![]() ![]() He says he spent still more money on the bids themselves, but lost most of the auctions, and even when he “wins,” he and others spend far more, through buying the right to bid and the bids, and the sale price, than the cheap, generic knockoffs are worth. Pstikyan says he spent $5,923 buying 44,250 bids on DealDash’s website in November and December 2016. It adds: “The problem is that DealDash is sham.” Pstikyan claims that Deal Dash actually is an illegal lottery, and that “the luxury ‘brand name’ products that DealDash offers consumers are not true luxury brands at all they are cheap, generic brands that do not sell in substantial volumes anywhere, except through DealDash and one of its affiliates.” "DealDash continually advertises to consumers that they can save up to 90%, or more, off brand name merchandise ranging from electronics, to furniture, to art, to flatware, to clothing and accessories." "Consumers pay money in advance for a certain number of intangible ‘bids,’ and then spend those bids in daily ‘auctions’ in hopes of winning the offered products at steep discounts," the complaint continues. While purportedly based in Finland by its 24-year-old “controlling owner,” William Wolfram, DealDash exclusively targets American consumers and ships merchandise only to the United States, the complaint states.ĭ “purports to offer consumers the chance to win brand name merchandise for a tiny fraction of the retail price," the complaint states. Grant Pstikyan filed the complaint against DealDash in Thursday with a federal judge in Minnesota.ĭealDash, founded in 2009, has registered millions of paying users throughout the United States, and American retirees are its largest demographic, according to the 35-page lawsuit. This page uses Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported-licensed content from Wikipedia.MINNEAPOLIS (CN) - The penny auction site DealDash made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling phony name-brand products, according to a class action from a Californian who says he lost thousands of dollars to the scam. ![]() The channel uploads commercials and videos of products up for bid. The channel was created on October 2, 2013, and the first video was uploaded on January 30, 2018. Due to this, and to the allegedly premium products on offer being generic items manufactured by companies with links to Wolfram, DealDash faced a lawsuit in 2017, later being dismissed eight months later. Both Truth in Advertising and Consumer Reports noted that DealDash's own terms of service tell users that they are likely to spend more than the retail cost for products and are unlikely to save money using the site. ![]() Small print explains she bid 761 times on that mixer, which cost her over $456, plus the $25 "price" she won it for, meaning she paid closer to $481 - well over the stated $349 retail price. The company grew quickly, quadrupling its revenue yearly for its first three years.Ĭonsumer organization Truth in Advertising reported that a DealDash television commercial shows an individual named "Roseanna" winning a $349 KitchenAid stand mixer for "less than $25". It later raised approximately $1.5-$2 million in venture financing from the CEOs of Rovio Entertainment and Carbonite. He used the money he had saved to start the company.ĭealDash obtained early financing from Tekes. Wolfram had generated approximately $500,000 in affiliate sales a year earlier buying popular YouTube videos for $50, borrowed from his mother, then collecting revenue from affiliate marketing links he would add. He had lost $20 bidding unsuccessfully for a MacBook on an earlier penny auction site. It was founded on February 22, 2009, by William Wolfram.ĭealDash was founded in 2009 by Wolfram, who was a 16-year-old Finnish entrepreneur at the time. DealDash 'Secret Pleasure' Commercial DealDash is an American company that operates an online auction and shopping platform. ![]()
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