Kayak

I used kayak in order to find the best price for a hotel in Aruba. However, kayak is only a search engine and redirected me to another site. I should have paid more attention, but thought kayak was a reliable search engine and continued with my booking. Everything was good. Then about a month before our trip my husband and I look through our details and had to change our trip due to Covid-19, we tried to cancel through kayak and it would not let us because it was through a third party website. It turns out the website that kayak redirected us to was a scam and we lost $1,200. Please do not use kayak, use google search or anything but from my experience, it does not look like kayak does it research on the companies it sends you to.

Friends - My strongest warning to you in doing business with Kayak and recommendation that you utilize a different service such as Priceline. I booked a hotel through Kayak and received confirmation on it; however, the hotel did not receive the information as Kayak and the 3rd party it utilized did not send it. I attempted to contact Kayak but their phone support was closed. I wanted to contact the 3rd party but it was an international number to Singapore and would have cost me $2.90/minute to call. I wrote them an email but did not receive contact so I had to pay again to the hotel directly (otherwise I would have to leave at 10pm at night and look for another hotel or hope that a miracle would happen and the booking go through). Both workers asked if I used Kayak and then stated that Kayak is non-reputable/inconsistent and to utilize other services such as Priceline as they handle all bookings themselves and actually have a phone number you can call for support 24/7.

I was directed to an airline website from kayak to purchase a flight package. I submitted my ticket purchase on the airline website and a phishing note came up from the bank that issued my card requesting security info on my credit card. It is made to look like you have to fill out the form to complete the transaction so I did (stupid me) and the total came up as the original price listed on kayak without the additional charges I incurred for my tickets so I knew I had been phished. Kayak opens a new tab when they send you to the airline site. I would close down the kayak tab at that point or better yet, not use kayak.

I live overseas. I have friends and family on literally every corner of the globe. Before I found Kayak, hunting for the "cheapest airfare possible" was the equivalent of "root canal". Tiring, painful, and depressing, I felt like I spent days and days searching just to find that one plane ticket that didn't have three fat zeros attached to the end of it. With Kayak I'm able to do one quick search through hundreds of airlines, finding the cheapest possible ticket everytime. With Kayak I've found non-stop flights from Brussels(BRU) to Chicago(ORD) for $500USD even during holiday seasons. Their online site is well formatted, simple, easy to use, and their app is even more convenient for searching on the go.

DISCLAIMER: I've only ever used Kayak for their flight search. I can't give an honest review on their entire company as I've never used their hotel or rental car search feature. That's why I give kayak.com and overall company rating of 4 stars.

Kayak, as a travel search engine company is totally responsible for letting E-DREAMS SCAM people all over the World. BEWARE of E-dreams... please goggle them... Nothing but straight robbery out of your bank account...

I used them twice to book a hotel. Twice the hotel did not have a clue about a reservation when I showed up and each time it took about an hour to reach somebody at kayak.com (in India) and to get a confirmation.
A company that contiunuously manages to $#*! up my travel is not going to get any business from me any more and as an executive in a rather large organization, I will make sure that kayak.com will get banned from the list of approved travel agancies.

Don't list all airlines, e.g. Southwest. Also fares sometimes appear more comparable than they are because some carriers (such as Spirit and Frontier) have additional charges, like luggage, which aren't mentioned.

Dear KAYAK, your stupidity and inability are frightening. After booking a flight on your website on the 13/08. From TLV to Heraklion to Marseille. I arrived at the airport (3hours in advance), today 3.09, and what do I realize?, that you canceled my flight. Not even a $#*!ing. Email to inform me that my first flight was cancel, not a $#*!ing message or phone call. Of course I had to call, and wait for more than 30 minutes that someone at KAYAK pick up the phone. I asked you for a new flight and you wanted me to pay more than 200 euros You are $#*!ing crazy. The only solution you provide me it s an hotel in the middle of nowhere. Because of you I lost my reservation at Marseille. I m gonna make you pay every expense I had because of you ( taxis, food, hotel). If I don't have the full refund of all my tickets under 14 days and all the expense, I'm sueing you. Of course this message will be on all social media. You can trust me to do it right away.

WARNING: DO NOT TRUST KAYAK.COM RATINGS (specifically flexible date search)

It turns out the only date thoroughly searched is the specific date you specify. Dates around that date are only partially searched. You can loose hundreds of dollars, by assuming their data is complete.

Here is the final response from their customer relations:

----
Hello,

Thanks for the specific scenario. I've reproduced what you are seeing so it was not something you were doing wrong.

The way flex search works is that we search providers who allow a search over multiple days. Since certain providers don't provide that data, we are sometimes not able to show all results within a flex search.

David Machado
KAYAK QA Engineer

-------

BOTTOM LNE: Don't trust their data. They do not indicate this incompleteness.
I wonder what other data is missing?

I have switched to Bing Travel. They also give better search controls.

