This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I don't see why it would only be Chinese immigrants doing it.
It's all over the place.
It's all fun and games until you're left with a bunch of crap you can't sell, or it turns out you were shipping dangerous products and now you're on the hook for it.
Enjoy your 5% profits though.
Yeah this is literally just the newest version of what people have been doing with Amazon and Ebay markets for like 20 years. Anyone can bulk order random shit on Alibaba and then mark it up for the US market. This is just cutting out the middle man.
It’s Sinophobia masquerading as news.
Temu is quite literally poisonous.
If you give me 15 minutes of your time and 200 dollars I can make you a millionaire! It's called drop shipping and with my weird little trick the hunnies will love you!
Who is buying that shit? I’ve never once heard someone say “look at this great thing I got on temu!”. I’ve literally only seen wish-fail stuff. It seems like a company that extracts pennies from putting shit directly into the landfill.
I haven't bought from temu, but I've bought loads of stuff for various things on similar sites like aliexpress. If I have the time to wait for the shipping, it's the exact same components as I buy in electronics supply stores here, but at a fraction of the price. I prefer to not pay a 300-400% markup for no real reason.
AliExpress (if you are not the person thiking you can get a 4TB SSD for 20€) is great.
It started off as a "for people" 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.
Temu is more on par with wish. It's really scanmy and disingenuous. Descriptions will claim one thing but send you some junk product instead.
AliExpress is a lot more legit. They're still cheap products, but at least you know what you're getting.
Anything 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 it's miraculous.
It isn't, I've 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 properly break through with the advertising. Because it's mostly just bullshit.
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.
It's 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)
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, there’s consumer protection, quality certification (important for insurance purposes), returns, after sales care and I’m sure I’m 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.
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. We've 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 aren’t tested for plastic toxicity.
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.
I've never heard him talk about great things he gets, but he's constantly talking to me about "Look how little I paid for this thing!"
Returns? My wife does the same as your coworker, but anything she doesn't like they refund her and tell her to keep. We call it Freemu.
As a counterpoint, I've bought loads of really good cycling accessories from AliExpress. It's 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.
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
Temu is like NAFTA for American “business” people.
You cut out the factory worker first, then cut out the American importer.
But the U.S. government’s moves to crack down on cheap e-commerce parcels from China have pushed sellers to rethink their business strategies.
So, there's the problem then. If they made it all more expensive for the American consumer, then that solves the problem. /s
On a serious note: it's obviously cheaper because there's no physical shop with no staff. Isn't this how Bezos started out, from a garage?
Temu? More like Trashmu.
It's the same low-to-medium quality crap that you can usually find on Amazon at a slightly higher price.
Reason why I only buy at AliExpress and only stuff I don't ingest or wear on me for longer times.
Yes!
This is the way. Why pay double for eBay or Amazon to ship me stuff from AliExpress anyways for like 5 day faster shipping at best.
But only for the same garbage that they will sell anyways. Shoes are leather and can be fixed and have been at a cobbler for like $40 to new. Clothing should be bought once and last at least a year if not much much longer. So I buy from better brands in person if possible.
I don't get why I should pay Amazon to be a shitty middle man that is trying to destroy the world more for my crap.
I only buy reputable brands from ebay or Amazon. Ingestible stuff usually locally if possible.
I bought from eBay recently and I got a package from Amazon. I don't buy from either anymore.
You should actually report that seller to eBay. Thats against their TOS.
Yeah I tried. I actually couldn't get a real support agent and eventually the refund period auto triggered cause the seller couldn't figure out how for me to return it.
eBay doesn't care. They just want their little piece.
Exactly this. People shit on the Chinese companies, but the American ones just rip us off with the same product.
Good on them, I wish I could do it
