I've seen better customer service in organized criminal conspiracies. We had to cancel a trip because of a family emergency and later tried to rebook. If you're in this position be prepared for hours on hold and a truly masterful runaround. And, finally, they say, "There's nothing we can do." Except, of course, keep your $617.60. Never, never, never again. How Kayak.com stays in business is one of the great mysteries.
I have used Kayak for years! Lately the price watch is a crock. Click and price goes up. Ok I get it sometimes it happens BUT on every flight I have searched the past 3 months? The kicker is that those prices don't change then on their site--still show the cheaper rate for a few days. ARGH. So sad to be discontinuing our relationship with what was once the crown jewel.:-( Goodbyes are hard.
I booked a hotel in for our trip to Barcelona. The per night price had been discounted and Kayak said that it was the best price and to book now. I did. Two days later the same hotel for our date's had dropped the price by more than 10%! Thanks Kayak! You cost me £9 per night each extra on a low cost hotel. The idea is good but I'll trust my own instincts in future.
The site recommended I buy 2 one-way tickets from different carriers instead of a single roundtrip in order to save money. I bought the first ticket, but then when I went to buy the second ticket, the original price of $141.00 quoted on Kayak.com was actually $485.00 on Delta's website. Of course I couldn't cancel the one-way ticket I had just purchased.
I fly at least twice a month, locally and internationally, and I can say this is the worst travel site I've used (in the U.S., anyway). This site simply quotes the prices I can find at other websites on my own, and it doesn't even quote them accurately!
I used to love Kayak and got great deals through them, but they're now using scam companies like Qeeq to book through. Don't waste your money - skip all these middlemen. Not worth the hassle of fraudulent charges, invalid insurance, etc. If Kayak stops using scam sites like Qeeq, will gladly go back to a 5-star review.
Kayak.com is great for researching your options. When it comes to buying tickets for them - my recommendation is go directly with the airlines. Kayak works through chatdeal.com to process all ticket purchases. If anything goes wrong, you will not be taken care of. Period. You can keep chatting over internet. The concerned department cannot handle it, will not return calls. I have been waiting 4 days now. Airline will refuse to help because you did not buy it from them. Buy the tickets from them on your peril.
Don't book hotels through Kayak. You will regret it.
Kayak provides the worst customer service in the industry. Modifying reservations is not allowed (they hide that detail by having a cancellation policy and not a word about modifying reservations).
Kayak also uses 3rd party companies to complete the booking. They say that only at the last stage of the booking. You'd think Kayak would assist you if there's an issue, since you are making the reservation through your Kayak account, but nope! Not at all.
These 3rd party companies are very low level. You'd never do business with them had they not been masked by Kayak branding.
Sorry. That's the way it is. Proceed at your own risk...
I had never used Kayak before this weekend. My experience is a nightmare and it could end up costing me thousands. They quoted me one price and sent me my booking. Then, the travel site they linked to sent me the booking. The itinerary was correct. I later found out that they had made an error and the site they linked to rejected the booking. Kayak.com accepted all four legs of the trip while the travel site they linked to only supports a maximum of three legs per booking. My world cup trip is ruined! Trying to get the right flights is impossible, and certainly not for the price we were originally quoted. The deal on the flight was the basis for the entire trip. I think it is very important that everyone heeds my warning: do not use this site. You will be stuck with any problems in the end and they will skirt all responsibility through fine print. It is amazing that they could get away with this!
They're good for researching and finding the cheapest fares and hacker fares. I've done ok with them, but I've not bought through them; they refer me to a different site having that price. Depending who that is, just doublecheck that all of the nickel and dime charges if any are shown. For hotels/cars though I lean towards Hotwire.
Horrible! I will never use this "Search" engine again. The android application was buggy and booked me through "getaroom.com" horrible as well, bottom feeders. Wrong day, wrong month. Called and was told too bad. Kayak allows these scamming third parties to be listed through their site, they know they are bad but continue to list them. Do not trust kayak or any of the "search" results. Go through the hotel, airline, call directly. Use them as a "search only" never book through them.
