coronavirus pandemic continues to keep flight schedules in flux. Unless you're booking last minute, you're likely to face schedule changes or even cancellations while airlines attempt to fine-tune operations. Yes, many fares now qualify for free cancellations, but refunds come in the form of airline vouchers whereas Kiwi.com would provide a true cash refund, even if your standard travel insurance wouldn't apply.

Related: Missed your flight? Here's what to do

Will I still earn miles on my flights?

Like any other online travel agency, you'll still earn airline miles on flights booked through Kiwi.com — but there are a few things to keep in mind.

If you're combining carriers, you might need to split your earnings. For example, say you're flying from New York-JFK to Prague (PRG) via Paris (CDG) and the first leg is operated by United while the second is operated by Air France. You'll need to credit the miles from the first flight to your Star Alliance loyalty program of choice and the second to your favorite SkyTeam program.

Do note that you won't usually earn hotel points when you book with Kiwi. This is the case across most online travel agencies, as hotel programs generally require that you book directly in order to earn points or use elite status benefits.

Of course, you should pay for your Kiwi purchases with a credit card that earns bonus points on travel . For example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Chase Sapphire Preferred Card earn 3 and 2 points per dollar, respectively, on all travel purchases. Both cards also have solid welcome offers which can help you jump-start your Chase Ultimate Rewards balance.

Related: When you will (and won't) earn miles on your flight

Bottom line

Taking the cheapest option presented on Kiwi.com will not be right for all travelers. If you are mixing and matching tickets and carriers, you are increasing the odds that something will go wrong with your trip -- and you are increasing the complexities of fixing it.

While this risk may be worth it for large cash savings and/or when you are traveling solo or just with another adult and have some flexibility in your schedule, it may not be worth it for a small savings, when less experienced travelers are involved or when you have a very firm time you need to arrive at your destination or back home again.

I'm not convinced that I'm the target customer for Kiwi.com's optional add-on guarantee, but I still love the Kiwi search platform. It legitimately does find good transport options that you might not consider on your own (or want to take the time to sort through manually), and booking is a breeze with one-stop shopping instead of having to make separate purchases.

For me, booking through Kiwi.com doesn't always make sense, but it's usually at least part of my search strategy when ordinary flights are priced higher than expected. After all, you never know what it will come up with.

Is Kiwi.com legit and safe for Booking Flights?

Wondering if that online booking site  Kiwi.com that sells cheaper air tickets is legit and safe for booking?

While booking flights with kiwi.com is generally safe, the reliability and trustworthiness of kiwi flights varies. If you want to go straight to the dangers of booking with kiwi.com ,  here is the link.

However, if you follow my trick and you plan to keep your flight , kiwi flights could provide the best value. This is especially true for light travelers without checked bags.

This article will explore all aspects of booking with kiwi .com, and the risks and benefits. These reviews of booking with Kiwi.com. reflect my personal experience and kiwi scams I was subjected to . 

I also provide tips on how to avoid the bloated final price (luggage included) and secure the best deal (it's possible). 

Updated February 25th, 2024

Hello, I’m Tatiana. I’m hopelessly in love with cute urban scenes and finding best places in Europe to go.

Let's connect on social media !

What is Kiwi.com?

Kiwi.com  or Kiwi flights, is a search engine owned by a Czech company since 2012, that helps you find cheap flights and buy cheap air tickets.

Is kiwi.com legit?

Kiwi.com or Kiwi flights, a Czech-based online travel agency, is a legitimate company. However, they have some borderline legitimate practices you should be aware of.

Read on to find out when you can trust them and when you should exercise caution.

is Kiwi.com safe to book flights?

Kiwi.com is safe in the sense that it is a legitimate company that sells flight tickets and uses secure payment methods to protect your personal and financial data. But they will try to hike up the price if you have checked luggage, and it doesn't feel very nice. 

Booking with Kiwi.com can also be unsafe if you need a refund but canceled your trip yourself , even if you bought the trip guarantee through them!

Why is kiwi.com cheaper?

Kiwi.com  is usually cheaper than many other places to finds cheap flights. How does this company do that?

how kiwi.com finds cheaper air price

Kiwi.com uses unique algorithm to find the cheapest flights for you. It lets you book flights with multiple carriers all in one trip for a cheaper price. 

Kiwi flights can do this because it combines tickets from different airlines that might not normally work together.

This lets Kiwi find cheap flights and flight combinations that most other websites and booking apps just can't.

The unique proprietary algorithm  kiwi flights use is called  Virtual Interlining.

