Comment by jakubmazanec
1 day ago
Just before Covid when everything was cancelled I booked some tickets through Kiwi and it was the worst decision - I spent year (!) getting my money back. I'm not saying Ryanair is a good company, but for their flight (i.e. one of those which I booked through Kiwi) they reimbursed me immediately. The second flight was EasyJet and they said they already sent the refund to Kiwi, while Kiwi said they got nothing. In the end it was Kiwi who sent me the rest, and in my view they truly are parasites (they also got a Covid loan from the Czech government). Maybe in the days of Skypicker when their search engine was good they provided some value, but nowadays I advise everyone to avoid them.
I booked direct on Ryanair.com and they refused to refund our tickets because the flight technically ran even though we weren’t legally allowed to leave our homes. Lesson learned, I’ve got travel insurance now
Have you tried a credit card charge back?
Did it on debit card, another lesson learned.
Yes, after the flurry of Covid cancellations I avoid using OTAs. Where we had flights booked direct with the airlines getting our money back was much swifter than where we had gone through an intermediary. Also EU bookings were much quicker to refund than US ones.
Compare and contrast with: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46364852
What's there to contrast? It's basically the same experience as I had.
Had a very similar experience with eDreams. Absolute scammers, in hindsight it was foolish to trust an unnecessary middleman.