Kayak

I wasn't too impressed with kayak.com mainly due to its outrageous prices. If you don't read the small fine print they're good at trying to trick you into believing your getting a deal by the time you notice they promised cheap price but failed to deliver it, you'll want a refund which doesn't have a high success rate. I wouldn't recommend them at all.

One issue I have encountered is that the page can be slow to load, especially when searching for flights with multiple layovers or destinations. This can make the process frustrating and time-consuming.

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...

My husband and I previously have used Kayak with much success, but COVID-19 and resulting flight changes has made using Four party websites difficult to navigate with limited available staff and customer service. This causes undue stress on both ends. We recently purchased tickets to Peru via Kayak & Chatdeal. LATAM had to change the flight times, resulting in an involuntary change and an arrival change to a day later. Because we are going through Chatdeal via Kayak, we have to get the refund through Chatdeal. When we first reached out to them, customer service was spotty. We had to call, message, and email in order to get an adequate response. I am usually very understanding since staffing and pressures from the pandemic have really placed stress on all of us. But when it comes to $1500, I am a little less willing to compromise especially when LATAM is allowing a full refund d/t the flight change. Since we reached out many times over the last 48h, Chatdeal's customer service has been better. And they are trying to work on getting us the full refund. My husband and I will be choosing to go directly through the airline from now on because of this experience even if we have to pay more for our tickets. Our recommendation is to use Kayak to find the best available flights/rentals and then go directly through the company to involve as few people as possible. Yesterday, I gave Kayak a two star review, but the service has gotten better, plus I have had more sleep since I am coming off of night shifts.

Update: Chatdeal was able to work with us to get our full refund with the $50 processing fee waived. I still maintain my review, but their customer service was much improved over the course of our interaction.

I been using kayak for years now. It's used to be my only search for flight. Kayak Always have the best deal of all site. But not anymore. The price as shown is not the price you gonna get when you purchase. Or the flight is not available.

Looking for a car rental, I went to Kayak.com/cars. I quickly found a list of companies offering cars for my desired dates, with a pickup and drop-off at LAX. Prices ranged from $230 - $500, with the cheapest being $197 through Priceline. Twelve years ago, I swore I would never use Priceline again. This experience does it! The rental company is Economy Rental Car and/or Allied Rent a Car, on Century Blvd. Near LAX. The ad implied that there was a shuttle. The fact that I had to pay upfront should have put me off, but, anxious to save some money, I went for the deal. Stock market experts tell you that pigs (for making or saving money) get slaughtered. The night before the pickup date, I went over my itinerary and discovered that I had made the reservation for a day later than I needed the car. I went back into the reservation and changed it—I thought. But Priceline doesn't allow for correcting human error. They make a lot of extra money that way and cause a lot of human misery that way.

But assuming making the date change had been successful, arriving at LAX, I went to the rental car shuttle pickup area. After a half hour, I hadn't seen any shuttle with "Economy Rental Car" nor "Allied Rental Car" on it. I asked one of the shuttle drivers about it. He said that Allied/Economy Rental Car doesn't have a license to come directly to the pickup area at LAX. I tried calling Priceline. I kept getting a recording. I tried calling Allied/Economy Rental Car. I got David, who went silent when I asked if I could get a shuttle. I decided to get an Uber, so I caught the LAXIT bus to the staging area for all the methods of transportation that LAX finds too bothersome to allow in the area of the terminals. For $22, the Uber took me to Economy Rental Car. I had waited so long for the non-existent shuttle that Economy had just closed. Employees were inside but would not open to rent me my car. The Uber driver was super kind and nice, and for no extra money, took me around the corner to Enterprise/Alamo. I wanted Enterprise, but they were up a narrow escalator and there was no way (I'm 80 years old) I was going to get my baggage up it. So I went to Alamo, where the guy gave me the desperate grandma rate: $703.00! I got on my phone and found a $21.35 a day rate at Fox. I tried clicking on Book, but couldn't get it to work. Another Uber at $8 got me to Fox. I was quoted $50 a day. Evidently the Book button didn't work because "the website was shut down for the night." Huh? Another variation on the desperate grandma rate, I guess.

At this point, I was totally tired of smarmy rental car tactics. I had come to see my family for one evening, which was rapidly disappearing. I got another Uber, which took me to my family for $60. The next day, I decided to get an Uber back to Economy Rental Car to get the car I had already paid for. I spent the next hour initialing all kinds of fair-to-the-company, unfair-to-the-customer contract items. I was told I would have to pay $20 per day for collision insurance or they wouldn't rent me the car. I protested that I have auto insurance and my American Express card covers just about everything. That didn't matter. Without a crystal ball, I couldn't see that the cheapest thing would have been to walk away from the $197. But I didn't. So they added $200 to the $197 I had already paid.

