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Once upon a time you could choose to buy good products from good brands on Amazon, or import cheap crap from China via Aliexpress or whatnot. But now that near

• jareklupinski 3y ago
  my last hack before i completely jump platforms is to make sure that when im buying something, I click into the link right below the item name itself so i get to the brand's actual amazon page, then i click the item again 50% of the time it'll be cheaper and have a better prime ship date (and say Sold By BrandName or Amazon instead of a random seller name), and no counterfeits at all this way yet
  • sokoloff 3y ago
    Do you have an example originally searched for ASIN* and brand-linked ASIN that this works on? I've not seen this personally, and checking my last 10 ordered items (some 6-7 character made up brand imported items and some recognizable brand items), following this process landed me on the same ASIN/same PDP each time, but it's definitely intriguing enough for me to want to find out more. * The alphanumeric Amazon Stock ID Number, for physical goods it's usually (always?) a B followed by 9 alphanumeric digits.
    • jareklupinski 3y ago
      i'll take a look next time i go, but if it helps for now I've specifically done this two-step with success for Tide and Charmin goods
• vasco 3y ago
  To be honest Temu sounds like someone was watching the Wish.com saga and decided it was a great idea to burn a bunch of billions. It can grow a lot while it's new but I have my doubts about longevity of this type "we only sell crap" platforms.
  • lopis 3y ago
    You'd be surprised how many people fall for these kinds of unbelievable deals from ads on social media apps, over and over again.
  • resolutebat 3y ago
    At least in Australia Temu hits the sweet spot of offering almost-China prices with reasonably speedy delivery (under a week). If you buy the same crap on Amazon.au, you pay a 3-4x premium for local warehousing, and if you buy it off AliExpress, it often takes a month or longer to deliver. That said, I presume the only way Temu can pull this off logistically is air freight, so I also have my doubts about his sustainable this is.
    • AussieWog93 3y ago
      Aliexpress have been great recently with shipping times. A lot of stuff is dispatched from their local warehouses (or at least flown in from China and consolidated locally) and distributed by their own courier network. Sounds similar to Temu, and TBH is probably exactly the same network. If you get tracking updates from "Fast Horse Express", it's definitely the same network. :)
      • resolutebat 3y ago
        Yeah, Aliexpress "premium shipping" is by air, and like Temu they have a minimum order threshold to trigger it. But Aliexpress is a messy jumble of tiny merchants with their own shipping fees etc etc, whereas Temu abstracts away all that complexity.
  • jeron 3y ago
    there's an unsubstantiated rumor that Temu is a Chinese money laundering operation - burning a bunch of billions to legitimize a lot of other billions
  • 1-more 3y ago
    I've been getting ads on social media to buy silencers on Temu. Ok not silencers, but adapters where one end has the female thread of a soda bottle on it, and the other has the female thread to match the external thread available on a Ruger 10/22. While silencers are federally legal in the U.S., they are illegal in many states and subject to a federal transfer tax. I could see this being a problem for Temu, and I could also see this never being any kind of problem for Temu. There may be settled case law that says these aren't silencers legally, idk. The whole discipline is hilariously talmudic and full of the heap problem (is a billet of metal a gun? What about with one hole in it? Two holes and a chamfer here and a routed channel there? etc.)
• sct202 3y ago
  Temu and Shein are at least improved versions of Wish. Idk how both companies did it but my last few orders have gotten to me in 8 days. Amazon for me is taking like 3-5 days without Prime, so the speed difference is not as big as it used to be when ordering from China would be a 1-2 month wait with everything showing up in a different package.
  • salad-tycoon 3y ago
    I’ve seen them air ship my cheap crap from China to USA for “free.” I thought I read it was a national subsidy/strategy but can’t find article now. Maybe economic warfare? Can’t see how flying my $10 order of giant plastic balls is economic. Not the one I was looking for but somewhat related: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/contributor-content/article273704075.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/contributor-content/articl...
    • gamblor956 3y ago
      Note that the linked piece is just an opinion piece from a professional writer who doesn't actually know what he's talking about and appears to just be making things up. It may even be paid for by Temu. Chinese shipping is cheap because the Chinese government subsidies it for exported goods, and because due to a postal treaty the U.S. government was forced to honor those rates for goods shipped to U.S. addresses. This treaty was renegotiated in 2019 (changes effective 2020) to make shipping costs several times more expensive for Chinese manufacturers, but those higher prices are still ridiculously cheap compared to the prices domestic manufacturers must pay so there is still a substantial arbitrage opportunity, which is basically what Temu is (in addition to being an I.P. theft play, but that's an entirely separate issue).
