How Wish Built (and Fumbled) a Dollar Store for the Internet (nytimes.com) 35
The number of users on Wish has plummeted, and its stock price has dropped. Former employees point to an emphasis on short-term growth over customer service. From a report: There were unbelievable bargains on "bestdeeal9," a store hosted on the e-commerce platform Wish, including a $2,700 smart TV being sold for $1 and a gaming computer advertised for $1.30. But none of the offers were real, and Wish knew it. The company, an online novelty emporium that had more than $2 billion in sales last year by dangling hard-to-believe discounts, created "bestdeeal9" as an experiment. Listings that had been removed for violating Wish policies were reposted on "bestdeeal9" and used in part to track whether shoppers complained when their orders never arrived. Employees working on the project repeatedly pushed executives to take down the store, arguing that it was both illegal and unethical, according to three employees familiar with the project who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss company matters. More than 213,000 people made purchases from the store, according to an internal document reviewed by The New York Times, though the document did not say how many received their items.
Tarek Fahmy, then the senior vice president of engineering in charge of the project, ended it in 2020 after it operated for several months, the employees said. Mr. Fahmy, who has since left Wish, did not respond to requests for comment. Wish declined to comment on "bestdeeal9." Several employees said "bestdeeal9" is indicative of the kind of practices -- giving priority to short-term growth over customer service -- that initially turned Wish into an advertising and retail behemoth but have now left it desperately trying to right itself. Since its founding in 2010, Wish had many of the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley success story: started by a young coder and his college friend, rumored to have turned down a $10 billion acquisition offer from Amazon and described by Recode as an app "that could be the next Walmart." It developed a reputation as the dollar store of the internet, shipping odd gimcracks and thingamajigs directly from vendors in China. It blitzed shoppers with viral online ads for $1 plastic tongue clamps, $3 "leather face diapers" for cats and a $2 handful of worms.
[...] Peter Szulczewski, the company's former chief executive, once compared Wish's success to Donald J. Trump's 2016 election victory, explaining that both the company and the candidate had appealed to "the invisible half" of Americans who were routinely overlooked by political pundits and Silicon Valley elites. But Wish squandered its early promise, according to interviews with nine former employees. Deceptive experiments like "bestdeeal9" drove customers away, as did low product standards and unreliable shipping. When the rising cost of ads forced it to scale back its marketing, the company struggled to attract new shoppers. Wish is now scrambling to turn itself around. The company declined to make its newly hired crop of executives available but said in a statement that "over the past six months, Wish has undergone a massive transformation." The company said: "We have already seen significant traction and remain committed to executing against our priorities and building a long-term platform for growth."
Tarek Fahmy, then the senior vice president of engineering in charge of the project, ended it in 2020 after it operated for several months, the employees said. Mr. Fahmy, who has since left Wish, did not respond to requests for comment. Wish declined to comment on "bestdeeal9." Several employees said "bestdeeal9" is indicative of the kind of practices -- giving priority to short-term growth over customer service -- that initially turned Wish into an advertising and retail behemoth but have now left it desperately trying to right itself. Since its founding in 2010, Wish had many of the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley success story: started by a young coder and his college friend, rumored to have turned down a $10 billion acquisition offer from Amazon and described by Recode as an app "that could be the next Walmart." It developed a reputation as the dollar store of the internet, shipping odd gimcracks and thingamajigs directly from vendors in China. It blitzed shoppers with viral online ads for $1 plastic tongue clamps, $3 "leather face diapers" for cats and a $2 handful of worms.
[...] Peter Szulczewski, the company's former chief executive, once compared Wish's success to Donald J. Trump's 2016 election victory, explaining that both the company and the candidate had appealed to "the invisible half" of Americans who were routinely overlooked by political pundits and Silicon Valley elites. But Wish squandered its early promise, according to interviews with nine former employees. Deceptive experiments like "bestdeeal9" drove customers away, as did low product standards and unreliable shipping. When the rising cost of ads forced it to scale back its marketing, the company struggled to attract new shoppers. Wish is now scrambling to turn itself around. The company declined to make its newly hired crop of executives available but said in a statement that "over the past six months, Wish has undergone a massive transformation." The company said: "We have already seen significant traction and remain committed to executing against our priorities and building a long-term platform for growth."
Thing that always bugged me about wish.com (Score:2)
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The thing that always creeped me out was that they could tell you something was going to be delivered in under 30 days but it literally wouldn't show up until the very last day of their delivery "guarantee", and what I started to notice was that if you didn't complain about the slow delivery, you wouldn't get it at all. I ordered several locksmithing tools from them and their delivery system didn't show it had been shipped 10 days before the time was up. I complained and within 3 days it was at the door. Th
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Amazon is the new Wish (Score:2)
Amazon is well on it's way to becoming the new Wish.
Re:Amazon is the new Wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is well on it's way to becoming the new Wish.
Hell, I believe it has already achieved that status. It's a labyrinth of Chinese junk dealers.
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[Amazon is] a labyrinth of Chinese junk dealers.
Yes, but at least with Amazon you actually receive the junk.
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"Amazon is broke" seems a little silly. Maybe it breaks down for your corner-case needs... but for most things it's fine.
