šJokerChinese immigrants in the U.S. are running Temu shipping centers out of their homes
carl_dungeonWho is buying that shit? Iāve never once heard someone say ālook at this great thing I got on temu!ā. Iāve literally only seen wish-fail stuff. It seems like a company that extracts pennies from putting shit directly into the landfill.
I havenāt bought from temu, but Iāve bought loads of stuff for various things on similar sites like aliexpress. If you have the time to wait for the shipping, itās the exact same components as I buy in electronics supply stores here, but at a fraction of the price.
I would say you should be free to make the decision to forego the advantages working though a middle man affords you, if you would prefer the savings. That said, thereās consumer protection, quality certification (important for insurance purposes), returns, after sales care and Iām sure Iām forgetting stuff. Nothing to do with differences in the product itself, more so the guarantee of a product that does what it says on the tin.
I use AliExpress for all the little items in my life that can fail without any real problem.
I need a comb and get 2/$1 to my door. $3/4/5 each in a physical store for the same.
I don't think you're appreciating how often these are literally the same products.
The retail sector has long ago entered enshittification. I'm not blind to the real people working in the field, but paying more for a product does not increase the chance of any positive environmental or social outcome. Feeding the beast, feeds their investors.
There is no ethical consumption.
There is no ethical consumption.
āWhat, me worry?ā
AliExpress (if you are not the person thiking you can get a 4TB SSD for 20ā¬) is great.
It started off as a āfor peopleā Alibaba.com and I have bought lots of quality stuff there including a phone, circuits, tools (not the best but they will probably outlive me), 3D printer stuff etc etc.
Temu is like wish, just crap.
Altima NEOTemu is more on par with wish. Itās really scanmy and disingenuous. Descriptions will claim one thing but send you some junk product instead.
AliExpress is a lot more legit. Theyāre still cheap products, but at least you know what youāre getting.
JohnEdwaAnything you can find on Temu you could get from Ali, and usually even a bit cheaper, Temu just adds a predatory interface and false marketing on top of it, and people who have no experience with what Chinese manufacturing actually costs think itās miraculous.
It isnāt, Iāve been buying this same stuff for almost two decades from sites like DealExpess, BangGood, Gearbest and then just straight from AliExpress. Temu is just the first to break through with the advertising.
And they gameified it by making it if you got someone else to sign up you both got insane coupons to make stuff that they were selling as loss leaders even cheaper and get enough and you could get it for free.
It made it a race to get the most people to sign up for the app as the very rare person got a switch for free for being better than any advertisement.
They must have been bleeding money for the name recognition. I still think their name equals trash.
Itās the exact same components I would have bought at a local store if there were any.
The last one closed almost 20 years ago. (Long before Temu, aliexpress and banggood)
Iād always thought there was a better use for the name Banggood than an electronic component store
I thought thatās what they call upvotes on PornHub.
I thought those were called ErectVotes
Tons of people. My wife bought a $7 digital camera off of there for one of our kids and 2 years later, both of our kids still love playing with it and it works perfectly fine. Weāve bought a couple of other toys off of there without issue. But yeah, the majority of the products on there are typically garbage.
Only thing I worry about with toys is if the plastic they use is non-toxic. Most cheap toys sold online arenāt tested for plastic toxicity.
RobotToasterIf your kid tries to eat their camera you have bigger issues to worry about.
Heavy metals and volatile chemicals can leech through skin. Some have cumulative effects.
If you think toxic means harmful only if you eat it, Iāve got a glow in the dark watch to sell you.
Not the best example, the health risks from radium dials were mostly to the people that painted them, because they licked their brushes to point them.
mostly is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Would you like to buy my glow in the dark watch, then?
True enough, but toxic toys arenāt super common in the US. It certainly happens, but they eventually get detected and recalled. That being said, with Trumpās plans for gutting regulatory bodies even further, Iāll be much less inclined to order cheap toys from online.
Ive never heard of anything from temu or similar being recalled
āDangerā to children: Amazon among online marketplaces selling unsafe toys in Europe
Some toymakers are āfloodingā Europe with dangerous toys via online marketplaces, including magnets capable of puncturing a childās intestines if swallowed and products containing toxic chemicals, according to an industry body.
Nothing in the article you linked states any sort recalls just companies stating that they take safety seriously. We all know that if a big corporation is saying something its definitely fact and theyd never lie.
Not temu, but I buy loads of stuff from aliexpress, from dice to entire 3d printers.
Same people who would buy the dropshipped product but at 1/3 of the price.
As a counterpoint, Iāve bought loads of really good cycling accessories from AliExpress. Itās not impossible to buy high-quality things from China - this is after all where a large part of everything is manufactured these days - you just have to be careful not to fall for the offers that are just obviously too good to be true.
I got some really nice plexiglass display stands from there for my display case for really cheap. But other than that, I wonāt buy anything thatās obviously crap. Oh yeah I got some string lights too, like 50 for 2 bucks and they work really well.
My coworker is obsessed with Temu. He buys like 10 things, typically 8 of them are garbage and he returns them and 2 are fine which he keeps.
Iāve neber heard him talk about great things he gets, but heās constantly talking to me about āLook how little ai paid for this thing!ā
Itās like the hot pocket of stores- take from package, place directly in toilet.
