Men offer money to date women on controversial website

[MarrickG]

[Photo: A screen capture of "Attractive Member" Valene's profile on the dating website WhatsYourPrice.com. Inset: Mr Brandon Wey, the website's founder.]

A US dating website created by a Singaporean-born entrepreneur has drawn the ire of many for its unconventional way of hooking single people up.

WhatsYourPrice.com, which started in April, lets its "Generous Members" offer and pay money to the "Attractive Members" to go on dates with them.

Prices put forth by the "Generous" group - the majority of whom are men - range from US$10 (S$12) to as much as US$1,000. The "Attractive Members", whom are mostly women, are free to choose the bidder they favour.

Once a date is arranged, the website reportedly takes a 5 to 10 per cent cut of the offer bid, with the remaining amount being paid by the "Generous" member to the "Attractive" member during their date.

What actually happens during the date is up to the two members. In the "How It Works" section, the website advises 50 per cent payment at the start of the date, followed by 50 per cent at the end.

Despite its seemingly good intentions, critics are labelling it a disguised shopfront for escort and prostitution services.

The website's founder, 41-year-old Brandon Wey, however said in The New Paper that he has a team working to weed out such members. They have removed "hundreds of members including scammers and 'cam girls' (who sell sex over the webcam)".

In an interview on Los Angeles news channel KTLA, Mr Wey defends the website as giving people to "buy the chance at love, to buy the first date to break the ice to get to know the person better." "No sex is involved," he said.

To the women, Mr Wey says it is an "empowering" website because "time is your worth". Through WhatsYourPrice.com, women have a means of filtering through the available men and if the date does not work out, she still gets compensated.

"It may seem materialistic for a woman to find a rich man, or shallow for such a man to flaunt his wealth but that's the way the world works," he said in an interview with The Sunday Times.

Some of the "Attractive" female members are going all-out to attract the men, posting scantily clad pictures of themselves, often in sexually suggestive poses.

Men are visual creatures, Mr Wey told The New Paper, and to him, it is not uncommon for women to use such photographs to attract their suitors.

He said people are free to talk about their personalities and even their fantasies, but they cannot advertise themselves as a social escort or someone who wants to offer sexual services for money.

Mr Wey, who is now a US citizen, studied at St. Andrew's Secondary School and Hwa Chong Junior College in Singapore. He later graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a double degree.

The website, whose membership is free, currently has over 80,000 people with an estimated 50-50 male-female ratio. Over 50,000 first dates have been successfully made, and the average deal price is around US$138.

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