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I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're try

I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad, you're out of luck". So I can't get a refund, I can't get a replacement, I can't leave bad review. This was very eye-opening to me. I immediately uninstalled their stupid app.

mattigames 1y ago
The closest thing to Amazon made in Latin America is almost the same thing, I'm talking of course about Mercadolibre.com, you can ask a refund for a product but if you do you cannot leave a review at all, and the products with bad scores have their scores and their reviews hidden, that's why is impossible to find a single product with less than 4 stars, and they have millions of them, it's as shady as it gets.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  Whats the goal here? Like, with amazon they don't own most of the products they sell, so presumably leaving a bad review doesn't bother amazon much, but what about temu?
  - Freak_NL 1y ago
    Temu is about offering a convenient hyper fast shopping channel to Chinese manufacturers with customers worldwide, primarily for clothing. A product which sells for months/years and gathers reviews is not part of their vision. Their customers don't need reviews (sales numbers is everything), but the users expect them, so they are there.
ipsum2 1y ago
Aliexpress has the same problem, quite frustrating.
- mixermachine 1y ago
  I can find some bad reviews on items that have a lot of positive reviews on Aliexpress. Seems like they don't completely filter all of them.
  - MIC132 1y ago
    But they do have a time limit on leaving a review, as far as I can tell.
    - dns_snek 1y ago
      They have a 30 day time frame to leave a review. That's why so many reviews just say "Everything arrived on time" and none of them say "this thing broke after 31 days".
      - bkor 1y ago
        AliExpress highly encourages leaving a review. They also encourage taking pictures. As a result, loads of random pictures in reviews. You can do an additional remarks later, but I often don't bother. It's drowned out anyway. What I often do is read the reviews. What's usually done is a critical review and still 5 stars. The fake reviews are pretty easily spotted. It shouldn't be this way, but in my experience it's still better than Amazon. With Amazon more effort is made to fake a review.
  - jampekka 1y ago
    If you read the aliexpress reviews, there are a lot of 5-stars totally bashing the product.
- oliwarner 1y ago
  Do you buy anything based on reviews there? They're obviously silly and exchanged for discounts and "coins" so I just ignore them in a way I don't elsewhere. I quite like AE because you can avoid the app and returns on DOAs often just involve a refund without returning anything. There are silly annoyances, and sometimes buying locally is inexplicably cheaper, but for little electronics, they're hard to beat.
BiteCode_dev 1y ago
I had bad reviews been supressed by amazon several as well, so at this point I'm assuming any review system is theater.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Amazon definitely don't do anything like this.
  - adrianmsmith 1y ago
    I've only ever left one bad review on Amazon. Chopsticks, they came bound together with some sticky tape. Sticky tape left a very sticky area just where your hands go that I was unable to get off despite a lot of effort scrubbing, washing, and so on. I left a polite constructive review saying they were good chopsticks but watch out for this stickiness issue. My review was declined by Amazon on the grounds it didn't meet their "community guidelines" (without elaborating further on which rule I'd supposedly broken).
    - spiderfarmer 1y ago
      They must have thought it was a bad dad joke.
      - onli 1y ago
        Amazon is known for suppressing negative reviews, there are many reports about it. Not sure why the grandparent comment is claiming the contrary - not doing the automatic redirect maybe, but they do remove or just not accept negative reviews.
    - nottorp 1y ago
      You don't have a glue removal spray? :) I bought one to get sticker residue off my windshield, but it's proven useful many times since. Mind, considering how well it removes glue, I wouldn't stick anything that was touched by it in my mouth... but may be okay for the hand end of your chopsticks.
vitorgrs 1y ago
In Brazil there's Shopee, which honestly, I find way better than Temu...
- esperent 1y ago
  Shopee has even worse behavior around reviews. You can't even leave a review past the first few days, and they bribe you with shopee points to leave a review. The result is people opening the box, going yep, it works, 5 stars, gimme those points. If it breaks a week or so later? Too late! No way to give feedback.
  - vachina 1y ago