      • jfim 3y ago
        Temu is basically using the de minimis import rule to avoid import taxes. There's a longer report linked at the bottom of this page that goes into more detail: https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/press-releases/select-committee-releases-interim-findings-shein-temu-forced-labor https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/press-releas...
• crooked-v 3y ago
  I wonder how long until SkyMall makes a resurgence.
• UberFly 3y ago
  Isn't Temu just another dodgy brands from China site?
  • glonq 3y ago
    They are, but unlike Amazon they don't pretend to NOT be.
• xyzzy123 3y ago
  Home brands of durable goods in the last 10 years have pretty much always been "Chinese crap" (I use this term loosely, sometimes the products are pretty good). BUT, and this is the key part - buyer teams from major brands vet the supplier, make cost/quality tradeoffs and do all the supplier due diligence (like making them attest the products are not made by "modern slavery", don't have lead in them, etc). They also squeeze them super hard on payments and financials. The BEEZELBUBS and QRYGGS are mostly the SAME factories that have always been making your goods but now they are "out of the box" and can sell to the consumer directly. The good part is that they can now compete "fairly" outside shelf space monopolies, the bad part is that no one seems to be doing supplier due diligence or addressing quality fade.
  • neilalexander 3y ago
    It's often also impossible to get after-sales support for many of these mystery "brands" and they don't tend to stay around for long before they change names again. I am sure this is by design.
  • massysett 3y ago
    This is the whole problem with Amazon and why I call it a flea market. Other retailers put their reputation on the line with their merchandise. Sure, the same factory that manufactures for Old Navy makes QRYGGS. But Old Navy vets it. Amazon’s issue is that it tosses its hands up and says “Sold by QRYGGS, fulfilled by Amazon.” Amazon says: if it’s garbage, not our fault, but you can return it. That’s just wandering a flea market with random vendors selling junk. So I’m actually disappointed that Amazon would double-down on this by eliminating its private labels. At least if I see it’s an Amazon brand, I know they vouch for it. Indeed, my experiences with Amazon brands have been at least decent. But given the choice between fighting the regulators, somehow firewalling the private labels from the other vendors, or reducing its flea-market trafficking, Amazon decided to double-down on the flea market and scale back goods that it vets. It’s a big red-light district of some good stuff mixed in with tons of garbage.
    • pseudalopex 3y ago
      > Amazon says: if it’s garbage, not our fault, but you can return it. But we will close your account if you return too many things.
• AmVess 3y ago
  My last two orders from Amazon were counterfeits. One was a pack of Sandisk thumbdrives that were very obviously fakes. I determined that Amazon simply doesn't care anymore. The value proposition was completely lost because I had to drive into town to return them. Twice in a row. Further, their prices have gotten horrible on a lot of things. I looked at some of their lawncare items, and most of them were 2-3x more than local prices.
  • thelittleone 3y ago
    I'm just surprised that this hasn't become a big issue for Amazon. Is it that most people aren't aware? Isn't it a big enough story for some news outlet to investigate and report? If it became generally known that a large % of products on amazon are fakes, surely it would affect sales.
    • patrick451 3y ago
      I think it's not well known. I've mentioned the counterfeiting problem to several friends, and none of them had heard if it before. For some things, especially any sort of safety related equipment, it makes buying from Amazon a complete non-starter for me because the risk of getting a shoddy fake is literally life and death.
      • ctchocula 3y ago
        My experience as well. HN is one of the few places I heard people talking about the commingling problem. I wonder how Amazon is able to keep this information from being known by so few people.
    • gilmore606 3y ago
      I bet the Washington Post will get right on that.
    • Larrikin 3y ago
      In my life, I nor anyone I know has ever gotten a counterfeit product. I've gotten obviously opened, returned, and repacked shit, low quality AliExpress shit no one would buy if they inspected it in real life, but nothing actually fake. I've used Amazon regularly, back even when it was just a place to get cheap books. I assume it happens but I think the comments on Hacker News are just not representative of the general public on this issue. Any Amazon thread on here is chock-full of people saying they constantly get fake products. I avoid large purchases on Amazon when I can, but that's mostly because I want there to be competition for them.
• deleted 3y ago
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• bradleyjg 3y ago
  At this point you have to both go with a “real” brand and investigate if any of their lines are still designed in house, or whether it’s a zombie brand that only badges white-box items.
• makeitdouble 3y ago
  I don't see notion of brands themseves staying a viable differentiator for most online purchases. Sure you could remember a name you decide to trust, and never ever care to do research from there. But I see it the same way we had a period on usenet where you'd put your real name and phone number in your posts signature. Too sad Amazon allowed reviews to be gamed, but I think third party reviews are still the way forward to identify good products.