I bought a clear glass teapot.
Nice–I like it.
Interesting - I went looking for scams and couldn’t find them. (I make it my business to be scammed so I can document it as a warning to others). Certainly Temu seemed less explicitly scammy than Wish (although having less scams than Wish is hardly an achievement)
Madame Pepperwinkle bought me a very nice, warm red sweater there. I was surprised at the quality. Not everything looks to be that good, though.
actually, I love TEMU–over $10 shipping is free, and fast. I’ve gotten a lot of kitchen stuff, and hats for $5. no problems
Temu kodama have infested my amorphophallus. (A sentence never before written in the English language.)
That order came in yesterday. And verdict? It’s perfectly fine and what I expected, perhaps even a little bit better than I had expected, but I had not ordered anything that is too quality sensitive.
My favorite was my under-$2 iPhone 12 case. It isn’t any Otter Box, but it fits my phone fine and actually makes operation of the side buttons easier, as they are a little more raised and tactile than what is on the bare phone. It is fairly thin, so I wouldn’t trust it for too much protection, but I’ve been carrying my phone without a case since I bought it about 2 years ago. Definitely just easier to hold and handle, and a more pleasant material than I was expecting (some type of flexible rubber instead of hard plastic.)
The rubber bands I ordered were rubbers bands. Hard to go wrong there. 150 for under a buck. I bought a small set of phone charging port cleaners. They’re these little brushes and I think they may just be repurposed interdental cleaning brushes, which is what I thought they might be from the picture. Those are the most meh product of the bunch. Those brushes bend too much to make a really effective charger port cleaner. They need to be absolutely rigid or nearly so. These are not.
Also got some kitchen scrubbing brushes – those were fine. And a $2 nose and ear hair trimmer that really doesn’t seem all that much different than the $10 one it is replacing. Oh, and “mop slippers” for $1.77. Those seem fine, but I don’t expect them to last for long. Totally seems like the sort of item you’d find at Dollar General or whatnot.
Overall, the experience slightly exceeded my expectations, and I’ll be shopping there again for sure when I need these little rinky dink type of items.
I’m gonna guess that they’re the same brushes I bought for cleaning the hard water scale out of the showerhead. A million uses!
So any other thoughts on Temu? They have some amazing prices, but I’m leery of said.
I’ve only seen the ads, but they remind me of the night market in Hong Kong. Tons of stuff, all cheap and/or knockoffs of Western stuff.
I haven’t bought much lately but I did buy my wife three or four knock-off “Lego Bouquet” kits and she enjoyed them all without any problems. I have no idea how compatible they are with real Legos since she just assembled the flowers and arranged them in a vase on her desk.
Since my comment (#22) upthread, I was approached by Temu who asked me to make some paid videos for them; I said no (I don’t make commercial content). They were very persistent and just kept emailing me several times a day to try to change my mind; this went on for a week or two, with me refusing every time, before they gave up.
I also got a lot of comments asking me to review products from Temu - it’s hard to put my finger on it, but a lot of them had a sort of ‘feel’ to them - they were from accounts that have never commented on my channel before. I think a lot of them were probably bots.
Aside from that, the ads I have looked at, offering amazing prices, were deals that were only available if you install the app - in fact when I tried to browse products on their site, some of the time, tapping on a price or some product details would just take me off to the Play store to install the app. As I understand it, the parent company (PinDuoDuo) has some rather questionable history regarding app privacy and intrusive permissions, to the point that it was described as ‘malware’.
Of course I know that when I deal with a retail company, I am surrendering some of my personal information, but normally that information is limited by the scope of the transaction - it’s one thing when a company selling you a thing keeps your name and address and email and spams you later; it is quite another thing when that company steals your phonebook contacts out of your device.
So for me, putting this all together, there’s something a bit off about the pressure to install the app - it might just be that they are super-eager to capture a slice of the market, but for me, they haven’t given me a reason to trust them yet, but have given me several reasons to be suspicious.
I’ve heard a number of sketchy things about the app and only shop on my PC. Not that they couldn’t try to inject malware onto the computer but I feel more confident protecting myself or cleaning up on that platform.
I won’t install the app. I’m pretty light on apps on my phone anyway.
I hadn’t looked at TEMU in many months, but this last week I was interested in some cheap charging stands, so I thought I’d see what they have. Browsing from a computer, it would not let me view individual product listings unless I create an account. I’m sure it wasn’t like that the last time I looked, a few months ago.
I’ll accept making an account to order something, but just to browse seems a step too far. I’m sure they’re counting on people staying subscribed to newsletters and ads once they create an account.
I was on it today without an account.
Could you view individual items? I could look at general listings, but when I would click on an item to view details, it wouldn’t let me view it without logging in.
I didn’t go as far as to clear cookies from TEMU, or browse anonymously or anything.
I think it depends what you’re looking at - sometimes you’re looking at item listings, other times you’re looking at deal listings that are targeting people who aren’t logged in - they look the same as the plain product listings, but they are just ads that direct you to sign up or (on mobile) install the app.
The other thing I noticed during one of my brief visits that was only trivial but I still hate it - I got one of those ‘spin to win’ popups. There was an X to dismiss it; I tapped the X and it spun the wheel anyway - there was no way to dismiss the popup.
That could be it. I was definitely clicking on the times that looked nicer, but had prices far below their Amazon equivalent. I did not bother scrolling down and just clicking on a few random things.
Apropos the ad blocking thread, some IOS ad blockers were recommended so I was looking at their store listings. One of them had a feature of blocking fake X to close buttons.
I experienced the exact same spinner thing and fake closing button in my recent shopping session there. I’m totally bribable enough to be convinced to buy there with the appropriate coupon or signup bonus, but at this point I haven’t looked to see if the coupon terms make them usable, or if it’s $100 off your first $1000 purchase, or $15 off non-sale items, but everything is always on sale.
I’d like it to not be a scam, just aggressive marketing that I can take advantage of.
Yes, no issues.
Yep, it’s working for me now. Earlier in the week, same search and clicking on the same item, it would open the details page, and then have an unclosable popover that insisted I create an account to view the great deal. Exactly like how a paywall works on some sites.
Maybe they were A/B testing it, and found I just left, the site instead of making an account.