A family lost $24,000 after booking an airline ticket on Kiwi.com that was impossible to actually fly. Kiwi.com says the family is to blame for not checking transit restrictions, but does this incident rather show that Kiwi.com is just a scam?
After $24,000 Loss Was Family Careless Or is Kiwi.Com A Scam?
A New Zealand family needed to get from Auckland to Amsterdam fast due to a death in the family. In searching out options online, the family found a pricey but convenient connecting itinerary on China Southern from AKL to AMS via Guangzhou (CAN). Curiously, it was not available on any other online travel agency, but represented the quickest way to get to Amsterdam. So the the family purchased the tickets, allegedly spending $24,000 NZD.
But upon check-in, they were denied boarding because Mainland China is not currently allowing passenger transit due to its zero-COVID policy. The family was turned away and upon contacting Kiwi.com, were advised they should have checked all transit requirements. A China Southern airport staff member was allegedly incredulous this ticket was even sold.
The innovative thing about Kiwi.com is that it puts multiple one-way tickets together on a single itinerary, which can result in substantial cost savings or more options versus simply booking the journey on a single ticket. In this case, it booked the family on a one-way ticket from Auckland to Guangzhou and a one-way ticket from Guangzhou to Amsterdam. Nowhere was that mentioned during booking, though prominent warnings to check transit and immigration rules were present.
So is the family totally at fault here (it certainly shares some blame) or should Kiwi.com not have sold them an itinerary in the first place it knew was not actually possible to fly? (My understanding is that even Chinese citizens who could enter China lawfully would have to quarantine before taking a connecting flight, though at the very least a transit visa is required). Here are the current rules for New Zealand passport holders from TIMATIC:
I’ve had experience with Kiwi.com myself and it has been positive overall, though I do not appreciate the tricks that are secretly played (key word, secretly) to find lower fares. I once found out upon check-in that I was actually booked on a hidden city ticket.
So is Kiwi.com a scam? I’m not sure I’d go that far, but caveat emptor and I think this family is due a refund if the itinerary booked was impossible to fly without a quarantine.
In this case, even though the family should have exercised more caution, the fact that China does not allow transit right now really made their ticket worthless.
CONCLUSION
A family claims to be out $24,000 after being denied boarding on a China Southern trip they purchased on Kiwi.com. Kiwi.com says the family should have checked immigration and transit requirements before booking.
Who do you think is at fault here?
I’m curious how $24,000 was the most attractive fare the family saw
It was NZ $, Jerry.
$24k NZD = ~$15k USD. That’s still a significant sum for most.
Kiwi.com is an absolute scam, I have experienced it first hand, nowhere while booking tickets it warns the customer to check immigration or quarantine rules.
Stay away from them
“I think this family is due a refund if the itinerary booked was impossible to fly without a quarantine.”
The itinerary was impossible for anyone to fly because of the quarantine.
I used Kiwi once to book a flight from Turkey to Germany and would never use them again.
Upon payment, I received a flight confirmation which included Kiwi’s reservation number but not an actual booking code or ticket number associated with the operating airline. I called and emailed Kiwi multiple times to obtain this information but nobody was able to provide me with an actual reservation or ticket number. So I had no way of knowing if I had a real reservation until I showed up at the airport check-in counter at 5 am. Not an ideal situation to say the least.
I used kiwi.com once. In that single transaction, I was quite satisfied and did not note anything wrong. The fare was reasonable and routing was creative enough to help me to get to my final destination in a last min situation.
I note a few websites had offered transit through Mainland China as possible itineraries. A few less frequent travelers shared their itineraries on Flyertalk.com and were fortunately advised not to go ahead due to Mainland China restrictions. I believe both parties were responsible. Kiwi.com is not a scam but should inform its customers better and update its website with latest information on travel restrictions.
No airline or travel portal is responsible for transit or visa eligibility check.this has always been on the passenger even before COVID
Kiwi.com is scam. They are dirty and third rated travel company. Don’t book in this website even if they give it free. Guys Please very careful with kiwi.com. They make money from your denied trip or cancelled trip. You can’t even talk to their customer care. They don’t refund a single penny to customer whatsoever reason. I lost $80000 when they denied my boarding. Interesting part is Airline refund the money to kiwi.com but kiwi not giving it back to me. Kiwi.com should be blocked from the Internet.
