I am sharing my genuine experience with booking via Kiwi.com because this was one of the most frustrating and unfair customer experiences I have ever had.
My original payment was KRW 1,265,721 (about USD 860). I canceled the booking within about 5 minutes of payment because I believed I would first be shown the refund amount, or at least the cancellation penalty, before anything became final. I thought that was the most basic and reasonable expectation.
Instead, the refund request was submitted immediately with no clear breakdown, no confirmed amount, and no proper warning about the financial consequences. From that moment on, I could not reverse it.
That is the part that still feels deeply unfair to me: I made a decision within minutes, but I was not given the information I needed to understand what that decision would actually cost me.
After about a month of waiting, the final result was that I received only around KRW 320,000 (about USD 217) in total value, including part of the refund as Kiwi.com credit. In other words, a cancellation made within 5 minutes resulted in a loss of around KRW 945,000 (about USD 642) — roughly 75% of the total amount I paid.
What made this even more frustrating was that I did everything I possibly could immediately after submitting the refund request. I contacted Kiwi.com’s AI customer support, sent direct messages to Kiwi.com on Instagram, and even reached out to each airline involved. I tried every possible channel right away, but I was still told there was nothing I could do.
I was told the refund amount could only be confirmed after the airlines reviewed the request, so I was left in the dark the entire time. I had no way to make an informed choice, no way to stop the process, and no idea whether I would lose a small fee or an enormous amount of money.
What made this even more upsetting was that, when I contacted the airline directly, I was told that even for bookings made through an intermediary website, same-day cancellations are generally refunded in full in principle. However, the outcome I received through Kiwi.com was completely different. Because of that, I find it difficult to trust how Kiwi.com calculated the refund amount in my case.
I also found Kiwi.com’s handling of the refund options extremely unfair. When it came to the refund itself, I was given no clear deadline or timeline and was simply told to wait indefinitely. But when it came to choosing between cash and Kiwi.com credit, Kiwi.com gave me only a short response window and then unilaterally converted part of my refund into credit when I did not reply in time. I was expected to wait endlessly for their process, but they were not willing to wait for me.
My complaint is not only about money. It is about how powerless and trapped I felt throughout the process. I do not think customers should be pushed into an irreversible financial decision without first being clearly told what they stand to lose.
This experience was not only stressful and confusing. It felt genuinely unjust.
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