Member of Parliament Allan Feldt (DF) is accused by a number of experts of misleading customers of his business Monkeworld.com. Feldt's methods are actually deemed illegal by the Consumer Ombudsman and the Danish Consumer Council Tænk. This is reported by TV 2.
And now Allan Feldt is defending himself on P1 Morgen, pointing to his son as the responsible party.
> "I'm a boomer. If I went to Frederik and said, now you have to do this and that with the marketing on the website, he would laugh at me." - Allan Feldt, Member of Parliament, DF
- He has been given a stern talking-to, and it was removed immediately, he says.
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An offer that (doesn't) expire any minute now
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On Monkeworld.com you can buy a single product: a stretchy rubber gorilla that apparently cannot break. On the website, you can see videos where it is thrown on the ground, hit with golf clubs, axes, and baseball bats, and shot with an airsoft gun.
The gorilla can be purchased for 196 kroner, but until yesterday, the price appeared as a special offer you had to hurry to take advantage of. The price was accompanied by a countdown timer indicating the offer would soon expire. But when the timer ran out, it simply reset and started counting down again. However, it is indeed an offer, even though it doesn't expire, Allan Feldt tells P1 Morgen.
- It is an offer on the site. That is entirely correct. It previously cost 39.99 dollars (256 kroner, ed.), and that is the normal price, he says.
After TV 2's article, the countdown timer and the offer campaign have been removed.
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Stern talking-to for son
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Allan Feldt owns 51% of the company PT Toy ApS, which is behind Monkeworld.com. The remaining share is owned by his son Frederik Feldt. And it is Frederik Feldt who has been responsible for the marketing, Allan Feldt says.
- I'm a boomer. If I went to Frederik and said, now you have to do this and that with the marketing on the website, he would laugh at me.
But Allan Feldt denies that his son deliberately misled customers.
- He had essentially dropped the ball. He had moved on to his next project, so he hadn't been tending to the site regarding that countdown mechanism.
Surely you don't just accidentally end up with such a deceptive marketing method on your website - you do that on purpose, right?
- No, I can't say that. I don't think that's a correct portrayal of what you're saying there.
Nevertheless, he has given his son an earful about it.
- I get the question from the journalist, and then I say to Frederik: "What is this about?" And of course, he got a bit of a scolding from dad for dropping the ball and not showing responsibility. And it was corrected immediately, says Allan Feldt to P1 Morgen.
[Image caption: Frederik Feldt and the toy gorilla he sells with his father. (Photo: © Stine Bidstrup, Ritzau Scanpix)]
DR has reached out to Frederik Feldt asking him to comment on the statements. He writes in a text message that:
- As Einstein said, "the only source of knowledge is experience."
In a LinkedIn post, he writes that he has always had full responsibility for the business's marketing.
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Several deceptive methods
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But the method with the fake countdown timer is illegal. That's according to Marie Frank-Nielsen, senior legal advisor at the Danish Consumer Council Tænk, speaking to TV 2.
- It helps manipulate the consumer into thinking they need to hurry up a lot to buy the monkey, she says.
And the countdown timer is not the only sales method on the website that experts assess to be deceptive, according to TV 2.
> "Find me one store that has sold to 70,000+ people without at least a handful of unhappy customers. It doesn't exist." - Frederik Feldt, Director, Monkeworld.com
Monkeworld.com has also had so-called 'toasters' on the website. They pretend to be live notifications that other customers have bought the product. However, it's the same names appearing over and over.
- Yes, there was a countdown timer and some purchase notifications on the site that weren't working as they should. Third-party widgets, set up incorrectly. I removed them the same day I became aware of this, writes Frederik Feldt on LinkedIn.
Furthermore, a Trustpilot rating of 4.9 stars has been displayed on the website. If you go to Trustpilot and find the site, the 12 Trustpilot users have only rated it at 2 stars, and several write that they never received the product they ordered.
Frederik Feldt, however, doesn't think much of those 12 reviews.
- Find me one store that has sold to 70,000+ people without at least a handful of unhappy customers. It doesn't exist. We have thousands of reviews collected through various channels, says Frederik Feldt on LinkedIn.
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Breaking the silence
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It has been a long time since Allan Feldt spoke publicly. His party stripped him of his spokesperson roles and the right to speak to the press and on social media after a couple of incidents in June.
First, he was reported to the police by Frederiksberg Municipality for photographing a pedagogue and a group of children at a daycare playground.
Shortly after, a TikTok post surfaced in which Feldt had written "beast" over a photo of two people sleeping and sitting on benches in a park next to a stroller heavily loaded with bags.
- We will not tolerate this, said group chairman in DF Alex Ahrendtsen to Ritzau on that occasion.
Alex Ahrendtsen informs DR that Allan Feldt still has a ban on speaking, but that he was given extraordinary permission in this case.
- I will do everything I can to deliver on the four areas I previously served as spokesperson for, and which I hope to return to, says Feldt to P1 Morgen.
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