Are you implying that when a passenger is denied boarding, Kiwi.com refunds the trip and pockets the money?
Right on brother !!! These assholes are crooked as a dogs back leg
I also lost a lot of money from Kiwi.com, but not as bad as that New Zealander, I had asked for a full refund from Kiwi.com since last November after multiple airlines that I’d booked had cancelled their services l. After so many requests made, Kiwi.com never answered me. I only thing they did offer me was credits but I refused. I only seek for full refund. I even contacted the airlines myself and they had already refunded back to Kiwi.com and told me to chase them instead. Unfortunately, I still haven’t heard anything back from Kiwi.com. I really feel that they have scammed me. I don’t know who can help me to get my money back. Never purchase from them again.
COMPLETE SCAM. The same happened to us. We booked flights for the entire family before COVID. Then COVID happened and the flights were cancelled. We immediately claimed the full refund and waited. A few times we got an answer to our repeated requests but their answer was they are waiting for the airline to refund them. After now more than two years I went to the airlines directly and they informed me they refunded Kiwi just days after the cancellation of the flights so more than two years ago. They are a complete SCAM. They received the money and just don’t pay it back.
Kiwi has a very poor reputation here in the UK. They are a Czech-based agency that finds customers through comparison websites. Many have found to their cost that the tickets, frequently on completely separate tickets simply do not work in the real world. Over the last 2 years in particular many customers have found one airline cancelling a flight but the return on a different airline is still operating and cannot be cancelled except at a total loss.
After the event customer service is virtually non-existent, and whilst I agree if you chose to book online you become your own travel agent and must take some responsibility, the willingness of Kiwi to sell flights that customers cannot use seems completely unreasonable. I suspect the customers living in NZ wrongly assumed a company named Kiwi was based there, but have now discovered, as many others have, that it is based thousands of miles away and outside the reach of NZ or UK laws
In this specific instance no refund is due (despite kiwi.com’s otherwise shady practices of not informing customers of what tickets have actually been purchased. Reason being, anyone who has traveled anywhere in the past 2 years knows to check travel restrictions. kiwi.com did not hide from the customers them that they were transiting thru China. The customer’s should have checked the restrictions. And, as the issue was transiting, it’s the customer’s fault.
I don’t dismiss your point, but I do find it shady that Kiwi.com is selling itineraries that are impossible to fly on.
So if someone recklessly shoots off a gun it’s my fault for getting in the way of the bullet?
You either work for kiwi or a spawn of satan…..
When I travelled from ord to syd in March United airlines, Qantas and google all offered routes for points and cash via Japan with a transit between airports. None of which was allowed. Both directions offered these impossible options.
Finally flew sg from syd to Singapore to Tokyo (transit in nrt) to ord.
Kiwi not to blame. I saw loads of instances of reputable sites offering impossible routes. I’ve booked with them before with no complaints.
No company should take on the liability for being allowed in or not. How can you build that algorithm. Are you a National. Are you a permanent resident. Have you entered a third country in the last 7 days therefore voiding your ability to travel on vtl to Singapore. Etc.
Here, however, Kiwi.com pieced together two one-way tickets (separate CZ ticket numbers) and merged them into a single itinerary.
But how is that different from if I turned up at ord and United denied me boarding because I couldn’t get from nrt to hnd?
Wouldn’t I be like wtf why did you sell me that ticket?
Yes, but in that case United would rebook you, likely without fee.
Hmmmm you think? So if I had booked ord -nrt and hnd -syd on a United saver award and turned up at the airport they would have rebooked me that day or the next? Via sfo? I’m asking honestly for your opinion because I seriously doubt it.
I searched ord to syd and a lot of options were ord to nrt (change airport) and then hnd to syd. All one award. Luckily I’d read about your stopover overnight and the rules regarding transit 🙂
Perhaps not a full-blown scam, but certainly an overhyped tech bro bullshit company that resorts to some very shady tactics. Here in their home country (Czech Republic), they’ve been often presented as this awesome $1+bn startup that revolutionized travel, but I’ve found myself helping a number of people who got screwed over by them.
