Nordica Sauna (SaunaKits.com) Review, BUYER BEWARE: 7 Red Flags
Today is one of those days I’m examining yet another dubious company in the online sauna world.
The store I’m referring to is Nordica Sauna that changed its name to SaunaKits.com in May 2026.
This time I’m not only reporting what’s publicly available to any investigative sleuth out there but also showing how I was personally scammed by Nordica Sauna (discussed in detail below).
Because of my own bad experiences with SaunaKits.com (https://saunakits.com), I started reviewing their site, collecting evidence, and truly assessing their claims, and found more issues than I had even imagined.
Here’s a preview of what’s to come: higher prices, deceptive marketing, unsubstantiated claims, manipulated reviews on Trustpilot, heavy AI usage (= translates to chatbots disguised as humans with generic info that doesn’t answer your questions), and finally, not paying a business partner who they owed money to, and when confronted about it twice, their response: radio silence.
There’s been a new development since, which I’ll also cover in this article.
Nordica Sauna (SaunaKits.com) Review: 7 Red Flags & False Claims
In order to show SaunaKits.com has many false claims under their belt, we must first see what their promises and offerings are. These are their biggest selling points:
- America’s most trusted sauna store, backed up by their 500+ Trustpilot reviews
- best prices guaranteed
- fastest deliveries
- over 2,000 products in their catalog
- amazing customer service
On paper, that looks as good as it gets. Who wouldn’t want the vastest selection with the most affordable prices, accompanied by stellar service and a swift delivery, and all this from the most trustworthy company there is on planet Earth?
Well, we all know what they say when something sounds too good to be true. That’s the case with SaunaKits.com too: it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. Let’s dissect their claims one by one.
1. Best Prices Guaranteed
Most sauna stores in the US price their products very similarly if not identically. That’s because they all operate under the same rules and are bound by certain contracts.
MAP (minimum advertised pricing) is one of them and means a store can only charge a certain amount or higher for a given product, but not go below the MAP price. That’s why you see identical pricing in most sauna stores.
So how does Nordica Sauna, the current SaunaKits.com, compare to all this? Peculiarly, their idea of “best prices” means consistently charging more than competitors for the exact same products:
In this example, I have added to cart the same Harvia sauna heater and six boxes of the same Harvia sauna rocks in two different stores, SaunaKits.com being the latter.
Even though it and the competing store use the same base price of $2,089 for the heater alone, SaunaKits.com charges so much more for sauna rocks and shipping that the price difference ends up being $653,36 when shipping to the same address in Seattle, WA.
If you thought I had to search long and hard for this example, that’s not the case. When I randomly chose 10 different products, and compared prices between SaunaKits.com and competitors, including shipping, this is what the results look like:
| Product: | Competitor(s): | SaunaKits.com: | Price difference: |
| Huum Hive Wood Stove (13 kW) + stones | $2,630 | $3,029 | $399 |
| Finnmark FD-6 Infrared Heat Room | $9,995 | $9,995 | none |
| Harvia Spirit Heater (6 kW) + stones + remote control | $2,952 | $3,096 | $144 |
| Narvi Stony 20 Wood Stove | $2,395 | $3,094 | $699 |
| Auroom Mira L Outdoor Sauna (black) | $25,280 | $25,280 | none |
| SunRay Baldwin 2-Person Sauna + Harvia heater (3.5 kW) | $3,496 | $3,496 | none |
| Saunum Air 7 Heater (stainless steel) + Wi-Fi + stones | $4,610–$4,665 | $4,720 | $55–$110 |
| Mr. Steam Recessed Light with 120 V LED Driver | $665 | $893 | $228 |
| Auroom Baia Indoor Sauna (thermo-aspen) | $9,990 | $9,990 | none |
| Scandia Heater (small, 240 V, 3 kW, 24 h thermostat on heater) | $950 | $1,349 | $399 |
Like said and shown, SaunaKits.com offers the same or more expensive prices than other sauna stores.
Personally I think it’s fine if a store doesn’t want to compete on (just) price; after all, in today’s economy virtually everything is expensive down to gas, groceries, and fast food, so it’s not realistic to expect sauna equipment to be cheap.
A store that wants to charge more for the exact same products could do something else to justify higher prices: they could offer better warranties or exceptional maintenance advice resulting in the products you bought serving you longer, or something else valuable.
But when a store is NOT offering anything extra, meaning it just wants bigger profits while claiming to have the best prices, that’s when it crosses the line to deceptive marketing.
2. Fastest Deliveries
Promising a fast delivery, let alone the fastest, is risky when talking about big and heavy sauna kits. What makes this promise even more questionable, though, is the fact that Nordica Sauna delivers products the same way its competitors do: through suppliers and distributors.