    Shopee allows you to post follow-up reviews, and gives you a grace period of 45 days to post reviews. If you want compare, at least compare with facts.
    - esperent 1y ago
      I just checked and I cannot edit any old ratings. Maybe it's something you can only do through the app? I can't install the app because I travel between countries and they block my Google account from installing the local app. I'm sure there's ways around that but I'd rather just use the website.
  - henriquemaia 1y ago
    I use shopee and find the reviews fair. Like everything else, you have to learn how to take the most out of a limited system. My experience so far has been good. Negative reviews seem fair, and give a good indication of what to expect (maybe I've lowered my expectations from the start).
nottorp 1y ago
Temu/Aliexpress/etc are for buying very cheap clothing. 2 out of 3 items fit and 1 out of 3 is decent quality. That's still cheaper, depending on what tariffs your country is charging. I wouldn't buy something where a warranty would be useful from them. Ok, maybe very niche hobby products, but then I wouldn't expect a warranty.
- echoangle 1y ago
  AliExpress is great for electronics. Not the „I need a phone“ stuff (although for that it’s fine too, I think), but more the „I need an ESP-32 module“.
  - squarefoot 1y ago
    This. People buying a laptop there for ten bucks then receiving the photo of one have indeed all the rights to complain, but common sense should suggest them before the purchase the old saying that if something looks too good to be true... And this can happen everywhere there's no strict quality control or accountability. Aliexpress is great for small modules, SBCs, diy electronics in general, however I wouldn't ever buy semiconductors, batteries or memory modules there, as the risk of fakes or low quality clones is close to 100%.
    - whatyesaid 1y ago
      Yeah especially as in places like London there have been many explosions and house fires originaying from cheap foreign e-bike batteries. Some Chinese companies care about a long-term brand and place high standards on themselves but it's not true that anything online has passed safety standards. It's hard to differentiate the two due to the amount of fake reviews also.
      - echoangle 1y ago
        Yes, I would never buy something grid-powered from AliExpress, and I would be very careful with larger batteries.
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
poisonborz 1y ago
You really expect that kind of support from something ahipped across the globe for peanuts? Ali/Temu and the kind serve specific purposes and they do it well. I find reviews on those sites still useful, and at least on Ali there are a fair number of negative ones as well. Users tell if a specific part works with Home Assistant or zigbee2mqt. I suggest to sort by order number and not stars.
- mort96 1y ago
  The "kind of support" they say they expect is the ability to leave a negative review. That doesn't seem too extreme of an expectation honestly. The only reason support came into the picture is that Temu redirected them to support.
- lodovic 1y ago
  But that is unfair competition against rule-abiding vendors. Platforms like Ali and Temu should face the most strict limitations for that alone.
- Nullabillity 1y ago
  "That kind of support" is the absolute bare minimum. If you're not even providing that then you're not fit to sell anything, at any price.
sdflhasjd 1y ago
Ebay do something similar too. You can immediately provide positive feedback, but you have to wait 7 days to add negative feedback. This is ostensibly to encourage sellers to address issues to retain reputation. Sellers can also get negative feedback removed after the fact by doing refunds, etc. This means high volume low value sellers have little incentive to actually properly describe things or post correctly. A common issue I keep seeing is sellers using slower postage than paid for. You can immediately see from the tracking number, even if you wait 7+ days to submit feedback, you'll get a 'sorry' refund and the feedback is somehow 'addressed' without them going back in time and delivering it faster. Online reviews are just a sham now, Goodhart's law etc as even if the reviews aren't fake, they're encouraged or incentivised from real customers. Look up any service provider on TrustPilot and it's the same: hundreds of 5-star reviews from people told to add a review just after signing up, a dozen 1-star reviews from bad customer service, and barely anything in between.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
chrisandchris 1y ago
We have gotten to the point where you can't leave a bad review on aggregation sellers (like Temu/Ali/Amazon) because if you could, your competitor will for sure buy some farm in Taiwan/wherever and destroy your reputation.