Some highlights:
– Selling connecting itineraries with multiple tickets, i.e. no connection guarantee & need to re-check bags
– Withholding PNRs and ticket numbers from customers, forcing to check in on kiwi.com
– Charging extra for services already included in the fare
– T&Cs force you to forfeit any EU261 flight compensation in favor of vendor
– Sending out reformatted boarding passes and providing fake email addresses to airlines
– Scraping airline websites for fares, leading to denied boarding
– Zero assistance for stranded passengers and bogus ‘guarantees’
Need I continue?
Dirty people in a 3rd country. Of course it’s a scam. And congratulations t9 them for F’ing people willing to fall for it.
It’s how TPG worked to afford 8 balls for “straight” men to do off his junk.
Absolutely the worse travel company in existence
I don’t have time to tell you about the ordeal I’m still going through for six weeks
After I was told a supervisor would call me back within six hours , No one did !
The next night the supervisor called me at 1 am and 3am ! WTF !!!!!
I’m a former airline employee , I know how run a business . This outfit is not only a scam, they lie , make up non-exisistant rules and actually had the balls to hit me with 2 surcharges because they said the fare went . Rubbish … I made the res on their site and PAID up front
I could go on but the story is so f&@ked up
It would take an hour to write all the shot down
I am writing to IATA , ARC and the company CEO.
“ I do smell horse piss at which my nose suffers great indignation “ Shakespeare.
STAY AWAY ! ☠️
In fairness they all do it to an extent. I mean, I can’t count how many times was I offered great C fares via Tokyo that involved a change of airports from NRT to HND. Clearly not possible before and I doubt if possible now. And this was even on standard airline booking sites. We all know better, but that’s not enough, most don’t and just imagine it’s possible if it’s being sold.
A group of friends and I were planning to travel to and within Peru just before Covid. Kiwi was offering a series of one-way tickets that would cover our domestic flights at a price substantially lower than LATAM and so I purchased on behalf of the group (about $2000 altogether).
After Covid hit, I asked for a refund and mine (as the purchaser) arrived in about 4 months. In spite of repeated requests, the refunds for the rest of the group have still not been received and Kiwi simply doesn’t reply. I should have not waited more than 6 months as that made requesting a charge back with my credit card company impossible.
How does a company like this continue to get away with this kind of behavior?
What’s the rush? Dead person will still be dead when they get there…..
I will not recommend kiwi.com to anyone. There are scenarios were your bank card is charged but you only receive the booking number no ticket number or other times the airline refunds you but because you bought a ticket via kiwi.com they will not return the money back to you. To make it worse their customer number is never answered after 48hrs of your ticket departure date.
Please do not use kiwi.com, I have lost alot of money with them.
I had multiple problems with kiwi.com. They seem to sell sometimes non existent flights or impossible connections. I have been cheated at least 4 times and would never book with them again
Based on learning the hard way, I recommend never using any OTA, even the well-known ones. If anything goes wrong, you are basically on your own.
But my question is whether anyone challenged the charge on their credit card. That would be the first thing I would try.
Kiwi.com is definetly a scam or at the very least the scum of the shady corners of the internet. The left me stranded in South Africa when the airline wouldn’t board me on an itinerary to Miami (home) that included a connection in a third country because I didn’t have a visa there! Thankfully I got a great ticket for an Emirates ticket back via Dubai. Kiwi.com basically gave me the run around and I never got a refund back -out $1600. I call it a scam.
If not a downright scam, Kiwi is just a terribly run company. My flight was cancelled a week before departure and I was the one that had to inform them of the cancellation. It took them 3 days to simply respond to me, and another 2 days while they ‘looked into it’. I ended up booking an alternate return flight elsewhere because they were taking so long and my travel date was looming. A good thing too! The replacement flights Kiwi offered were downright ridiculous. My cancelled flight was direct, and they offered me flights that required two stops, multiple visas and self transfers. If I wanted anything more convenient, it would cost £600 ontop of the original ticket! I requested a refund and was told that they would get back to me in 3 months. My hopes of actually revieving it are zero. Learnt an important lesson though… be careful where you book!