They don’t even try to hide it but state it themselves on saunakits.com:
“As soon as we receive your order, we automatically reach out to our suppliers to confirm that it is in stock and available for immediate shipment. […] If your item(s) are available for immediate shipment (within 5 business days), we will process the charges and submit the order for shipment.”
This kind of language clearly shows they don’t pack and ship products themselves, which also suggests they don’t have a say in how the shipping goes. Instead, their role is to act as an intermediary.
(This is very common, and like said, practically all competitors do the exact same thing.)
SaunaKits.com even admits on their own website that shipping can be delayed due to various problems and that they can only give you estimates.
This means that while SaunaKits.com doesn’t necessarily offer any slower deliveries than competitors, there’s no evidence showing they provide, or even could provide, faster deliveries than anyone else due to their business model.
3. Over 2,000 Products in their Selection
This point has less to do with whether their claim is technically true (which it could be) and more to do with how customers perceive their selection and how it compares to those of competitors.
A claim of “over 2,000 products” makes you think of a huge store and that Nordica Sauna differs in this sense from competitors who have much less to offer.
In reality, Nordica Sauna’s selection is very similar to those of competitors. The reason for this is the same as above with point #2: when you’re forced to work with the same suppliers everybody else is, and you don’t make or manufacture anything yourself, how could you realistically have more products to sell, given that you’re running a sauna store, not an everything store?
I scoured SaunaKits.com’s sauna selection specifically, including all traditional sauna buildings and sauna heaters they sell, and found their selection to be just as modest as most other stores’ in the US.
As stated, this in understandable because only certain brands are available in the US. The heater selection is especially scarce, Nordica Sauna offering only five distinct brands: Harvia, Huum, Scandia, Finlandia (which is the same as Harvia), Saunum, and Narvi.
Could over 2,000 products in their catalog still be possible? Maybe. When counting one heater model as 12 different products like below, that certainly helps:
To the customer, it’s still only one product. Harvia KIP is exactly the heater I have myself, and the fact that it comes in a few kW variants and can be sold together with remote control and/or rocks, doesn’t make it 12 different products.
Another store can have all the same Harvia KIP variants but offer only one product listing. When you click it, you choose the desired kW in a drop-down menu and can check all the boxes you want for add-ons like stones and remote control options.
That’s a much more honest and user-friendly way of offering products.
4. America’s Most Trusted Sauna Store
To me, this is where muddy waters get even murkier.
SaunaKits.com uses trust-centered marketing language and bases it on their Trustpilot reviews (www.trustpilot.com/review/saunakits.com), most of which were collected during their Nordica Sauna days. (Now the review pages have been merged).
Since we got a foretaste of Nordica Sauna’s reviews above, let’s investigate what kind of reviews they usually and nowadays get:
I have a ton to say about these UNnatural, often unprompted and unverified reviews that Nordica Sauna gets like mushrooms after a rain.
To be clear, I’m not saying SaunaKits’ reviews are fabricated and fake in the sense that they couldn’t be based on real customer interactions, but the way they’re collected has to include heavy automation. It’s simply the only explanation for the findings below.
a) Most Reviews Are AI-generated
The formatting, sentence structures, total lack of relevant details, emphasis on the wrong things, and keyword-heavy language all point to AI usage. If all reviewers from all around the US wrote their own reviews freely, it would be impossible for them to sound essentially the same.
It’s likely the reviewers are given a ready-made review template, asked certain questions, and/or asked to mention specific subjects, such as the person’s name who helped them. It’s even a possibility that AI fills the gaps, makes the reviews uniform, and ensures they all share the same, praising tone.
b) Name-dropping like We’re Talking about Celebrities
I find it unusual that almost anyone writing their own reviews would make it a priority to mention the customer service agent’s (full) name repeatedly throughout their review.
Wouldn’t you much more likely concentrate on the product you bought, how easy or difficult it was to install, your experiences using it (several times or even for weeks), and then maybe mention the agent’s name once if you were truly that impressed with them?
I also think mentioning the rep’s name would be more likely during a phone call with a real human, not in a written review after a digital conversation with a soulless chatbot, which is exactly what SaunaKits.com uses (more on that later).
c) Reviewing the Service, Not the Products
SaunaKits.com sells sauna buildings, sauna heaters, and other sauna equipment just like they did during their Nordica Sauna era, so wouldn’t it make perfect sense if they also received feedback on those exact items?
It’s only if they also sold consulting, engineering, or installation services, for instance, that it would make sense for customers to emphasize the service in their reviews.