The reason some airline don't normally work together is because they may not have codeshare agreements. But it doesn't matter to Kiwi. The company buys the tickets and then resell them to you in any combination it wants. 

So, great, right? Not so fast.  First, let's address the trust issue some people are having with kiwi.com (myself including).

Is Kiwi.com trustworthy?

The question of whether Kiwi.com can be trusted can only be answered with -- it depends. You can trust them with certain aspects of booking, such as trip support and check-in. However, they're safe only if both you and the airline won't change your flight. There are also some borderline legal areas to be aware of, which I will explain in this post. Kiwi.com claims to offer cheaper prices compared to booking directly with the airline, but this can be misleading. Booking directly with the airline can be cheaper than using Kiwi.com, especially if you have luggage. The Kiwi.com guarantee policy is also rather misleading , giving you a false impression of coverage when you may not be fully protected. You need to read the Guarantee policy thoroughly to understand exactly what you are buying, but I highlight the dangers in this post. So, let's examine all possible scenarios to determine when Kiwi.com can be trusted and when it was not trustworthy based on my own experience, which could happen to you as well. If Kiwi.com didn't have any positive aspects, I would advise avoiding them completely. However, Kiwi flights have some attractive features for booking cheap flights and can save you money. So, if you're a savvy traveler, read on.

Is kiwi.com reliable?

Kiwi.com is reliable in their automated e-mail support after you bought a ticket from them.

So, it's reliable in a sense it provides you with all the information and instructions you need to complete your trip.

It provides you with automatic check in, boarding passes, confirmation codes, terminal numbers, etc.

You can access them through the Kiwi.com website or app. Though many complained about having a hard time contacting kiwi.com representatives. 

But are they reliable about refunding money to you if the trip is canceled? It depends. Read about it below. 

Booking a flight with kiwi.com

Kiwi flights: when it's good to use it for booking.

Booking a flight with kiwi.com only makes sense for a budget traveler or anyone who doesn't want to overpay for his flight, if they are planning to buy a cheap ticket .

Booking a more expensive flight, & buying the cheapest ticket option on kiwi.com ( the Saver Ticket) will result in a 10 euros refund, if you cancel your flight. Keep this in mind, and read about it in the "negatives" section.

Positive aspects of buying with kiwi.com:

Search Radius: You can no longer search for flights to or from a specific city or country by drawing a circle on the map, but you can do the same by choosing the '250 km from "your city" option.'

Fly Anywhere: You can enter “anywhere” as your destination and see the cheapest flights to various places around the world.

Instead of 'anywhere' you again can add "250 km from "this city" option.'

Kiwi price lock. Kiwi flights let you use ‘lock in the cheap price’ you found for 3 days (cost- €10), if you need more time to pay.

Multi-city Feature: You can plan complex trips with multiple stops and destinations with ease.

Date Range: You can search for flights within a flexible time frame and see the best prices for each day, or by adding '-/+5 days'

Nomad future. This feature, when chosen, shuffles the destinations to create an itinerary for you: you suggest cities, it chooses the best days for the flights. It also offers to combine flights, buses, and trains.

Price Alert: You can set up notifications for when the price of your desired flight drops or rises.

However, watch out for 3 scams below kiwi might employ, but you can prevent them if you know about kiwi scams in advance.

Negatives of booking flights with Kiwi.com

Booking with kiwi.com carries some risks that you should be aware of, such as:

Flight Changes or Cancellations: If your flight is changed or canceled by the airline, kiwi.com may not be able to offer you a suitable alternative or a full refund. You may have to pay extra fees or accept vouchers instead of cash. You may also have to deal with poor customer service and long waiting times to resolve your issue.

Missed Connections: If you miss your connecting flight due to delays, bad weather, or other reasons, Kiwi.com may not be responsible for rebooking you on another flight or covering your expenses. You may have to buy a new ticket yourself or rely on the Kiwi.com Guarantee  if it applies.

Extra Costs: Booking with kiwi flight may involve extra costs that are not included in the initial price, such as baggage fees. You may also have to pay more taxes or fees if you book flights in a different currency or country than your own.

Now, it’s reasonable to expect that baggage fees might be extra, and no one argues with that. However, Kiwi.com also uses some questionable practices lately, that I want you to be aware of.

What is the Kiwi.com Guarantee?

The Kiwi.com Guarantee is a service that covers you in case of flight changes or cancellations by the airline, or missed connections due to delays of more than 1 hour. It only applies if you book all your flights under one itinerary with Kiwi flights.

