- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Budget-conscious buyers hunting for rock-bottom prices at Temu may be getting more than they bargained for, a recent U.K. news program has found.
In “The Truth About Temu: Dispatches,” Channel 4 reporter Ellie Flynn found dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals in items from a $4 “silver effect” necklace to a $14 children’s jacket.
Operated by PDD Holding under the auspices of WhaleCo, the Chinese-founded marketplace has gained a massive following over the past two years, with one-quarter of the British population downloading the app and some half a million users worldwide.
Temu’s explosive rise has everything to do with the impossibly cheap prices it offers on everything from swimsuits to electric scooters, which can cost 10-40 percent less than on Shein, even for identical goods. That and the gamification of commerce—think discount roulette wheels and countdown timers—that once led GlobalData Retail analyst Neil Saunders to describe it as “addictive as sugar.”
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I don’t understand how anyone can see Temu anything other than a scam. If I want my cheap shit - I use AliExpress - I absolutely know what I’m buying is going to be garbage and all I need it to be is garbage.
overconsumption of wasteful products like this is what’s destroying this fucking world.
Tbf I am just buying things for table top mini games, it’s cheaper on there. I know the quality isnt great, but I just want scatter for my tables.
I’m just buying a cheap <insert product here> is a common excuse for over consumption
Again, hobbies. They are for me. I’m not buying fast fashion that I will throw away after a season. I’m not buying kitchen gadgets. I’m not buying much at all other than food these days because the economy fucking sucks. When I do shop, I shop at thrift stores. I’m not going to apologize for buying miniatures and train models on Ali Express 2-3 times a year. Im frugal with what I spend my money and I am certainly not an over consumer.
Many many people are very stupid
I bought a lot of really nice stuff from both places (and some shitty stuff, but most of the time because I “saved” some time by not reading reviews), and they’re basically same, Temu is just Aliexpress, but little bit more expensive and with warehouses in EU. So I just pay a bit more if I need stuff in a few days, not in few weeks.
In many cases, temu stuff is probably just Ali stuff from resellers.
Anyway, no idea how you find temu and Ali any differentBut…but…I can shop like a billionaire. A billionaire!
I don’t get it, how is Temu a scam and AliExpress isn’t? They seem like the same thing, just an online marketplace for cheap shit with campy wild advertising. I actually prefer the shitty exaggerated product descriptions. It’s easier to gauge what I’ll be actually getting. It’s harder with better produced advertising coughRayconcough
I didn’t say Ali wasn’t - Im just saying, I know what to expect on Ali. I expect shit. Temu markets itself as an amazing market place. Ali is the wild west of drop shipping.
Ah, I see. I haven’t paid much attention to Temu ads, my perception of it from the website was just AliExpress with fewer options but faster shipping.
Sometimes I’m blown away by the quality. Like a lot of the shit I’d buy locally is chinese made anyway.
Often you get stuff like ‘premium’ retailers getting the stuff that QC passed to a higher standard or whatever but it’s worth minor decreases in quality for a 1000% discount or whatever absurd retail markup there is.
The thing is, if you’re buying something for a dollar it’s gonna be about that quality. you need to know the brands that make good shit. Like some of the 40 dollar kitchen knives on aliexpress are amazing value, some are scams. Electronic components are similar. I can buy an esp32 there for 5 bucks, or locally for 45. Same product.
Now would I trust a fruit bowl bought for 2 dollars to be good? lol no. There’s just material reality at the end of the day. No amount of genius engineering and dubious manufacturing conditions can make high quality material appear from thin air.
Cheap Chinese shit is shit?
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Temu is just a marketplace. Think “Amazon with only third party sellers.”
If heavy metals are a problem, that’s not a Temu problem, that’s a China problem.
It’s also a Temu problem as they’re the sellers of said products and should be verifying that those products are not made of toxic materials.
Then I am quite certain it is also an Amazon problem, and an eBay problem, and an AliExpress problem. Singling out Temu is disingenuous.
Yes, it is also all those seller’s problem as well. And I’m not sure shy you seem to think that’s an issue. It’s not.
Because the headline frames it as a purely Temu problem and with Temu-exclusive products, when all these other marketplaces should be included as they sell the same things. They should have compared them with other marketplaces as well to show whether or not it’s a broader “online marketplace” problem.
Your phrasing is technically correct but it omits that perhaps the scale of the problem is different among different marketplaces. Perhaps this is evident in the predominant selection of items and their prices. Thus you’re trying to make it sound that you’re gonna get the same amount of poison when you buy a jacket on Amazon and Temu, when you have a pretty good chance to buy a western brand on Amazon and you have zero chance to do that on Temu.
That’s a fair point on item selection. You get the major brands that are better about getting their supply chains. So the overall proportion is different, though still a significant problem.
My point was more about buying the same cheap jacket on Amazon as you’d find on Temu or AliExpress, which is what I see most of on Amazon.
That’s not how retail works.
This is peak boomer mentality.
What planet do you have to live on to believe stores vet the products they sell in any way???