In SaunaKits’ case, this discrepancy shines through: they sell physical products but mostly receive (AI) reviews on the (AI) customer service they provide.
There’s an exhausting array of reviews on customer service alone, and hyping it in 5-star reviews before your sauna has even arrived, but this cracks me up the most:
They honestly expect us to believe that a customer who wanted a sauna so badly they were willing to spend thousands on it, is MORE impressed with the customer service than the sauna they got? What does that tell about the sauna?
Imagine going to see a movie you’ve been looking forward to all summer, and loving it, but still being more impressed with the faceless, online platform you used to buy your ticket. In what world is that believable?
Also, notice how the reviewer is not at all bothered by the delays and issues, which is exactly what customers usually leave complaints about. Moreover, this person has only one review to his name (which is very typical on current Nordica Sauna’s Trustpilot page), meaning he has never reviewed any other product or company, but simply couldn’t contain himself when presented with the opportunity to hallelujah SaunaKits.com.
At this point, one could ask that since SaunaKits.com is relying so heavily on AI-driven storytelling in their manipulated reviews, why do they want all of them to revolve around customer service instead of actual user experiences that would be much more valuable?
I can think of a few possible explanations.
Most website visitors never buy anything but a few of them may ask something through chat; when you incentivize even these people to leave a review and make it easy – by offering a pre-made/AI-generated review template of some sort, for instance – you’re inevitably going to get many similar-sounding reviews focused solely on customer service.
For the store, the beauty is that it doesn’t matter! Only those who specifically go to read Nordica Sauna’s reviews can see that they aren’t natural, varied, and product-oriented like you would expect. All the rest see 500+ 5-star reviews on the front page of SaunaKits.com and are immediately convinced.
On top of that, many don’t realize how flawed Trustpilot is, how anyone can leave (fake) reviews, and how bad Trustpilot is in detecting what’s genuine and what’s not.
d) Rebranded Name Shoved Everywhere
Yet another factor pointing to manipulated reviews is the fact that so many reviewers specifically, and sometimes repeatedly, mention how pleased they are with “SaunaKits.com” (of which I’ve shown many examples above).
This happens even when they bought the product from Nordica Sauna before the rebranding took place on May 4, 2026.
I find it hard to believe that first you pay a business to get the product you want, then you can’t wait to brag about the company online, obviously for free and on your own time, and once you finally write your first ever Trustpilot review, you make sure to mention “saunakits.com” even though your great experience was made possible by Nordica Sauna.
It feels pretty clear that since SaunaKits.com has no history as a company under that name, they need all the mentions they can get and want to control the narrative, which AI enables them to do.
e) The Story Doesn’t Add Up (= No Expertise Showcased by SaunaKits.com)
Below is the embodiment of everything AI-related we’ve discussed: perfect formatting, paragraphs, and grammar down to the typical em dashes, name-dropping, repeated use of SaunaKits, praise, five stars… all the works. But this time the review is verified unlike most reviews this company gets.
So let’s give Nordica Sauna the benefit of the doubt and say this review is based on a real purchase. Why is it still clearly AI-generated and why doesn’t the fictional story make any sense?
This reviewer, Isaac, thinks altitude is something to pay extra attention to when choosing an outdoor sauna. Notice how he never mentions which sauna heater he chose (not even whether wood-burning or electric). He researched for weeks and, once again, received excellent guidance from John, but still got the “specs” wrong:
🔶 When your sauna is at an altitude of 9,000 feet, the most important factors to consider are better than adequate ventilation because of less oxygen available, chimney and proper draft so that it’s easier to light a fire, and insulation because it’s cold for most of the year.
Notice how AI never made the connection that high altitudes mean cold climates, especially when you have a “mountain property.”
There was a time I lived at an altitude of 8,000 feet in Wyoming, and our community there had a funny, yet factual saying: “We have two seasons: winter and July.” And yes, it could still snow in June and start snowing as early as in August, so summer was, indeed, short. Hence, good insulation is a brilliant idea, and should be a must if choosing an electric sauna heater.
Unsurprisingly, SaunaLife CL7G, the sauna building sold to Isaac, is uninsulated, and SaunaKits.com recommends only electric heaters for it. 🤦♂️
🔶 Altitude doesn’t matter when choosing the sauna building: it won’t explode or break, be it a cabin or barrel sauna and made of whichever local or Nordic wood. It should of course be well-built, stained or painted with products that contain anti-mold agents and UV protection, and have a proper roof and floor, etc., but so does every sauna at sea level.