--disappointed

I booked airfare on kayak and the kayak web page directed me to eDreams. I will never use Kayak again. I had to cancel my flight which was on Lufthansa. Lufthansa refund my money to eDreans on Oct-10-2022according to my email request. EDreams App still says refund pending. So I have been trying to call eDreams for the last month and the eDreams customer service phone number keeps hanging up on me saying call cannot be completed. So today I thought I would call Kayak's customer service #. Guess what it went silent 1 minute into my call. Not sure what my next option is? Terrible Terrible customer service!

Kayak booked the flight which doesn't fly on the day we booked. We went to the airport with 2 kids 3 and 1year old only to realize there is no flight that day. The airline company couldn't help because the ticket date on the airline system is different than what is shown on our kayak ticket, and it has already past. They said it's completely kayak's fault. When we called the customer care it gets disconnected, finally after 10th time they gave us a different flight. We don't have a bassinet seat which we reserved for and they can't help us in anyway. This is a huge inconvenience for our family. I am never going to book again with them and if you are traveling with kids avoid booking with kayak.

They are big time scammers. I booked a hotel vacation four months ago, i have my receipt and copy of confirmation and i call customer service today and i was speaking to an agent who has now told me what i received is wrong and sent me a new email with the complete opposite of my booking. There is no manager available and she wants me to call back after being on the phone with her to ask for a manager. HUGE SCAMMERS BEWARE!

Do not trust this agency. I couldn't board my flight I had 2 tickets worth over 2000$. I contacted the airline and they said I can rebook my tickets through my agency and the agency said the airline doesn't allow it. They are liars

The comparson of prices and booking process was easy. Also long as you don't have an issue. I used the site once to book business travel. All the rooms were non-refundable, so when I had to leave a day early they refused to refund the final night. The blamed the hotel. I also requested an itemized receipt broken down by date with the room rate and taxes. It took 13 phone call and 24 hours to even receive the email and then this was all they would send:
1st night - 163.20 USD
2nd night - 163.20 USD
3rd night - 163.20 USD
4th night - 163.20 USD

Taxes Paid - 69.92 USD
Total Amount Paid - 722.72 USD
Total Amount Due - 00.00 USD

They really don't care about their customer and I will never use them again.

Kayak is giving wrong predicitions of prices and misguiding customers from buying flight tickets when they are low and then pushing chat deals with low prices. By that time all the authentic flight ticket prices are too high. Chat deals are NOT authentic and many times the flights dont have the tickets.
I woudl give zero review if I could.

Kayak.com deserves a 0 for the worst customer service on the face of the planet. I used Kayak.com to book a room at the Willard InterContinental in Washington D. C. and soon after booking found out I wasn't able to go. After calling Kayak.com trying to cancel a full month and a half before my check-in date they said no. So I called the hotel explained to them and they said there was nothing they could to do, but if I had booked through them they said i would be able to cancel. I took my case to the Better Buisness Bureau and after 3 days of complicated transactions from Kayak.com to me the BBB said they couldn't make the company give me my $621.73 back. So now I'm out $621.73, running out of time, very upset at Kayak.com, and never plan to use the travel agency again.

I used Kayak to book a room and it went through Travelocity and when I arrived at the Best Western Mezona hotel in Mesa, AZ. They wanted a $100. Incidental fee and would not give me the room without it and refused to give me a refund on my prepaid room.

My favorite travel site - they just added links to southwest fares. I believe you still need to check JetBlue and Virgin America separately though, which sucks

Don't book at KAYAK! Book at the hotel website! You won't get a refund even if you try several days before your booking starts. I'm putting this out on my social media to warn
Everyone I know.

If you are booking a trip, this site is great. Wonderful staff that treat you great too, hats off to the group at www.kayak.com I am another satisfied customer :)

This Company is in a Bad mode, just cancelling affiiate contracts befor reachning the pay out limit, then telling you that in the contract is written that you did not rech the limit, so all the income is lost. Take your hands away from this company use trivago, booking or others!

DO NOT book through KAYAK.COM!
Check their rates... then go to the airline or hotel site directly. I've booked many, many flight and hotels... some through KAYAK... for ex. If you change a hotel reservation to shorten your stay by ONE DAY... KAYAK charges a PENALTY of the FULL AMOUNT of the ENTIRE STAY! (read terms and conditions) it happened to me, booked 2 nights in Houston at $378, had a meeting cancel and CHANGED my reservation to only 1 night... they charged me a $378 change PENALTY... so I paid $700 for ONE NIGHT!. KAYAK.COM is COMPLETELY INFLEXIBLE on this policy. BEWARE!

I bot an hotel via this site and when I arrived the hotel was not even close to what the pictures shown in the web site.
I called and they said they couldn't verify my card, which doesn't make sense as my card was already charged. I asked for my money back and they said at least 5 buisness days. I believe that they could sell the room for more so they cancelled my trip 3 days before. Then I had to rebook with the hotel and it was double the price. When I called to ask questions I was hung up on 3 times and when I finally talked to the manager he kept saying I need to talk to my bank. I asked why the money was off my card if they couldn't verify it. He kept saying I need to talk to my back. I said he needed to answer the question but never did.