A warning , this Kiwi.com Guarantee is not much different from the guarantees you get from the airline directly! Read below what Kiwi com guarantee covers and what it doesn't.

is Kiwi.com Guarantee worth it?

Below is a thorough analysis of all cancellation options available to you if either you or the airline cancels your flight.

This analysis will help you determine if the Kiwi Guarantee is worth it. I will uncover everything that you might miss on the Kiwi website about the Kiwi Guarantee if you are not paying specific attention to it.

This is easy to do when Kiwi company refers to some of its rules with statements like: You’ll find the details of your purchased cancellation policy in section 5 of our Terms & Conditions. And then go to subsection 5ii to read the rest of the conditions...

Okay, I am just kidding, there is no subsection to section 5, they only ask you to read the well-hidden section 5! ;) Warning! Having kiwi Guarantee does not guarantee you a refund (above €10) if you cancel the trip yourself. The Kiwi Guarantee mainly provides coverage for trip disruptions caused by the carrier.

Can I get a full refund from Kiwi com?

If you bought the Kiwi Guarantee when booking your flight, you will receive a full refund only if it was the airline's fault!

If it was due to personal reasons, force majeure, or misconduct, the Kiwi flights company won't pay you. If you do not have the Kiwi Guarantee and your flight was canceled by your carrier, you have a chance to receive either a full or partial refund .

The link to claim your refund through kiwi.com can be found here.

If you cancel your trip

You can cancel up to 48 hours before departure and be eligible for a refund, but the refund amount depends on the ticket type you chose when booking, here is a link to more information.

Keep in mind, you will end up with €10 credit for your next booking on a €500 ( or a $1000) ticket you already bought, if you bought the cheapest saver ticket! Having Kiwi guarantee won’t change that!

If the flight was canceled by the carrier

If you have the Kiwi.com Guarantee, you’ll get a full refund for the unused parts of your trip, either in Kiwi Credit or back to your original payment method. However, you would get the same protection, without buying any guarantee polices, if you booked directly with the airline.

Without the Kiwi.com Guarantee, Kiwi travel will request a refund from the carrier on your behalf, but they state that a refund might not always be possible, as some carriers only refund in vouchers, or they don’t refund at all. 

Keep in mind, it will take them up to 6 months to refund your money!

If you choose to cancel directly through the carrier, the refund amount can’t be guaranteed by kiwi.com ( presumably, because airline policies vary, but this is a grey area!). Kiwi states that the airline might send the refund to you or to Kiwi.com ( with the possibility for them to hold your money longer than necessary).

So, what was the point of buying Kiwi com Guarantee ? A good question many people ask themselves. So, my verdict is - no, buying kiwi.com guarantee is not worth it. I never buy it myself when booking with kiwi flights.

Read here in more details about everything Kiwi.com Guarantee covers . It’s not much at all if you canceled the trip yourself! You might end up with $10 only and in a form of a credit for the next flight!

I don’t know about you, but it sounds quite sketchy, unless you are buying a very cheap $20 ticket. I still use their services for these kind of tickets, as the risk is low. 

But kiwi flights “sweetens the deal” by advising that adding a travel insurance (in addition to their kiwi guarantee) will cover your expenses if you can’t travel due to medical reasons. Duh…

What does kiwi.com GUARANTEE cover

Kiwi.com Guarantee offers you the following benefits:

Alternative Flight: Kiwi.com will try to find and book you an alternative flight to your destination as soon as possible, at no extra cost to you.

Accommodation: Kiwi.com will cover the cost of accommodation for up to 2 nights if you have to wait for your alternative flight for more than 8 hours during the day or 4 hours during the night.

Food and Drink: Kiwi.com will cover the cost of food and drink for up to 3 meals per day if you have to wait for your alternative flight for more than 4 hours.

Transport: Kiwi.com will cover the cost of transport between the airport and your accommodation, or between different airports if needed.

Refund: Kiwi.com will refund you the full price of your original ticket if you decide not to take the alternative flight offered by them.

The Kiwi.com Guarantee does not cover you in case of:

Personal Reasons: If you cancel or change your flight due to personal reasons , such as illness, injury, death, etc., you will have to follow the cancellation or change policy of the airline and pay any fees or penalties that apply.

Force Majeure : If your flight is affected by force majeure events, such as natural disasters, wars, strikes, etc., you will have to follow the policy of the airline and Kiwi.com will not be liable for any compensation or assistance.

