In trying to clear the dazzlesmile™ name and seek relief they have filed a lawsuit naming Epic Advertising AKA Azoogle, Farend Services Limited (Just Think Media shell), Jesse Willms, Just Think Media, AtLast Holdings, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. I believe that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will all find a way out of the lawsuit but this is a far-reaching suit that claims Federal Unfair Competition, Trade Name Infringement, Cyber Piracy, Common Law Infringement, Contributory Infringement, Vicarious Infringement, Unfair or Deceptive Business Practices, State Consumer Protection, Misappropriation, Civil Conspiracy, Fraud and the RICO Act. All I can say is that is a mouthful.
It turns out that they not only are outing Just Think Media and Azoogle they are also outing themselves for some practices that they were asked to use for an advertising campaign run by Epic Advertising. They claim that in January 2009 Carson Parmalee who is a sales manager for Epic contacted Roger LeFevre who is the CEO of Optimal and dazzlesmile™ to try to gain an advertising account and start helping dazzlesmile promote its products. Epic claimed to have a network of 40,000 publishers that did CPA (Cost Per Action) offers with Epic and they claimed to protect trademarks, and brands. Apparently the Just Think Media teeth whitening crap was already out and running under other names like Dazzle White and they where having great success, so its possible now that our research on Just Think Media needs to change a little bit because now they seem to be an affiliate or partner of Epic Advertising (Azoogle).
Epic apparently pushed the auto-ship or “continuity offer” on dazzlesmile where they would offer a free trial or sample for shipping and handling and after a 14 or 30 day trial sihp and bill the rest of the product, as well as receive products monthly. These are some of the items we are trying to fight because I do not feel that these offers are legit and they are not designed to help the consumer. Here is the kicker Epic pushes a 15 day payment remittance for its clients so dazzlesmile receives an order and on the 15th day of the trial they have to pay Azoogle for the order. This does not mean that the order can not be canceled or fraudulent but Azoogle (Epic) gets paid.
Epic apparently pushes this type of model on all its clients in which case Epic needs to be shut down. These payment models allow epic to gain massive amounts of money without any real downside because in most cases Azoogle gets paid before the consumer can report the problem or cancel the account, that means dazzlesmile is stuck with the bill.
dazzlesmile was told to do exactly what they are told by the Epic web team and that by following the directives of the web team they should see hundreds or even thousands of daily orders for the dazzlesmile products.
Here is a small tidbit in the lawsuit that did not surprise me, Epic was surprised and impressed that dazzlesmile actually had a customer service department, apparently most of the other companies that are working with them does not have customer service, but why do you need customer service for fraud or scams? The object of those is not to service the customer.
Optimal was supposed to pay Epic based on a cost per action basis meaning every time someone placed an order dazzlesmile had to pay Epic Advertising $43 dollars. Why $43 dollars? Because Epic told dazzlesmile that the most important thing was to have a CPA at or above $40 to get more people on the offer. Like I have discussed in other posts this is why scams travel around the internet so fast because of the high profits that can be obtained from the offer. Epic also convinced Optimal to have a free trial with a low shipping cost and bill later. Epic claims this will help and is meant to stimulate sales. Remember Epic gets paid $40 dollars after 15 days and dazzlesmile has only received the shipping costs so if the program is canceled dazzlesmile is out $40 + Cost of Product Shipped – shipping cost. These loses can be massive in bulk. Epic informed dazzlesmile to set a high bill rate so that they could make up the $40 dollars with the second billing cycle.
In order for Optimal to do business with Epic they had to run a promotion where customers could get product by only paying shipping and handling and that customers tacitly agree to get more shipments at full price through the “terms and conditions”. Here we go hide the billing in the terms and conditions and we will rip you off. dazzlesmile did tell Epic that it would not say free in any connection with dazzlesmile because the products are not free. Epic told dazzlesmile that the terms and conditions must be placed on the landing page grayed out below the credit card inputs and/or out of sight from the input fields. Here we go with the practices i deplore tell the consumer they agreed but don’t show it in a reasonable spot. The other option Epic gave them is have a link to the terms and conditions at the bottom of the landing page.
Epic designed these landing pages and the terms and conditions of the promotional offer. Epic and dazzlesmile was ready to go in May of 2009 the first week dazzlesmile received over 2,500 orders. In four hours on May 7th 2009 the ad campaign generated 2,000 orders. That is crazy so in 4 hours Epic is “due” $86,000 for the CPA? Epic even told dazzlesmile that the majority if not all orders where from a single publisher and not the 40,000 supposed marketers they had in the network. Epic told dazzlesmile the publisher was from Canada welcome Jesse Willms and Just Think Media.
