I can’t believe anyone would buy from Temu. I knew they were Chinese knockoff bullshit the second I saw their first obnoxious ad.
Plenty of items on eBay are just people who buy from China directly and mark up prices. If it is likely made in China and I don’t want it quickly, I’ll buy off aliexpress. That said, alibaba wanted me to upload photo ID which I noped out of. Temu started spamming my email address when I’d never used them. The unsubscribe link went to their website said to adjust your account settings if you didn’t want spam… I never created and account and avoided them completely following that.
Amazon is usually OK if you buy things that are sold by Amazon or sold by the manufacturer (if it’s a well-known brand). The third-party sellers on Amazon based in China are almost always reselling stuff from Aliexpress/Alibaba with a significant markup.
Apparently for some people (my mom) the search or filters work better on Temu. No idea why, I only ever use AliExpress.
Alis search is really bad.
Somehow the auto translation is active for the product names but if you search they don’t seem to apply.
For example:
Searching for Cherry MX switches brings up articles that are named “Mechanische Kirsch Schalter für Tastatur” (essentially the name but translated). Problem is: Cherry the company is like it’s in english as well, also the fruit amd thus will not be translated correctly.
Trying to search more niche stuff quickly gets annoying when trying to find something specific.
somethings people don’t care about quality. An example, the one time I checked out Temu way back when it first made its splash I bought some targets for shooting… Hard to fuck that up and got em cheap as fuck with that promo deal they do to hook you. Uninstalled it right after, probably not worth it but I feel like that is a common experience. There are items where you just simply can’t fuck up so the ultra cheapness works out.
With that said, an obligatory FUCK temu and those like it.
Have you seen the wheel spin and Fomo coupons?
Maybe not as much but still highly gimmicky in comparison to normal e-commerce sites
My only reasons to buy on Ali is when I need something simple like velcro that can be cut to length or other small scale stuff electronics (e.g. Rasperry Pi 0) and it doesnt have to be fast.
Ironically the shipping is either free or so cheap it’s better than domestic amazon.
I often suspect they sell the same item but order it with DHL shipping (our domestic shipper) with high priority shipping included in the price (2€ item + 8€ shipping = 10€ on Amazon + “free” shipping)
A huge amount of products are just generic Chinese products that have a brand slapped on it. If you’ve ever bought a random small USB device (i.e USB hubs, etc) from a major brand like LogiTech and others, if you crack it open it is just the same device as cheap resellers with a branded coating. It’s not worth it to many companies to bother manufacturing their own small tat so they just sub-contract out.
And sure, it likely works, but it’s the exact same hardware with the same capabilities as a product a 10th of the price.
The cheap Chinese stuff often uses knock-off ICs tho.
They can be fairly difficult to detect, and will work for a short time or under very light loads. But they will be nowhere near the spec of the data sheets.
They might massively overheat, not provide the correct currents or voltages, run at lower speeds. All sorts of corners being cut to turn a $2 IC into a 50¢ IC. Or a 50¢ ic into a 5¢ one
So yeh, might be the same PCB layout inside, it might visually look the same (or very very close) but the parts are likely to be counterfeit.
Of course, it’s also probable that name brands might be hit with counterfeit parts inside as well. Hopefully their QA picks that up
I can’t believe people pay full price on cheap stuff. The only reasonable thing to do is pay cheap on cheap stuff. And the delivery times are unbeatable .
I can’t believe people buy cheap trash that would be sold on Temu.
But here we are, people buy cheap ass trash off Temu. If China started picking through the trash we shipped them and sold it back to us on a site like Temu, something tells me people would still buy it.
With how cheap they are, people will and should buy from TEMU. Aliexpress as a general store never had much of a competition for English speakers outside of Banggood for select electronics. Taoboa is good but it’s harder to use
So for you, the lowest price is the only thing that matters? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a shitty product? Or that they’re one of the least efficient shippers due to their tariff avoidance strategy, and in doing so are contributing more per purchase to climate change than even companies like Amazon and Walmart?
I’m happy because it’s competition for Aliexpress.
Arguments against carbon emissions and carbon footprints against corporations isn’t very helpful unless you can do something about it. This is somehow a very unpopular opinion here, for some reason people don’t like being told that they don’t have much power. Boycotting it by yourself won’t work either, because even if the west gives up on it, the East will not. Carbon emissions will remain unless strict regulations are maintained, and we know who buys politicians these days. If I can do nothing about the climate, then yes I’d rather pay less. And I’m not explicitly anti-China like some people here because America is just as hypocritical.
Yes there are really bad products and their QC is horrible. I’ll say the same for Aliexpress, Taobao, Amazon, Walmart and Bestbuy. Unfortunately for everyone here, we’re going to have to choose between shit options, so yes I’d rather pay less if it’s shit I’m going to get anyway. Besides, I’m smart enough to not make bigger purchases on these sites because I know of their QC situation.