🔶 Full glass front isn’t ideal in a cold climate as glass lets heat dissipate unlike more insulating surfaces like wood. Having wider windows or full glass fronts means you have to choose a more powerful heater to compensate for the heat loss. This also means that John did in fact manage to upsell to Isaac after all.
🔶 “The right unit.” Because of the vagueness, we don’t know whether Isaac is referring to the sauna building or the heater, but it doesn’t really matter here because there is no right unit. All types of sauna buildings can work, and the heater can be from any proper sauna brand, free-standing or wall-mounted (if choosing electric), pillar heater, a heat-storing heater, you name it.
It really comes down to your preferences and what you can afford. Whether you prefer higher heat or want the maximum amount of löyly, whether a quicker heat up time is a priority or not, or if you want hundreds of pounds of sauna stones (which then mean your sauna needs a sturdier foundation), and so on.
🔶 “Everything as described” with the features of the SaunaLife sauna; why wouldn’t all the info be correct, given that it’s coming directly from the manufacturer? There’s nothing here to thank former Nordica Sauna for. Or did Isaac really think that when he orders and pays for a bigger sauna with two benches by an established sauna manufacturer, he’s going to receive a different product, maybe a small sauna with only half a bench?
Regardless of what Nordica Sauna’s review strategy is – whether they use a template, employees draft AI reviews for customers to approve, or reviews are AI-generated from notes based on real customer interactions, for example – it’s clear this AI-prompted review was not written by Isaac or any real person.
5. Amazing Customer Service
After everything we’ve learned so far, what kind of customer service would you expect from an AI-first company which Nordica Sauna nowadays is?
You guessed it: AI chatbot with AI agents. That’s a pity, given that 79% of Americans would much rather interact with a human than an AI agent.
I had the displeasure of talking to one myself as I needed to test Nordica Sauna’s customer service for this review. I was greeted by the ominous John again:
100% of John’s replies to me were AI-generated. That explains why I got such useless, non-committal replies that didn’t answer my question.
John’s replies appeared in seconds, so there’s no doubt they were AI-generated. Not that the content alone wouldn’t have been enough to confirm AI usage.
And to think this is the John whose AI-generated answers are reaping all the profuse a*s-kissing in SaunaKits’ AI-generated Trustpilot reviews. It’s like a snake eating its own tail.
6. Backed Up by Professionals
In their marketing, Nordica Sauna boasts about professional athletes endorsing them, whereas other sauna stores are “not backed by professionals.”
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but being a professional athlete, public speaker, or any known person doesn’t give you any sauna knowledge. By being any of those alone, you have no professionalism whatsoever in the context of sauna bathing.
And since all the “professionals” Nordica Sauna has recruited are paid for their words and/or got their sauna for free, what they say actually has less weight than the words of a random customer who first researched saunas out of pure interest, bought any real sauna with their own money, and started using it.
All the people in the videos on saunakits.com are essentially reading off a script and hitting more or less the same talking points: 20 minutes in the sauna, great for recovery and sleep, the sauna they “got” is a game-changer, combine it with cold plunge, “highly recommend” and “go get yours, Nordica Sauna has everything you need.”
Most of these professionals don’t even show the sauna they’re sitting in while filming, probably because they wouldn’t have anything of substance to say: in order to say something of value, you’d actually have to be familiar with the sauna, ideally with the whole process, i.e., from the reasons you picked it to the assembly and finally using it.
After viewing the videos, my guess is that you’re just expected to look at them (to see them on the page without watching them), assume that Nordica Sauna must be great, and feel a sense of trust emerge. Because if you do really watch the videos, I can’t imagine anyone being convinced by them.
7. Reason for Name Change
Moving on to the crux of the rebranding, why change the name Nordica Sauna to SaunaKits.com in the first place?
Their own answer is this: “Same team. Even better name. […] Over the years, we’ve shifted from just another online store and have become something bigger — a platform.”
So, what they’re saying is that Nordica Sauna was a descriptor for “just another online store,” while SaunaKits.com describes something “bigger” and is a “platform” unlike their previous store.
This kind of nonsense could only be true if words lost all meaning.
First of all, out of these two options, Nordica Sauna is the “bigger” name. It’s not as exact as mere SaunaKits, so it allows you to sell more options but without losing focus. It’s clearly inspired by Nordic sauna traditions, which is great and as accurate as can be. The a’s in the end of both words, NordicA SaunA, have a nice ring to them (especially when pronouncing sauna correctly!).
In addition, Nordica Sauna feels classy and premium, and since we now know this company likes charging more than many competitors (as discussed in point #1), Nordica Sauna simply as a name at least tried to justify the higher prices, even if it created just an illusion of better quality.