Fraud or Misconduct: If you provide false or misleading information, misuse or abuse the service, or violate any terms and conditions of Kiwi.com or the airline, you will lose the benefits of the Kiwi.com Guarantee and may face legal action.

Take a note, these are a lot of cases you would not be covered by the Guarantee, even though you have paid for it! 

For more information, you can visit Kiwi.com Guarantee page .

How to Claim the Kiwi.com Guarantee?

If you need to claim the Kiwi.com Guarantee, you should contact Kiwi.com as soon as possible through their website or app. You will need to provide your booking number, flight details, and proof of your expenses (such as receipts or invoices).

Don't bother looking for kiwi.com phone number: it's impossible to find. 

Kiwi.com will review your claim and process it. But it may take up to 6 months for you to get that refund in your bank. ( if your claim approved).

KIWI.COM SCAMS

I have already mentioned borderline legitimate practices of Kiwi com guarantee . I will also discuss here all the complaints they got for not issuing the refund. 

But that's not the only way they will try to scam you.

They’ll try also try to scam you by charging 2-3 times more ( compared to the airline) for an extra baggage if you need it. Or, will forget to acknowledge you already paid for your bag. 

KIWI SCAM #1 - OVERCHARGING FOR BAGGAGE

How does Kiwi.com attempt to overcharge you? They offer a complimentary service of automatically checking you in 3 days before your flight. Shortly after booking or purchasing the ticket, they will send you an email offering to manage your booking.

If you wish to add an extra bag, they will charge you €59 for checking your bag or one extra cabin bag, giving you no other option but to agree.

I fell victim to this scheme twice (that I am aware of) before deciding to investigate and compare the cost of adding the bag directly from the EasyJet website.

I do not know if it was intentional or not, but it took EasyJet a considerable amount of time to locate my reservation using the reference numbers provided by the Kiwi website.

I was informed by EasyJet that they could not find my flight, and if I had purchased my air ticket from a third-party site (such as Kiwi), I would need to manage my trip through there.

However, I persisted by clicking on different links until I finally managed to make EasyJet locate my flight.

Upon accessing the EasyJet website, the first offer presented to me was an Extra Leg Space ticket for €27 . This ticket includes additional space for legroom, the option to choose a seat for free, and the ability to bring a large carry-on in addition to the one offered for free without any extra charges.

All of these extra perks are available for €27, or alternatively, for €24, you can opt for an Up Front ticket on EasyJet, which includes all the mentioned above benefits except for the extra legroom.

Extra Legroom offering by Easy Jet for 27 euro

In comparison, Kiwi.com was asking for €59 for just one extra bag without offering any additional perks. This meant that Kiwi.com was attempting to charge me €35 more (more than twice the amount) than what I would pay on the airline's official website.

However, this is not the only way in which they try to deceive you...

A screenshot of baggage bundles offered for Alonga Travel, the author, during the ticket purchase on Kiwi flights.

Notice how they offered a 15 kg checked bag for a €59 fee? Compare the picture below with the same bag offered for €24 on EasyJet.

Kiwi.com scam #2.

Another scam by Kiwi agency involves not displaying the paid bags on your phone app, leading you to pay for them again.

After automatically checking you in, Kiwi.com will send you an email that only lists your one free small cabin bag.

The extra bag I had already paid for during the ticket purchase process through them was not included in the email.

Now, if you had purchased your air ticket in advance, do you remember if you had already paid for the extra bag you intend to check in? In my case, I did not remember and ended up paying for the bag again.

Only after I paid for the same bag again, Kiwi sent me a new email indicating that I have two paid bags to check in when I only needed one.

By this point, it is too late to do anything as I have already made the payment.

Good luck to you, attempting to contact them to demand a refund. 

A screenshot of no paid checked bag shown on their email confirmation to me 3 days before my flight, even though I had already paid for one checked bag during the initial booking 3 months ago (and forgot about).

Kiwi. com scam #3

Kiwi.com not refunding you money that the airline paid them when they cancel your flight. Or, taking their sweet time (6 months) to do so. Or, only refunding $11 from an expensive ticket. 

This is a highly questionable practice of kiwi.com!

If your flight was canceled by the airline, you’re entitled to a full refund or a choice of a different flight. The airline refunds the 3rd party booking agency, Kiwi in our case, the money. They are supposed to refund you that funds immediately.

Except, that doesn't always happen!

Read through kiwi.com reviews.

Kiwi.com reviews flights

There are so many complaints about that and many bad reviews about kiwi.com! In fact, kiwi.com was rated only 1.7 starts on Trustpilot .