It may be a scam, but it appears to be a profitable one…
https://www.phocuswire.com/Kiwi-raises-100m-for-innovation
I believe they’re a scam. I spent more than 4K CAD to book a flight from Russia to Canada. But because of the war the first half of the itinerary was canceled and I applied for Assisted Refund. It’s been more than 3 months since I haven’t heard from them. I raised a support ticket maybe a week ago but no response. I hope to get something but I almost lost any hope.
Not scam kiwi company. More times I was fly with this company.
While don’t think kiwi is responsible for checking visa and quarantine requirements I do think that the right thing to do here is give a partial refund.
I love their website as I use it for itinerary ideas but I will always try and book directly with the airline if I can.
I was purchase air ticket from Kiwi.com Booking number-200323288 for my wife Mrs Rozina Akter the ticket was confirmed and she suppose to fly with Biman Bangladesh Airlines from dhaka to Kathmandu and from Kathmandu to Dubai with fly dubai 21-feb-2022 but when she reached to the check-in counter Dhaka Airport check-in staff refused to book her ticket due to transit passenger restriction even i was discussed with check-in counter supervisor over the phone he said the particular rule following since last two years.
Therefore my querys why Kiwi.com doesn’t mentioned website or in the email about this restrictions? why i lost my money? And my wife suffering in the airport? i send several email for refund money but not yet received any feedback from Kiwi. Com.
Mansorul Hoque
Dubai. United Arab Emirates
Just back from a Kiwi.com Europe trip that included 5 separate one way tickets. Maybe I just got lucky, but everything worked out like a charm–and for a whole lot less than other sites. Kiwi did the auto check ins and even advised me to print boarding passes to avoid charges. The PNRs were always clearly shown in the app; all you have to do is tap the “show details” arrow. They even cautioned me about terminal or airport changes or transit visa requirements where appropriate. When you want cheap, you’ve got be prepared to do some heavy lifting yourself. All in all, it was a good experience. Covid refunds are a nightmare with so many OTAs so can’t really single kiwi out as a bad actor… Still fighting with eDreams for my refund…2years and counting…
I also had issues with Kiwi. On my return flight they booked me for a connection flights that were 1h apart. The company didn’t let me board since the check-in was finished. They told me that 1h isn’t enough between flights.
CHECK REVIEWS ON THEIR ANDROID APP. Plenty of 1-star reviews of people missing flights and poor support.
Three of 4 flights didn’t have a reservation number, showing only unavailable.
Lost my flight and had to buy a new ticket at the airport.
Kiwi support was always late to reply and very dodgy. Never replied what I actually asked.
Didn’t refund my flight for made up reasons that were contradicting what they had told me before.
They not taking care of their customer, no reply the messages, no support,
I have bad experience with them, unfortunately
I thought of using them before when they showed up on a Google flight search.
I’d never heard of them and tried googling them…. The online reviews showed they were sketchy….i paid a little more with the airline direct but in hindsight, seems like I missed the bullet on that one.
I booked return flights to Belize from Toronto and then Covid hit and my flights were cancelled by the airline. I could not talk to anyone live and sent several emails to which I got an auto reply saying they were looking into it. Two and a half years later I still have not received a credit or refund. I eventually gave up trying.
I have since read reviews re Kiwi.com and I didn’t see one happy customer.
As a side note, I was booking my flights through Trip Advisor and had no idea it was Kiwi.com until I received my confirmation. They’re a major scam for sure.
I booked a round trip flight directly to India from the US on British airways. They sold me a $1400 ticket that was unflyable in both directions and refused to refund.
Yes, they gave the same excuse as kiwi.com for their actions. It’s apparently always the customer’s responsibility to check all flight and visa and covid requirements. Kiwi is no better or worse than any other airline.
Scam!!! The get refund from the airline but I never get it from Kiwi
Kiwi>avianca customer service 🙂