There were unbelievable bargains on \u201cbestdeeal9,\u201d 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

But none of the offers were real, and Wish knew it.<\/em><\/p>\n

The company, an online novelty emporium that had more than $2 billion<\/em> <\/strong><\/em>in sales last year by dangling hard-to-believe discounts, created \u201cbestdeeal9\u201d as an experiment. Listings that had been removed for violating Wish policies were reposted on \u201cbestdeeal9\u201d and used in part to track whether shoppers complained when their orders never arrived.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Employees pushed back on the fake store, from which more than 213,000 people purchased before it was shut down in 2020. <\/p>\n

Employees told the Times<\/em> that bestdeeal9 was a symptom of problems at Wish as the company let customer service fall to the wayside and instead focused on growing the business. Wish spent more than $1 billion on sales and marketing last year \u2014 you might recognize the company\u2019s logo as one affixed to Los Angeles Lakers jerseys. The company rented a Bel Air mansion for influencers to make content at, now available to lease for $300,000 a month. And its digital ad strategy was like \u201cthrowing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks,\u201d Jennifer M. Grygiel, an associate communications professor at Syracuse University, told the Times.<\/em><\/p>\n

Scammy set-ups like bestdeaal9 were too much even for Wish shoppers, who weren\u2019t exactly expecting white-glove service. Items often took weeks to arrive, and there is an entire genre of memes poking fun at the difference between what the Wish listing advertised and what actually arrived. The company\u2019s user base and revenue have plunged in the last year, the Times <\/em>reports, <\/em>as Wish tries to turn things around.<\/p>\n