mattigames 1y ago

The closest thing to Amazon made in Latin America is almost the same thing, I'm talking of course about Mercadolibre.com, you can ask a refund for a product but if you do you cannot leave a review at all, and the products with bad scores have their scores and their reviews hidden, that's why is impossible to find a single product with less than 4 stars, and they have millions of them, it's as shady as it gets.

wredcoll 1y ago
Whats the goal here? Like, with amazon they don't own most of the products they sell, so presumably leaving a bad review doesn't bother amazon much, but what about temu?
- Freak_NL 1y ago
  Temu is about offering a convenient hyper fast shopping channel to Chinese manufacturers with customers worldwide, primarily for clothing. A product which sells for months/years and gathers reviews is not part of their vision. Their customers don't need reviews (sales numbers is everything), but the users expect them, so they are there.

ipsum2 1y ago

Aliexpress has the same problem, quite frustrating.

mixermachine 1y ago
I can find some bad reviews on items that have a lot of positive reviews on Aliexpress. Seems like they don't completely filter all of them.
- MIC132 1y ago
  But they do have a time limit on leaving a review, as far as I can tell.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    They have a 30 day time frame to leave a review. That's why so many reviews just say "Everything arrived on time" and none of them say "this thing broke after 31 days".
    - bkor 1y ago
      AliExpress highly encourages leaving a review. They also encourage taking pictures. As a result, loads of random pictures in reviews. You can do an additional remarks later, but I often don't bother. It's drowned out anyway. What I often do is read the reviews. What's usually done is a critical review and still 5 stars. The fake reviews are pretty easily spotted. It shouldn't be this way, but in my experience it's still better than Amazon. With Amazon more effort is made to fake a review.
- jampekka 1y ago
  If you read the aliexpress reviews, there are a lot of 5-stars totally bashing the product.
oliwarner 1y ago
Do you buy anything based on reviews there? They're obviously silly and exchanged for discounts and "coins" so I just ignore them in a way I don't elsewhere. I quite like AE because you can avoid the app and returns on DOAs often just involve a refund without returning anything. There are silly annoyances, and sometimes buying locally is inexplicably cheaper, but for little electronics, they're hard to beat.

BiteCode_dev 1y ago

I had bad reviews been supressed by amazon several as well, so at this point I'm assuming any review system is theater.

IshKebab 1y ago
Amazon definitely don't do anything like this.
- adrianmsmith 1y ago
  I've only ever left one bad review on Amazon. Chopsticks, they came bound together with some sticky tape. Sticky tape left a very sticky area just where your hands go that I was unable to get off despite a lot of effort scrubbing, washing, and so on. I left a polite constructive review saying they were good chopsticks but watch out for this stickiness issue. My review was declined by Amazon on the grounds it didn't meet their "community guidelines" (without elaborating further on which rule I'd supposedly broken).
  - spiderfarmer 1y ago
    They must have thought it was a bad dad joke.
    - onli 1y ago
      Amazon is known for suppressing negative reviews, there are many reports about it. Not sure why the grandparent comment is claiming the contrary - not doing the automatic redirect maybe, but they do remove or just not accept negative reviews.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    You don't have a glue removal spray? :) I bought one to get sticker residue off my windshield, but it's proven useful many times since. Mind, considering how well it removes glue, I wouldn't stick anything that was touched by it in my mouth... but may be okay for the hand end of your chopsticks.

vitorgrs 1y ago

In Brazil there's Shopee, which honestly, I find way better than Temu...