So here we are:
Rental: $197.00
Uber LAX-Economy 22.00
Uber Alamo-Fox 8.00
Uber Fox-Valencia 60.00
Uber Valencia-Economy 60.00
Forced insurance: 200.00

Total: $547.00
Wow! WHAT A BARGAIN YOU GET FROM PRICELINE!

WAIT! THAT'S NOT ALL! I finally got home and found that Allied/Economy had charged an additional SIX HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE DOLLARS and 88 cents to my American Express card. $200 is for the insurance they forced me to buy, but the rest? I brought the car back on time and in the same condition in which I got it (with the check engine light on). What's the rest for?

Oh. Maybe I drove it too far? $439.88 too far? I drove it 407 miles. Other reviewers state there's a limit of 150 miles per day. So for an 8 day rental, I should be able to drive it for 1,200 miles without extra charges.

So how about fuel charges? I filled the car up at Costco in Santa Clarita before heading into L.A. To turn it in. If the car (a Toyota Corolla about 4 years old) gets 29-38 mpg and it is 35 miles from Santa Clarita to Los Angeles, I was short one gallon of gas when I turned the car in. Let's say they charge $6.00/gallon to fill up. So I owe them (though I shouldn't) a total of $206, then what's the other $433.88 for? The guy at Economy/Allied who accepted the key while denying that any further paperwork--like a receipt with a total like reputable car rental companies give you--had a big, sly smile on his face. Hmmm. I wonder why?

I have a fraud case started with American Express. If that fails, my $197 rental will cost me ONE THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX DOLLARS AND 88 CENTS! ($1,186.88) OUTRAGEOUS!

This site is good for finding flights, but I am utterly disappointed in the experience I had purchasing from them. Not only is it sometimes cheaper to book directly with the site, I had a bad experience when I bought tickets for a JetStar flight. Apparently booking with Kayak sometimes directs you to a third party website, which seemed to offer a great deal for the price of the plane ticket, little did I know that it was because they took away the luggage price that is already included in standard JetStar flights. Knowing that the airline included the right to one piece of luggage included in the price I opted out of purchasing extra luggage for the flight. To my considerable surprise checking in at the airport I was told that I had to pay for my luggage and I was tremendously appalled to find out that the price of my luggage was nearly twice the price of the plane ticket! ( As you may know, paying for luggage at the check in counter is more expensive than pre-booking it). Whatever little amount of money I may have saved booking with Kayak, rather than the airline directly had all gone to waste. There was 3 other people with me that day, and we ended up paying extremely more in luggage fees than the cost of our flight tickets. Around $600 dollar just for luggage. Looking back, I dont even think that the items within my luggage amounted to the cost of the fees. I really cannot recommend booking with Kayak, nor will I ever do so again in the future.

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.

I visited the site about four times last week looking for great hotel deals. Unfortunately, the site would just freeze on me every single time.:(
Since reading some of the positive reviews, I may just have to give it another try. But after reading the negative reviews, I just don't know anymore.
Unsure potential customer. :/

I HAVE BEEN USING KAYAK FOR FLIGHTS FOR YEARS AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HAPPY WITH THE WEBSITE. THIS TIME I GOT CAUGHT OUT WITH A NEW OPTION TO SAVE MONEY BY BOOKING FLIGHTS WITH ONE AIRLINE ONE WAY AND ANOTHER RETURN. THE FLIGHTS SHOWED AS BEING $99 EACH. I WENT AHEAD WITH THE FIRST FLIGHT WITH JET BLUE AND 30 SECONDS LATER WENT TO PAY FOR THE RETURN FLIGHT WITH DELTA ONLY TO DISCOVER THE RETURN FLIGHT WAS NO LONGER AVAILABLE RESULTING IN HAVING NO OPTION BUT TO BOOK A FLIGHT 3 TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE. VERY SAD AS I'VE USED KAYAK COUNTLESS TIMES BUT THIS TIME WILL BE THE LAST. I TRIED TO CONTACT CUSTOMER SERVICE FIRST OF ALL TO DISCUSS THIS COMPLAINT BUT WAS NOT ABLE TO FIND A WAY TO SPEAK WITH SOMEONE FIRST OF ALL. TOO BAD :(

I used Kayak to find a good rate on a hotel in Los Angeles. I was able to book a decent rate and all went well until I had to change a date on the reservation. There is a big disconnect between Kayak and its affiliate getaroom.com Kayak at this time can't update your trip record with anything changed on getaroom.com. Kayak still displays the old cancelled reservation with the title of the new reservation. The information between all these entities is not updated. The problem with a site like this is all the middlemen touching the reservation. Me -> Kayak -> getaroom.com -> Hotel. I had to call the hotel directly to make sure the reservation existed because I didn't have a valid confirmation number from any system.

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.

