Infinijen - is it legit? Klarna help, too!

soolin

JaffaW said:

Most scam sites don’t have means to contact or check order status. Prior to it going offline, I was able to do both, so it seemed more legit.
I was told that the item would ship yesterday, and arrive on Jan 6th.
The only option on Klarna is to say that you didn’t receive your order. So I guess I will wait til the 6th.
I will also reply to the emails that infinijen.co.uk sent me to confirm my order. If I hear nothing by the 6th, I will report to Klarna, my bank, and police.

You seem determined to trust the company and reluctant to answer some of the questions being asked and I hope you are right as I don’t like to think of anyone having to fight to get any money back. You might want to ask yourself though 

1) what proof have you got that the 2 companies are linked and also if they are linked what protection you have from a limited micro business . Nothing online shows any link.

2) what is your plan B if the 6th of January comes and goes with nothing , how did you fund the Klarna payment and are you sure you have recourse from that source? 

3) if your PC does arrive are you happy that you appear to have a warranty (do you even have a warranty.) with a non existent company ?

4) what persuaded you to use a company with no apparent presence anywhere , I worry that this is one of those ‘price too good to be true’ scammers .

5) did you screen grab a copy of any return or dispute policies before the company disappeared , that is usually a good way of telling how good a company is .

6) you say ‘ Most scam sites don’t have means to contact or check order status.’, I’m not sure why you think that , and also, by that same  argument you should be truly worried now as you can’t check as company has disappeared. 

7) out of interest when did you order and what was the total amount and how much have you paid so far and when is your next payment due? 

JaffaW

Not determined to trust, just that it seems a very good scam if true. Give the devil his due as they say.
I spent a few hundred. The next payment isn’t due until the end of January.
I know that my bank is good as they were able to help when someone hacked my Nike account, including returning the money. Though, of course, Nike is a reputable company.

smashinglynaive

JaffaW said:

Not determined to trust, just that it seems a very good scam if true. Give the devil his due as they say.
I spent a few hundred. The next payment isn’t due until the end of January.
I know that my bank is good as they were able to help when someone hacked my Nike account, including returning the money. Though, of course, Nike is a reputable company.

The problem here is that your payment to Klarna  is legitimate. Your payments to Nike were not.

I'm not sure a chargeback on the basis of "item not received" is going to work when Klarna are acting as the intermediary.  You are getting the service from Klarna that you are paying for, finance.  That said there's no indication that Klarna won't play ball but I suspect it is with them that any dispute will need to be raised.

And I'm not really sure how this is a "very good scam." Admittedly we can't see the site but they've really only put in a bare minimum of work outside of it to make it look remotely legitimate.  A few coupons on a couple of spammy coupon sites is about as far as they've gone.  They didn't even give Google time to get a link to their site.  And they didn't do a particularly good job of finding a company to tie themselves to that really fits, as they have an entirely different business purpose and appear, in a literal sense rather than a business sense, to be effectively dormant.

Even without seeing the site I wouldn't have fallen for this, purely because I wouldn't be happy handing over potentially thousands of pounds for a PC from someone with zero reputation.

JaffaW

I thought it was a good scam because the site, when it worked, was very well built. It even had a Virtual Assistant web chat service which I used, to check that it was properly operational.
They replied, and were able to answer a number of questions about the business, and my order. In my experience, scam websites don’t go to that sort of trouble.
One of the directors of the company was a lecturer in computer science, so I thought it linked up to selling PC parts.
I also checked the address through Companies House, and the directors run a lot of businesses from that address, so I assumed that this was just another small venture.
So the scammers have done their homework.

soolin

JaffaW said:

I thought it was a good scam because the site, when it worked, was very well built. It even had a Virtual Assistant web chat service which I used, to check that it was properly operational.
They replied, and were able to answer a number of questions about the business, and my order. In my experience, scam websites don’t go to that sort of trouble.
One of the directors of the company was a lecturer in computer science, so I thought it linked up to selling PC parts.
I also checked the address through Companies House, and the directors run a lot of businesses from that address, so I assumed that this was just another small venture.
So the scammers have done their homework.

The company cannot have legitimate directors , lecturers or not, if they don’t show on companies House. There is no apparent link between them and the mostly dormant micro business you have linked it to. You are dealing with one company and that is where your contract sits and it is them, the one that no one can find, that you need to investigate. 

smashinglynaive

JaffaW said:

I thought it was a good scam because the site, when it worked, was very well built. It even had a Virtual Assistant web chat service which I used, to check that it was properly operational.
They replied, and were able to answer a number of questions about the business, and my order. In my experience, scam websites don’t go to that sort of trouble.
One of the directors of the company was a lecturer in computer science, so I thought it linked up to selling PC parts.
I also checked the address through Companies House, and the directors run a lot of businesses from that address, so I assumed that this was just another small venture.
So the scammers have done their homework.

Well they've bought an off the shelf retail website and decided to staff it.  It's beyond most, perhaps, but if we're talking potentially £1000's per scamee I'd be willing to put a bit of legwork in too.

They appear to have picked a business that doesn't actually at all tie in with what they're doing. They're not a retail seller of games and toys but either way this is not particularly difficult.  Once you get an SIC code you can do an advanced search for all companies under that code.  Then all you need to do is pick one that is active but perhaps not doing much and then plaster its name all over your off the shelf retail website.

As I said, I'd not be taking the word of the company when determining its trustworthiness.  Did the lack of any references to them (or really their parent company) not start bringing massive alarm bells?

JaffaW

“I wouldn't be happy handing over potentially thousands of pounds for a PC from someone with zero reputation.”
I completely understand that, but my thinking was that every company has to start somewhere. Big companies with big reputations were small unknowns once.

cx6

Not really knowledgeable about Klarna, but would this transaction be deemed a credit agreement ?

If so, you are in luck.

MattMattMattUK

cx6 said:

Not really knowledgeable about Klarna, but would this transaction be deemed a credit agreement ?

If so, you are in luck.

Klarna do not appear to be fully covered by the Consumer Credit Act, they do appear to have a policy of full refunds for non delivery of goods.

OP, out of interest, in your Klarna account, who does it say the transaction is with for this purchase, does it include a functioning website and whatever it say the status of the order is? From their own site is appears they would not normally take payment until goods are delivered.

born_again

A couple of pages on Wayback machine..

Based in Edinburgh by phone No.