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Be Wary of Temu: What You Should Know Before Making a Purchase!
- theshrike79 3y agoSomeone put it like this: Temu is what you get if you order Wish.com from Wish.com. Just use Aliexpress, it's the least bad frontend to Chinese manufacturing. ebay.yourcountry and your local Amazon work too if you don't want to buy from Aliexpress directly.
- daft_pink 3y agoAliexpress has terrible shipping times and regularly claimes you'll receive your stuff in a very short time period, when it really takes forever. It's a great place to order things from if you know what you're getting, know how to choose reputable sellers by sorting by number of orders, and don't care how long it takes to receive the product. I use Temu once in a while, but wouldn't recommend Aliexpress over Temu at all. I find the few bucks that I save isn't worth it over Amazon's quick delivery times most of the time.
- mmastrac 3y agoThe trick is to pick a decent number of orders, but not so many that the manufacturer has run an exit scam and replaced the product with something even lower quality. That's a tough one to get right.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 3y agoHonestly the first 3 points you could just replace “Temu” with “Amazon” or “Walmart.com”.
- macinjosh 3y agoI agree, though I think the extra pernicious part of Temu is the junk is _so cheap_ that people order more of it hoping to get something decent. On top of the lower prices Temu offers free returns which I would wager are just thrown out. However, this creates even lower barriers to over purchasing and more wasteful shipping and landfill usage.
- jrflowers 3y agoAnecdotally I’ve ordered many little household and garden products like microtape, cups, planter beds etc and never once been disappointed. In virtually every instance I could find the exact SKU on Amazon for 4x the price, so it’s a little bit funny seeing people suggest “reputable online stores” because for a lot of people that will in practice just mean “pay the relatively very high Amazon fee in exchange for quicker shipping”
- macinjosh 3y agoI have a couple family members who jumped on the Temu band wagon. I've even been so lucky as to receive a couple random items as "gifts". Without trying to sound ungrateful, I felt like I was on the end of an elaborate scheme where in we pay money for trash adjacent items to be sent across the ocean and then immediately deposited in a landfill when the quality becomes apparent. Is it karmic retribution for us "recycling" plastic by shipping it off to China?
- daft_pink 3y agoI disagree. They do sell cheap low-quality items, so you can expect less quality. However, they have a good return procedures and you're paying with a credit card. You really don't have to worry about getting scammed. It's like Ikea. Sometimes a cheap product is what you're looking for, other times it's terrible. However, they accept returns readily so I'm not sure why you're worried about getting scammed.
- bhouston 3y agoThis is the same with AliExpress and other similar Chinese ecommerce websites like BangGood. They all seem to be selling the same items and I suspect often the storefronts are run by the same people. I have brought a lot of IoT type electrics like esp32 and related tech from them includes wires, soldering irons and sometimes usb hubs . It all worked and met specs. I am careful to not pick something without reviews. And generally I am not buying items worth very much so if it doesn’t work out I am not out a ton of money. I work with the assumption of no support and no returns. So I limit by risk. Amazon has responded to AliExpress by allowing many Chinese storefronts that ship from China on their website with many of the same items with similar-ish prices more recently. The selection is still not as good though.