But I like BestTravelCoupon, com and Trivago.com more. These 2 sites seem to search more and post better deals.

Kayak.com compares pricing of a variety of flight information for you and is convenient in that aspect, but the navigation of the page, the prices offered, and the overall quality of the experience was less than stellar.

I cannot recommend this site. I made a reservation for a car with Dollar with Kayak but I was completely surprised by completely different prices when I finally picked up the car. I really don't have any confidence in their quotes, so why use it?
When I wrote an email complaining about the discrepancies (I will mention these at the end for the details-oriented persons) this is the completely unhelpful answer I got:
Hi, The prices you see on KAYAK should be the same as what you see on the booking site. However, it looks like that travel provider may be having issues with the accuracy of the data they are sending us. In any case, we will use your report to help us improve data quality with them. Thanks for letting us know about this! Kind regards, Walter KAYAK Systems Engineer

The details of my complaint:
Dear Sir/Madam, The rates you quoted were not honored by Dollar. When I asked for an extra day, the discrepancy between the price you quoted for 7 days ($205) rose to $294 with the extra day! The attendant said Kayak might have had problems figuring taxes, Whatever the reason, the end result is that I was seriously mislead by Kayak. This was extremely disappointing and I really don't think I can trust the rates kayak quotes anymore; I think it i better to book with the rental companies directly. I would appreciate if Kayak could compensate me, in some way, for the discrepancy.

Booked a car through kayak with enterprise. Went to pick car up in Stuttgart to find though quoted €230. We had not got any insurance even though I was sure I had added this and and also would have to pay €6 a day if we took the car out of Germany! We ended our holiday paying €437! When could eventually contact kayak they said it was all in the small print. My advice is check that your insurance is included and about the border money before you go as this put quite a damper on our holiday. Don't think I'd use kayak again.

I was a big fan of Kayak, but I want to warn everyone about a recent experience that has changed my mind. Our family lost $1000 in savings because of a Kayak alert failure.

I set up a daily alert for specific outbound and return dates. The alerts only last for 10 days at a time (highly inconvenient if you plan trips any reasonable time in advance, such as searching for a flight a month or more ahead of time - e.g. Xmas, three months in our case). I had it running (with resets) for about six weeks and saw only minor fluctuations in price. However, with my most recently reset alert, it failed to come after the seventh day (the email on the seventh one said it will expire in "three more messages" = 3 more days). It resumed again on the 10th day (last day of that cycle).

When I went to reset the alert, I did a check on Kayak's "chart" to see past price fluctuations and noticed that there was a $300+ dip very recently. After reviewing all my alerts, it became obvious that it occurred during the time frame of the missing alerts (represents over a $1000 missed savings for our family). Also, that alert on the 10th day and all subsequent email alerts from the reset now have a new format (i. E. look and feel).

Like most people, I'm pretty busy these days so did not specifically notice that the emails were missing as they hit my general email along with hundreds of others on a daily basis. I usually just give them a quick look as they come in. What's the point of having an alert if I cannot rely on it, but instead need to specially monitor if it will come and then do a manual search myself if it doesn't? It seems likely, if not evident that Kayak were sloppy and screwed up in its transition to the new format, but fat chance getting them to admit so, nor, if they do, getting any meaningful consideration for it, given their terms of service. (I have contacted them and they are "looking into it" - my paraphrase).

So now I am signed up with five other services (not just one any more)... you can bet that my next booking will be on those ones - I may still use Kayak just to search a route and validate prices, but that's about it.

I give it two stars because it is a good site to validate prices, and because I have saved money in the past with alerts, but I highly recommend you have alerts set up with multiple services because of a lack of reliability with Kayak (and my fear that other services may be just as unreliable).

I travel to Canada fairly often and am within 2 hours of 5 major airports. While I would never book through Kayak - it uses the major travel companies, like orbitz, that are all rather scammy and can cause a host of problems - it's great for initially comparing the prices for the different airports. Sometimes airport A is cheapest to fly out of, sometimes it's $200 more than the other 4, and sometimes it's best for me to do one layover. Kayak helps me figure out what I'm looking for when I go to the airlines' websites.

This site should only be used as a search engine. After you find your "Deal", you should log off Kayak and log onto the site Kayak suggested. I have used Kayak for over 5 years, spending most of my time in the air, in a rental cars, and hotels.
After being a loyal customer of Kayak, let me share my recent and last trip booked through Kayak.
I travel to Australia 2 to 3 times a year. My last flight booked to Australia, through Kayak, was booked in early March to leave LAX to Sydney on Oct 2nd
The 3rd of September Kayak contacted me to let me know that my Flight was over sold BY 300 PEOPLE and I was going to be switched to a flight leaving three (3) days earlier, changing me from a VAustralia flight to a Delta Flight.
Kayak then informed me that because they are a "third party", there was NOTHING THEY COULD DO TO HELP.
If I would have spent the few extra dollars directly with my chosen Airline, I would have been fine.
Neither Kayak or the website they sent me to were willing to help in anyway.