I searched for car rental in reno. Kayak's website provided out of date information which caused me to loose 3 days if my car rental and to rebook another car with much higher rate. My trip was ruined as a result. I wasted stressful hours to resolve this mistake.
Amer
Even though the site may say that hotel reservations can be cancelled without penalty, they will do everything they can to hold onto your money. Two phone calls and a lot of waiting later, I am still trying to get them to do the right thing. This is what happened: I got the beachfront room I wanted, but not with the beds I wanted (only clarified on making the reservation). Called the hotel to switch--they said to cancel the first reservation with kayak and they changed the room. Now Kayak is saying that the hotel has to waive fees to make a refund available!
I have used this website to find hotel deal quite a few times and have never had a problem. It compares many companies that don't always show up on other sites and I found some good deals. Never had a problem, no complaints here, will use again and recommend.
I looked around for flights, from lax to panama city panama. After getting our pass ports out and cc and spending 30mins to get all the info in place. I pushed book it and it said oh you took to much time so go back and look for the prices again. Of course they were more $$$ what a waist of time. Use someone else.
I booked a trip on Frontier from San Diego to St. Louis through Kayak. This was the cheapest flight available which I assumed was due to a change of planes in Denver. However, after receiving my confirmation i discovered I did not have a seat assignment and needed to call Frontier directly. I called immediately and was told I could only get a seat assignment at the airport because of the discounted ticket. If I wanted a seat assignment early, I would need to pay $40 per leg.
On the day of the flight we arrived at the airport with plenty of time. The only seats available were middle seats for all 4 legs of our trip.
I don't know if this seat selection policy is standard for all Kayak bookings or just Frontier but the $100 saved up front was not worth it considering also the time spent in layovers.
I was monitoring my flight prices with kayak.com, it kept giving me stale results almost for a day. Flight prices given by kayak were horribly wrong. It kept showing $71 where the actual price was $161. I lost almost $100 due to wrong results given by kayak.com. And it kept showing me flights which were already full. Its better to search prices and flights on individual sites rather than trusting kayak. I know its time taking but you won't regret later like I did.
I have booked for Kayak and the price is very affordable and the service was really good. Besides, I would love to give them an overall 5-star rating.
I booked a flight in May of 2020 for a family member on Kayak it booked it on FinAir.
I needed to change the dates due to family member receiving cancer treatment. I tried so hard to get hold of Kayak as well as FINAIR neither has customer service number or it doesn't work. There is no way to reach either one in case you need to change. The airline website even does not work. I can't believe Kayak can stay in business like that by ripping people off their money. Needless to say on top of our misery we lost $407.0. I will never use Kayak again or FINAIR. Stay away from both.
I typically use Kayak to compare airline fares but thought I would try using the site to book a flight. What a mistake! If you have to make any changes with your flight you have to wait on hold for long periods of time and call back multiple times. It is a total pain. I will continue to use Kayak to compare airline fares but NEVER use Kayak again to book a flight.
If you are booking a trip, you should be comparing prices on kayak.com. It's a meta-travel-site search engine (don't know if that's the proper term) which basically means it searches all the different travel sites (orbitz, priceline, etc), aggregates that data on their site, and allows you to pick the most affordable or convenient flights. It even has a priceline.com window pop up in a new window with their prices so you can make sure you are getting the best deal possible.
Even if you are sure you are getting a great deal on Virgin or Southwest (I think these might be included in the kayak search now but not 100% on that), check kayak anyway. I thought I was getting a great deal from SF to NYC on Virgin America last month, but just for the hell of it, I did a search for direct flights on kayak and found one for almost $100 less! Definitely one of my favorite places on the web.
Overview
Kayak has a rating of 1.6 stars from 322 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with Kayak most frequently mention customer service, credit card and search engine. Kayak ranks 200th among Travel Search Engine sites.
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- Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
- Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
- Suspicious reviews are flagged by our algorithms, moderators, and community members