esperent 1y ago
Shopee has even worse behavior around reviews. You can't even leave a review past the first few days, and they bribe you with shopee points to leave a review. The result is people opening the box, going yep, it works, 5 stars, gimme those points. If it breaks a week or so later? Too late! No way to give feedback.
- vachina 1y ago
  Shopee allows you to post follow-up reviews, and gives you a grace period of 45 days to post reviews. If you want compare, at least compare with facts.
  - esperent 1y ago
    I just checked and I cannot edit any old ratings. Maybe it's something you can only do through the app? I can't install the app because I travel between countries and they block my Google account from installing the local app. I'm sure there's ways around that but I'd rather just use the website.
- henriquemaia 1y ago
  I use shopee and find the reviews fair. Like everything else, you have to learn how to take the most out of a limited system. My experience so far has been good. Negative reviews seem fair, and give a good indication of what to expect (maybe I've lowered my expectations from the start).

nottorp 1y ago

Temu/Aliexpress/etc are for buying very cheap clothing. 2 out of 3 items fit and 1 out of 3 is decent quality. That's still cheaper, depending on what tariffs your country is charging. I wouldn't buy something where a warranty would be useful from them. Ok, maybe very niche hobby products, but then I wouldn't expect a warranty.

echoangle 1y ago
AliExpress is great for electronics. Not the „I need a phone“ stuff (although for that it’s fine too, I think), but more the „I need an ESP-32 module“.
- squarefoot 1y ago
  This. People buying a laptop there for ten bucks then receiving the photo of one have indeed all the rights to complain, but common sense should suggest them before the purchase the old saying that if something looks too good to be true... And this can happen everywhere there's no strict quality control or accountability. Aliexpress is great for small modules, SBCs, diy electronics in general, however I wouldn't ever buy semiconductors, batteries or memory modules there, as the risk of fakes or low quality clones is close to 100%.
  - whatyesaid 1y ago
    Yeah especially as in places like London there have been many explosions and house fires originaying from cheap foreign e-bike batteries. Some Chinese companies care about a long-term brand and place high standards on themselves but it's not true that anything online has passed safety standards. It's hard to differentiate the two due to the amount of fake reviews also.
    - echoangle 1y ago
      Yes, I would never buy something grid-powered from AliExpress, and I would be very careful with larger batteries.

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

poisonborz 1y ago

You really expect that kind of support from something ahipped across the globe for peanuts? Ali/Temu and the kind serve specific purposes and they do it well. I find reviews on those sites still useful, and at least on Ali there are a fair number of negative ones as well. Users tell if a specific part works with Home Assistant or zigbee2mqt. I suggest to sort by order number and not stars.

mort96 1y ago
The "kind of support" they say they expect is the ability to leave a negative review. That doesn't seem too extreme of an expectation honestly. The only reason support came into the picture is that Temu redirected them to support.
lodovic 1y ago
But that is unfair competition against rule-abiding vendors. Platforms like Ali and Temu should face the most strict limitations for that alone.
Nullabillity 1y ago
"That kind of support" is the absolute bare minimum. If you're not even providing that then you're not fit to sell anything, at any price.

sdflhasjd 1y ago

Ebay do something similar too. You can immediately provide positive feedback, but you have to wait 7 days to add negative feedback. This is ostensibly to encourage sellers to address issues to retain reputation. Sellers can also get negative feedback removed after the fact by doing refunds, etc. This means high volume low value sellers have little incentive to actually properly describe things or post correctly. A common issue I keep seeing is sellers using slower postage than paid for. You can immediately see from the tracking number, even if you wait 7+ days to submit feedback, you'll get a 'sorry' refund and the feedback is somehow 'addressed' without them going back in time and delivering it faster. Online reviews are just a sham now, Goodhart's law etc as even if the reviews aren't fake, they're encouraged or incentivised from real customers. Look up any service provider on TrustPilot and it's the same: hundreds of 5-star reviews from people told to add a review just after signing up, a dozen 1-star reviews from bad customer service, and barely anything in between.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

chrisandchris 1y ago

We have gotten to the point where you can't leave a bad review on aggregation sellers (like Temu/Ali/Amazon) because if you could, your competitor will for sure buy some farm in Taiwan/wherever and destroy your reputation.