I have to disagree with those who say Kayak.com is a one stop shop. I've used Kayak many times and I've started to notice a pattern: They don't show all possible flights, which means you might not be seeing the cheapest ticket amongst the results.

Lets use my most recent situation:
I did a search on Kayak and selected "my dates are flexible" in hopes that I can find a ticket cheaper than the date I originally planned on going. If it means saving $50 to board a day or two later/earlier, I'm going to take it. If $50 isn't worth saving to you, then I envy you for having such a privilege!
(I realize that leaving a day earlier means spending that $50 and more on hotel + food, but that's time spent in my destination that is totally worth it!)

According to Kayak, the cheapest ticket would be $1745, departing Dec 14 and returning Jan 22. Well guess what? Priceline.com showed a ticket at $1714, departing Dec 12 and returning Jan 22.
(At both websites I searched for Dec 13 departure and Jan 20 return, and the tickets both have the same number of stops and similar flight duration.)

So now I know from Priceline that the cheapest ticket is from Dec 12 - Jan 22. So, I decided to do a search on Kayak for just flights departing Dec 12th and returning Jan 22nd. Only THEN did the $1714 ticket come up on Kayak.
Why it didn't come up during my initial search is beyond me, but I don't find Kayak very honest for not revealing the cheapest flight to me until I specifically did a search for the date with the cheapest flight... Which defeats the purpose of Kayak.
I'm using it to find the cheapest flight but what's the point if it's not telling me the cheapest flights?

Kayak gets a boo from me. I'm not saying you should use Priceline, BUT I'd only use Kayak as a confirmation that I won't find tickets cheaper elsewhere. Don't trust Kayak to give you the cheapest tickets from the get-go!

Travel search engines are a dime a dozen these days and for the time being kayak.com has a leg up. I however, made the mistake of trusting kayak.com's search results and fancy diagrams and it cost me over a thousand dollars. It claimed that the fare that i was searching for was a stable fare and would be stable at that price for several more weeks. Supposedly the tickets I wanted were going to be their for awhile. Days later I went back to the site and found to my horror that the prices had jumped 200 bucks overnight! These things happen but kayak.com shouldn't be claiming to be experts on pricing and claim to have superior pricing analysis when they are just guessing. They claim to much smarter than they really are.

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:

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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

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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 have booked through Kayak.com twice in the past. The first time I booked a flight through this company, it was to have my son flown home from College in Blairsville PA to Portland. I booked it and when my son got to his layover they canceled his flight to Portland ME. After alot of calling back and forth we were able to get him on a flight into Boston MA and I had to have my sister (his aunt) drive through Boston at 11:30pm on a work night to go pick him up. Needless to say, we were not happy. The second time I tried Kayak was to book a room in Old Orchard Beach ME for my vacation. This proved to become a problem as well. I was charged $385.76 for 2 nights. My husband decided to leave early and add another night at the hotel. When I called to see if we could do this the hotel told me that the room that I had wanted (with a balcony) was already booked but they would put us in a queen room. I was disapointed, that was not what I wanted. When we checked in, I gave them my debit card to add the extra night onto it and they ended up charging the entire stay to my bank account AGAIN! So, here we are up to over $800.00 for the room that I didn't even want in the first place. Then, when I realized what had happened with the hotel and Kayak charging my account twice I called to get it rectified. I was given an fax number and told to fax over my bank statement showing that my debit card was charged twice. I had to drive 30 miles to the nearest Staples to fax, (and be charged for the fax) to them. I waited 2 days and had not seen a refund so I called again and the first person I spoke to said it was a wrong fax number that they gave me, but to call another number and speak with Customer Service. I did so and the man I spoke with said that the fax number was infact correct but that he did no receive the fax that I had sent 2 days before. I am now requesing to speak with a supervisor. After being on hold for 13 minutes a man identifing himself as a supervisor get on he line. I explain what has happened and told him that if I have to travel and pay to fax my bank statement to him again I want someone to be responsible for receiving it. He said that he would call the hotel and see if they would tell him that my account was charged by them. I was put on hold again for another 11 minutes and then he came back on the line and said that the hotel was going to refund my bank account $287.30. What happened to the $385.76? So I guess I, the consumer takes the loss of $100.00? Now, before this took place, I had already booked another room in Blairsville PA so I could go to my son's graduation. I am soooo praying that this doesn't turn into a complete mess AGAIN! I have called and made sure that the room I selected is the room I'm getting. But I'll be damned if I'll be handing over my credit cards or debit cards to the hotel after this last fiasco AND LOSS.