My 60+ mother was like that, until I convinced her to stop. Once she ordered a hat, didnāt like it, so tried to send it back. Temu just gave back her money, and told her to keep it. I bet itās a quality product
Returns? My wife does the same as your coworker, but anything she doesnāt like they refund her and tell her to keep. We call it Freemu.
chakan2Iāve met people that have gotten decent stuff off there. Their clothes seem nice and the electronics are hit and miss.
Itās about the same rate of crap to quality as EBay these days, and Amazon is only marginally better.
eBay is completely different though, since they have a lot of consumer protections, as well as a variety of services and used products. I got my phone on eBay used, which was about half the cost of buying new, and the phones was <6 months old. I also got a smart watch on eBay refurbished, again about half the price and thereās zero indication on the watch that itās used or refurbished. I buy used Switch games (w/ case) on eBay as well, which arenāt as good of a deal, but I still routinely get them $30-40 when theyād normally retail for $50-60.
You can buy utter crap on eBay, but you can also buy high quality used products. On Amazon, those same used products tend to be about 10% more expensive (my experience), and Temu just doesnāt have anything similar.
If youāre after cheap everyday items, shop at your local dollar store or buy on AliExpress. If youāre after new electronics, wait until one of the regular sales (usually holiday season and tax season), or shortly after the next version launches, and then shop online (lots of retailers). If youāre after used electronics, check your local classifieds, and fall back to eBay.
At no point is Temu on my list of options.
Youāve clearly never lost a dispute on eBay. Itās possibly the worst customer experience Iāve had.
I needed a glass part for a projector, it showed up broken. Tried to send it back and the seller offered like a 10% refund. eBayā¦after waiting a week (mandatory dispute resolution time) showed up, spent another week trying to meditate, the just said fuck it, the seller is right, eat a dick and your broken color wheel.
eBay gives you the illusion of consumer protection until you actually need it.
But no, based on some of the car parts and things Iāve gotten off eBayā¦the quality is objectively not better than what Iāve seen off Temu.
Thatās really too bad. I have never had to file a dispute since everything Iāve ordered has so far been as expected. Then again, I havenāt had any problems in my area with shipping companies mishandling packages either, so YMMV in your area if thatās a common issue.
My favorite thing Iāve got off eBay so far was a catalytic converter. It was empty.
My state doesnāt do emissions, and I kind of knew what I was gettingā¦but wowā¦I canāt believe a company would allow that in the first place.
Wow, thatās ridiculousā¦
You canāt trust ebay ratings either because if you have a bad experience they often wonāt let you post a review
Temu is insanely popular. Donāt underestimate this. Yes, itās pure crap, but people buy it. They earn bucks.
Meaning, itās not a valid argument to say itās crap, and then itās not a problem. Temu is a problem.
But then we have to start another discussion about the free market, because then Temu is valid.
Then what? Legit question, I donāt have the answer to.
Where there was once Tupperware, and makeup, there is now temu
Yeah, everyone is āa business ownerā by selling temu crap all over the place now.
Even farmers markets with wealthy looking white people selling garbage mugs and tchotchkes that are all clearly from China.
Someone else did all the work and they think they are special for pushing it on others. Heck so many ads these days are for sites selling the shovels in this gold rush for making your own drop shipping site on tiktok. What else is Shopify?
The thing is that itās not PURE crap.
Itās kind of like going to a flea market. Most of it is crap and you can still find some decent and good stuff thatās way cheaper than it should be.
AppoxoGues why: Ultra cheap labor.
And probably not 100% voluntary.
And probably not 100% voluntary.
I donāt need to guess. I know from having been to China and having talked to people.
Itās mostly a combination of 3 things:
But those reasons arenāt nefarious
Kinda on-topic:
youtu.be/Di5rmpD03iM
youtu.be/Di5rmpD03iM
What Xi Jinping Fears More than America
I cannot obtain food and housing without work. I am being coerced to work under duress. I would like to get off this planet now. Like right now.
I got some temu stuff. A 7$ bag heat sealer. Works perfectly fine.
However, I do not abide surveillance pricing. I can defeat the surveillance pricing but the procedure annoys me, so Iāve gone back to aliexpress which is easier to defeat.
Any tips on defeating aliexpress pricing? I stopped buying because everything was up so much.
Itās a process for me, I open hundreds of tabs, save all URLs, strip trackers from URLs, remove duplicates, then I reload all tabs into a fresh, empty multiaccount container, then I use a scraper addon called gatherfromtabs to pickup all the prices, then I log and setup everything up to the last page of the sale, I tally up all the totals in excel, order by price, usually 100s of ads, find the absolute 3 cheapest ones, review the ads really thoroughly to avoid scams and then buy 10-20x of whatever this item was to make it worth my time.
This process will become more difficult over time.
I mean, I rather not, but I rather not pay extra for nothing, usually saves 10- 30%
maybe itās because iāve been watching too much of the office lately but I expected you to end this comment with:
moitoiCreate a new account each time with a new email address (outlook works fine). Profit of unlimited ānew customer offerā. You can even do it for each article you purchase.
With this, I bought a lot of 1 cent crap when it was a thing.
What is surveillance pricing? Are they like using cookies to subtley raise the price on thing youāre searching for?
I took would like to know as well.
PsychadelligoatCookies and fingerprinting, yes
Things like using surveillance to figure out when your payday is and raising prices on that day because you psychologically are more willing to spend
Thatās fucked up. Why this legal?