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Chinese immigrants in the U.S. are running Temu shipping centers out of their homes
(restofworld.org)
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Technology
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Temu is insanely popular. Don't underestimate this. Yes, it's pure crap, but people buy it. They earn bucks.
Meaning, it's not a valid argument to say it's crap, and then it's 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 don't have the answer to.
The thing is that it's not PURE crap.
It's kind of like going to a flea market. Most of it is crap and you can still find some decent and good stuff that's way cheaper than it should be.
Gues why: Ultra cheap labor.
And probably not 100% voluntary.
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 don't need to guess. I know from having been to China and having talked to people.
It's mostly a combination of 3 things:
But those reasons aren't nefarious
Kinda on-topic:
https://youtu.be/Di5rmpD03iM
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 I've gone back to aliexpress which is easier to defeat.
What is surveillance pricing? Are they like using cookies to subtley raise the price on thing you're searching for?
Things like using surveillance to figure out when your payday is and raising prices (just for you, and just on that day) because you psychologically are more willing to spend in that moment
That's fucked up. Why this legal?
Because we live in a capitalist hellscape and the companies that implemented these tricks were the fastest growing segment of our economy for like 15 years (esp after the 2008 crash) so the government turned a blind eye. Now they control the world and are able to literally buy politicians
I've heard that if we vote, all these problems will go away. But every time I vote, there's never an option on the ballets for "Guillotines"
The free market will provide guillotines if the people truly want them. /s
You need to vote for people that will PUT guillotines on the ballot! If there are none, find someone who will, or be the change you want to see.
We let them and also you need quite a lot of skill to overcome it as it is a kind of a cat and mouse game. And there's a end game of "tell us who you are or else we don't tell you the price, or we tell you only the 'highest price that nobody pays' "
Perhaps it's not a lot of skill needed, but a particular set of skills
I took would like to know as well.
Cookies and fingerprinting, yes
Any tips on defeating aliexpress pricing? I stopped buying because everything was up so much.
Create a new account each time with a new email address (outlook works fine). Profit of unlimited "new customer offer". 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.
It's 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.
maybe it's because i've been watching too much of the office lately but I expected you to end this comment with:
wtf
I mean, I rather not, but I rather not pay extra for nothing, usually saves 10- 30%
ya with how expensive plastic crap is nowadays in most stores, why not just buy from a place that sells the same thing that represents more closely to the price of manufacturing them? Of course I wouldn't buy any tech stuff from there, but a simple plastic container? Temu for sure!
Where there was once Tupperware, and makeup, there is now temu
Yeah, everyone is "a business owner" 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?
Do they sell Adderall?