TripAdvisor also has over 6,000 complains about Kiwi dot com. 

That is because while air ticket purchases on kiwi.com supposedly come with 24/7 customer support & the Kiwi Guarantee , but it seems it's not always the case.

Now, the disclaimer. I, personally, never had to claim a refund with Kiwi.com. I am only aware of this problem that some people were having from their  numerous reviews.

But I did thoroughly analyzed all kiwi website posts on all the scenarios they will issue a refund, and all guarantee terms and conditions, and it's pretty sketchy.

But I had a firsthand experience with the 1st, and the 2nd scam.

So, above are the 3 scams by Kiwi flights to watch out for

Do your math! I did mine. While I might still purchase air tickets from Kiwi com in the future if I find a great deal on a one-way ticket (without the extra bag during the ticket purchase), I will ensure to visit the EasyJet (or whichever airline) website 30 days before a flight and add some extra perks, such as paid baggage.

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Related Questions

Is kiwi.com atol protected.

No, Kiwi.com is not covered by ATOL, because it’s inapplicable for this regulation. ATOL only applies to companies based in the UK and not those located overseas.

Kiwi.com is a Czech Republic registered company that operates online and is not subject to ATOL regulations

What is ATOL

In the UK, all companies selling package holidays must have ATOL membership by law. This includes package holidays that include flights, accommodation, and/or car hire.

ATOL membership also covers certain Flight-Only bookings sold by UK travel companies if they cease trading.

Is Kiwi.com Worth It?

To conclude my post, kiwi.com is worth it if you are looking for cheap flights and don’t mind taking some risks and inconveniences. It can help you save money and time by finding combinations of flights that other websites cannot.

It can also offer you some protection and assistance in case of flight disruptions with its Kiwi.com Guarantee, but only some, without the real guarantees. 

However, kiwi.com is not worth it if you prefer booking directly with the airline and having more control and security over your trip. 

Therefore, before booking with Kiwi flight you should weigh the pros and cons carefully and decide what matters more to you: price or convenience.

You should also read the terms and conditions of Kiwi.com and the airline carefully and compare prices and options with other websites.

I hope this blog post has helped you understand more about Kiwi.com and whether it is legit, safe and reliable for booking flights!

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Hi, I am Tatiana—a digital nomad, slow  traveling around Europe and beyond. Do you like my rooftop mobile office in front of a beautiful church and a storks' nest on its roof? That was such an awesome experience!:) Follow my travel explorations on Alonga Travel and unique findings to learn of places like this!

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ABTA Travel Insurance

ABTA Travel Insurance is a high-quality travel insurance product from ABTA provided by the AXA Group. With three levels of cover to choose from for both single trip or annual travel insurance, we can provide cover that will work for you.

Get a quote

If you need to speak to someone about your quote or have a question about an existing ABTA Travel Insurance policy find our contact details here .  

ABTA Travel Insurance is a high-quality travel insurance product from ABTA and is underwritten and administered by the AXA Group.

It offers: 

• Up to £10m medical cover per person, including Covid-19 medical expenses while on holiday providing customers aren’t travelling against FCDO or medical advice*
• Up to £10,000 cancellation cover per person
• 24/7 emergency medical helpline
• Easy online medical screening process.

And ABTA Travel Insurance also provides you with a reassuring range of benefits as standard that some other insurance providers don’t or will charge extra for – including:

• Cover should your airline or other holiday suppliers go out of business
• Free access to an online English speaking doctor via the Doctor Please app
• Missed connections cover
• Cruise cover
• Gadget cover
• Over 120 sports and activities covered.

Other reasons to choose ABTA Travel Insurance

• There is no upper age limit for single trip cover.
• You get free access to a travel companion app, which includes a medical translator, hospital locator, emergency numbers, medical assistance and lots more.
• There is no reduction on the value of claims for lost/stolen items because of wear and tear.
• You have the option to speak to someone over the phone from start to finish should you need to. 
• The policy wording is straightforward, clear and easy to understand.

* This is providing an accurate medical screening is in place. Terms and conditions apply.

Travelling during Covid

ABTA Travel Insurance will cover you to travel to destinations worldwide, providing there is no advice in place from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) advising against all travel or all but essential travel. However, our policies will not cover cancellation of your trip due to government restriction on travel due to Coronavirus or any future pandemic (for example the FCDO advising against all travel or all but essential travel to your destination or your flights being cancelled).

For full details of cover, please review our Coronavirus FAQ webpage or policy wording.