Re:Amazon is the new Wish (Score:4, Interesting)
eBay is better case though (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with the point but for places like Amazon and Alibaba users would have an expectation the store would have vetted the products and sellers they allow on the platform (no matter how untrue that might be).
With eBay it's pretty clear eBay is connecting individual sellers with buyers so it's a lot more distinct from the service. If I have an bad experience with a seller on eBay I'm careful to never use that seller again; if I buy a bad product on Amazon I may be less likely to use the service as a whol
Re: eBay is better case though (Score:3)
Amazon tells you to go fuck yourself if you get ripped of by one of their sub vendors. What we need are some laws that make Amazon and their ilk be responsible for EVERYTHING sold on their website.
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Re: eBay is better case though (Score:4, Interesting)
And that's why I never sell things online and instead unload my used electronics to places like CeX. I may not be getting the best deal, but once the item is off my hands, it's off my hands. No returns and no chance of being scammed.
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ebay is an flea market amazon is like consignment (Score:4, Informative)
ebay is an flea market amazon is like consignment shop that sells there own things + does the stocking + selling + etc of others things + they also have drop ship setups.
Ebay does not really sell there own things and is clear about who you are buying from. amazon mixes it up and makes not as easy to see if you are buying from amazon or buying from others with amazon being there e-com store. or if it's consignment from amazon.
Re:Amazon is the new Wish (Score:4, Insightful)
The major problem - and it is a MAJOR problem - on Amazon is the cr@ppification of their product search. There are several layers of cr@p to it all, each of which would be a major shortcoming but now makes Amazon virtually unusable for most classes of product.
The biggest factor is that the whole system is designed to push hundreds or thousands of irrelevant results on to your screen (Google does this too, but to a less overwhelming degree), As far as I can tell it treats every key word in a search as an "or" so that trying to specify exactly what you want unleashes a flood of additional irrelevant results for each term you add trying to narrow the results down. But this just scratches the surface of the search fail as bad as this is.
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As far as I can tell it treats every key word in a search as an "or" so that trying to specify exactly what you want unleashes a flood of additional irrelevant results for each term you add trying to narrow the results down.
It's worse than that. I've tried search for items by their manufacturer's model number, so something like "AM23QR6284" (this is made up random junk as an example, it's not a real thing) - the exact model I wanted to buy - and had the actual product be the 10th result behind a set of Chinese knockoffs. So clearly Amazon has a set of "synonyms" for model numbers to direct you to junk.
All the entries are also clearly written for SEO. You'll go to a page for a monitor and it'll read something like "Flatscreen M
Seriously now (Score:2)
"Leather face diapers" for cats? Hard to imagine a cat who would put up with such a thing.
Perhaps they were purchased by microcephalic S&M aficionados.
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Depends. Are these leather "face diapers" for cats -- yes, hard to believe a cat would put up with them. Or maybe they're "Leather Face" diapers for cats -- for truly hardcore horror fans who have cats with poopy problems.
Jail (Score:2)
"Employees working on the project repeatedly pushed executives to take down the store, arguing that it was both illegal and unethical, according to three employees familiar with the project"
Why aren't these executives in Jail?
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Why aren't these executives in Jail?
Indeed. This was not mere incompetence. It was deliberate fraud.
/. promoting criminals? (Score:2)
Wish was overpriced (Score:2)
I bought on eBay starting last century, then lost the appeal when eBay went from people and auctions to more and more Chinese stores... I started buying on AliExpress ~10 years ago, I often had ads for wish and all, but I have always found that it was more expensive then AE... I never bought anything on wish. They never were close to being the new amazon, Ali(baba/express) is the next amazon.
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I particularly enjoy (Score:3)
...the ability to somehow fold Trump into this story. Well done!
"...Peter Szulczewski, the company's former chief executive, once compared Wish's success to Donald J. Trump's 2016 election victory..."
That gives this such a nice validatory spice to my daily Trump Hate. I mean, I've been struggling since he's not president anymore, but as long as we can connect him somehow to everything that makes me angry, I can cope.
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I have had a mixed experience with Wish as well.
Some of the cheap stuff was great, some listing were obviously bs. And some products were too good to be true.
I have seen power banks rated at 10000000mah for about 10-20 bucks. Pics show them to be about the size you expect a 10000mah to 20000mah power bank to be at (I have a couple of 20000mah power banks).
I also saw a USB2 thumbdrive rated at 250GB or some other large size, for about 2 bucks. I knew this was bs, but I bought one, just to test what was actua
Meta-meme (Score:2)
When you buy Wish on Wish...
Wait... (Score:2)
Wish got tired of being a meme for getting ripped off so they created a special store to be nothing but ripoffs?
Aliexpress (Score:1)
Mind Blown (Score:2)
I had seen Wish ads and had always assumed that they were a wholesaler for prostitute and OnlyFans supplies. I never suspected that they were trying to be an Internet dollar store. Seriously. The only thing I've every seen ad for from them are cheap sleazy costumes and weird lingerie. Perhaps if they advertised table covers, cleaning supplies, and squirt guns I'd have checked them out.
The Invisible Half (Score:2)
I.e. the half hell bent on self destruction, be it by simply buy electronics that have a high chance of burning their house down, buying toys with a high chance of poisoning or otherwise killing them, or electing an obvious retarded lunatic into office.