When Optimal (dazzlesmile) questioned the quality of the orders Carson Parmalee, and Marc Porchelli called and told dazzlesmile it was time to pay up the almost $100,000 it owed then. This is 7 days into the campaign, am I in the wrong business? Roger LeFevre believes that Epic knew what was coming with the orders, and that they where low quality and would be canceled and returned, which would make the campaign unprofitable for dazzlesmile. Can we say Oops?
Optimal decided to look close at the advertisements and found that the Epic’s affiliates or publishers where sending SPAM, creating fake consumer blogs, and using deceptive advertisements for the orders. They where also pushing other offers with the product, meaning you would get 2 products for 1 but both would bill monthly. Guess who gets the bill for the CPA? Thats right dazzlesmile will while the other product just gets the bill rate monthly for absolutely no overhead. The products pushed together was Whitening Now and dazzlesmile. The second product is Jesse Willms product or so it seems.
Optimal’s call center is overrun with calls at a rate of 50-75 a day with cancellations, Epic at that point says that the single publisher (Jesse Willms) has a smash and grab mentality. dazzlesmile demanded that an I Agree button be placed along with a description of the terms and conditions that provided the permission for the auto shipment on the landing pages. Epic said that was unacceptable and told them not to do it. Epic also pushed the use of an exit pop-up to make another offer. So in this case dazzlesmile did the right thing in my mind they tried to make Epic play fair. However Roger should have known better when he saw the advertisements and backed away quickly there is better ways to promote his product with other CPA offers that actually will do what they say, he could have went to Linkshare or Commission Junction.
dazzlesmile broke the relationship with Epic Advertising in June of 2009, however Epic continued without the permission of Optimal or dazzlesmile, and now they did not even have the product so they just stuck dazzlesmile on the same pens that were already being sold as Whitening Now and used the dazzlesmile trademark to continue the advertising campaign.
Now we get some more information we did not find on Farend Services, Just Think Media created Farend on May 27th 2009 and registered the company in Cyprus as a front to sell teeth whitening offers. At that point Just Think Media also registered several of the dazzlesmile domains that many of you may have gotten ripped off from. dazzlesmile claims that it is on the verge of insolvency due to the after effects of this marketing campaign because of what Epic and Just Think Media are doing with the dazzlesmile trademark. Optimal is still feeling the wrath of this campaign by getting returns of these pens to the call center and still having an influx of calls because people get the pens marked dazzlesmile do a quick check on Google and get the call center number and call and bitch them out. However in this case dazzlesmile is clean and should not be harassed. This is also why in my earlier post about dazzlesmile cease and desist letter the terms and conditions had the auto-ship text in it. I retract the statement that dazzlesmile is a scam but it’s really hard to differentiate between the two at this point.
There is a definite watering down of the trademark and trade name because now when I say dazzlesmile you automatically think of the scam, so how can dazzlesmile stay in business? I do not think they can. I recommend the reading of the full complaint of the lawsuit and make your own opinions. However at this point while I think Roger made some very bad business decisions I do not believe that company is a scam and hopefully will be able to get some remediation of the problems at hand. I also give them a huge thumbs up for making such a bold statement as a lawsuit with the RICO Act included in it and wish them the best of luck.
I hope to be able to keep everyone up to date as this lawsuit progresses as soon as I find a place I can follow the suit. I am working on the details with Roger for doing an interview on the Scam Cast podcast, I will keep everyone in the loop on this as well.
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Very interesting post. This story was covered by Wired magazine today but your post is much more revealing:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/teeth-whitening-company-sues-google-microsoft-and-yahoo/
The CPA networks really are very shady in the ways they operate!
Working now on some questions I think Roger has agreed to do an interview on the podcast with me so more to come
WOW! When I saw the Cease and Desist letter last month I was certain a lawsuit couldn’t be far behind. Damage was done and so a lawsuit was inevitable. What I find interesting is that AtLast Holdings is included as well. That’s not too surprising, since AtLast is Jesse’s third-party fulfillment house. I learned weeks ago that AtLast Holdings was registered in Colorado and was doing business as AtLast Fulfillment. It just goes to show what happens when you get hooked up with the wrong people.
I’m still wondering if and when the Feds will get into the act. I’m certain that there’s more hanky-panky going on than what’s in the 67-page lawsuit document, but I can’t prove it. What these people fail to realize is that federal investigators are probably out there posing as regular customers and gathering evidence. I’m going to continue to watch this one very closely.
Haha this is too funny, maybe that other company had their product name close or something but that’s not going to pull any weight against any of these companies. It’s pretty hilarious to see some random company get all hot and bothered over this and go after all the biggest internet giants. They’re going to get completely steamrolled, this is going to be interesting to watch indeed :-)