Klarna - www.klarna.com

My experience with KLARNA has been a nightmare!

I tried to make a purchase using Klarna on Dec 29th. The website I was purchasing from declined the order, which remained in my shopping cart -- the site wanted me to try another payment method to continue checking out.

I then see that Klarna has charged me the first payment (close to $100).

I try to get online with Klarna's support chat, which takes forever to get back to me. Then, the chat rep only copies and pastes generic answers (at this point it isn't even clear if this transaction went as it was supposed to or if there was a serious error somewhere along the way). He says it will take 5-7 days to remove the pending charge. He is rude, I ask to speak with a superior, which he ignores. I ask again, and he says "He will just tell you the same thing I did so there is no point" and then finally escalates the chat.

Three days later -- no specialist or any chat rep has returned my messages.

To add insult to injury... today, days later... I am charged AGAIN for the first payment of close to $100 with a NEW pending charge on my bank card!

I have spent several hours trying to get this straightened out with Klarna and I had to spent close to an hour on the phone with the original seller website to ensure that the order was not actually placed (they had no record of the order at all.)

I still don't even know if this Klarna "transaction" went as it was supposed to or if there was a serious error, but I do know one thing: In my opinion and experience, Klarna is a WASTE OF TIME, a WASTE OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES with pending charges for an order that NEVER EVEN FINISHED CHECKING OUT and which the company has NO RECORD OF.

At this point I have wasted hours of my time, hundreds of dollars of pending bank charges, and have nothing to show for it except this review and a long chat log of unanswered messages on Klarna.com.

Are you aware that if you add a Credit Card to service your Klarna account, that your credit card company are highly likely to charge a cash transaction fee, plus interest charges. The interest rates and the charges involved are far higher than you could obtain a loan for elsewhere. This means that Klarna is not interest free as claimed on slice it purchases IF you use your credit card, as you pay charges and interest to your credit card.

Neither Klarna, nor your credit card will make this obvious to you, as it is in the small print. The first that you will know about this is when you receive your credit card statement.

My credit card credit company very kindly refunded my first charges incurred as a result of a Klarna transaction, as they accepted that I wouldn't know about them unless I spent half of my life reading terms and conditions, which after all are supposed to be fair and reasonable by law. They advised me to change my payments to Klarna from my bank account to avoid charges. I set up Direct debit from my Bank account to Klarna.

I received a Dormeo mattress topper purchased through Klarna on slice it. It was wet and mouldy on arrival and I contacted Klarna immediately via chat to report the damage. The agent refused to do anything. Although the purchase was shown in my Klarna account, he stated that no payment plan was set up.

I was subsequently, able to report the damage via the Klarna app and received confirmation that all payments were suspended until Dormeo resolved the issue. However, Klarna have processed a payment which has incurred fees with my credit card.

I took this up with Klarna who have nit been able to satisfactorily explain why they made the payment which they stated was suspended. Dormeo have done nothing yet, so nothing has changed.

By sheer accident during the chat with Klarna, it also became clear that despite that Klarna had confirmed that the Direct debit to my bank was set up, my existing purchases would still be charged to my credit card (incurring the fees that I had taken steps to avoid) unless I also added an alternative card. This was never made clear and I repeat only came to light by accident during the chat.

I have now had cause to use Klarna Chat 3 times and on each occasion have been disappointed. On each occasion.,my reasons for contacting Klarna have been completely reasonable. Regarding the suspended payment which went through, the original agent terminated the chat. I'd had to repeat myself very politely to her several times. Likewise, her colleague that I then contacted.

Klarna do not offer a copy of chat sessions as do most companies that use chat. Neither do they send copies of formal complaints, again a reasonable request, particularly when it is obvious that the agent has had difficulty understanding your issues AND that you have already had to repeat yourself several times.

I won't be using Klarna again.