SaunaKits.com, though, feels like a cheap outlet store, lacks imagination, and is old-fashioned as it makes you think of the dot-com bubble of the year 2000 (yes, the .com part really is included in the new name and logo).
So again, what would make a company abandon a good name they built their reputation around, and change it to the lamest name possible?
I can’t answer the latter, but I do think I’ve found the most plausible reason for the former: a trademark infringement lawsuit.
Turns out there is a much older company named Nordic Sauna, founded in the 1960s, and they weren’t too happy with Nordica Sauna’s very similar name.
It appears Nordica Sauna agreed to changing their name in order to avoid a costly legal battle they could’ve lost.
For anyone thinking the lawsuit isn’t the reason for the forced rebranding, I can tell you how unideal it is for an online business to change their name after years of operation.
Everything Nordica Sauna had built was tied to their address https://nordicasauna.com. When that address no longer exists, and a new URL with no history (https://saunakits.com) replaces it, the company loses most traffic Nordica Sauna used to get and has to build many things from scratch.
Needless to say, no business wants that. You simply must have a grave reason to do something so damaging to your business as to change its name and destroy its virtual home base.
I get why Nordica Sauna didn’t want to mention the lawsuit as the reason for the name change, since they’re not obligated to tell the public they’ve been sued, but they could’ve still crafted a much better rebranding story instead of resorting to AI once again, leading to empty corporate jargon and the worst logic I’ve ever seen in a press release.
SaunaKits.com’s Business Model: Not Paying a Business Partner, Then Ceasing All Contact?
This really happened but has since been resolved. I’ll tell the whole story below.
SaunaKits.com offers the same affiliate program they did when when they were still Nordica Sauna.
(When stores are part of affiliate networks, their affiliate partners, such as bloggers and YouTubers, get a commission if they refer a paying customer to the store. For the customer, the product costs the same (and can sometimes be given a discount code as well). The store splits their profit with the affiliate partner.)
I joined Nordica Sauna’s affiliate program in March 2025. Luckily, I linked to their products only on two of my articles. Nordica was never my favorite choice: as a price-conscious consumer myself, I want to highlight only the best deals to my readers.
I used Nordica Sauna’s links only when I deemed other options riskier. For instance, one competing store at the time could offer a slightly lower price on a given item (and a higher commission for me), but the site had countless annoying pop-ups jump at your face, flashing menus, ad-like promotions and text running everywhere, and because of all this, scrolling the website was slow or sometimes impossible.
In addition, that store’s Trustpilot reviews were fewer and worse than Nordica’s (oh the irony, now looking in hindsight!), so I just didn’t feel comfortable recommending the trashy-looking, possibly virus-laden site over Nordica Sauna even though I might’ve gotten higher commissions that way.
Then came the day I made my first (and only) commission through Nordica Sauna:
And what happened after? Nothing.
My commission of $174.60 was never approved and paid. I approached Chris Tester about it twice, in March and May 2026, and received no answer.
Sometimes, the commission is rejected fairly soon after the sale because the customer cancels or returns their order, which the affiliate partner is notified of, but that should’ve happened in Dec -25 or Jan -26 if that had been the case. Instead, Nordica Sauna just kept my money and moved on like nothing ever happened.
Nordica Sauna is the only company I’ve had this kind of experience with; cooperation with every other business partner has worked beautifully.
It’s only 12 days after I wrote this very article that SaunaKits.com reached out and finally paid me the debt they owed on June 26.
They apologized, citing an “administrative lapse” as the reason why I wasn’t paid in a timely manner.
I firmly believe I would’ve never been paid unless I had written this article, and when I asked my sweetest, most gullible loved one if they believed there was a human error behind this, they instantly said no.
But I’ll let you be the judge.
Final Thoughts
After I had felt betrayed by Nordica Sauna (SaunaKits.com) for nearly seven months, assessed their claims and reviews, and been offered their AI-generated customer service, their trust-focused slogan felt particularly tasteless and grotesque.
That’s why I proposed a new, updated slogan: America’s Most Trusted Busted Sauna Store.
But it reflects my opinion only, which is why you may like what Nordica Sauna has to offer more than I do:
- lots of AI-assisted reviews generated in the same editorial voice & style (that can be based on what real humans typed in chat)
- automated customer service
- the same or higher prices than with competitors
- the same products competitors have
- paid promotions where “experts” read off a script
- poor sauna understanding
Even though I’m not a fan of SaunaKits.com’s business practices, I get why they chose the strategy they did: when you have absolutely no real competitive edge, meaning you can’t offer better prices and/or better selection, or anything else to stand out from competitors, then all that’s left to do is to make people think you really are the best.
