I’ve bought two items, both ridiculously cheap, a set of beltless belts for about 3 bucks each and a backscrubber for about 7 bucks. The backscrubber in particular seems to be of high quality, one side gentle, the other side less gentle.
It’s my understanding that they are very unethical and tempt people to buy lots of cheaply made goods that will end up in a landfill much of the time.
Shein and Temu violate US tariff law and evade human rights reviews on imports
Lawmakers argue the tariff violations give Temu and Shein unfair advantages over U.S. retailers. Temu’s valuation is estimated at over $100 billion, while Shein was recently valued at $64 billion.
This video is about 21 minutes, but the You Tuber, Shelbizzle, explains some of the environmental harms caused by Temu.
The Problem with Temu & Why You Should Never Shop There
It’s been a little while since I watched this video, but I could go back through it and include a summary if needed.
Summary of Shelby’s “The Problem with Temu” video:
- Selling goods for much less than they are worth drives consumerism
- They mostly sell novelty items that will end up in the trash within 30 days
- Even if what YOU buy from Temu doesn’t end up in the trash, be aware that sustainability is about more than the end-of-life of an item.
- Temu loses about $30 per order because they are trying to take over the US market
- Temu will remove a seller’s products from the site if they do not agree to sell for a lower price, a price determined by Temu, not the seller.
- Takes advantage of loopholes in US tax laws, taking money out of our economy and society without giving back. They use our roads, ports, and waste facilities without paying anything.
- Small businesses can’t compete with Temu and do have to pay US taxes.
- 600,000 shipments a day and likely higher now.
- Contaminates water in lower socioeconomic areas to skirt environmental regulations in higher-income areas.
- Steals photos from other websites to make you think what you’re buying will look nice.
- Shelby also talks about Temu’s greenwashing and sponsoring social media influencers, including influencers who are multimillionaires and would never buy anything from Temu without being sponsored.
In other words, TEMU takes advantage of flaws with a capitalistic economy?
I apologize for the complete hijack, but … what now?
So basically, the online equivalent of Dollar General or Wal-Mart?
I mean, those aren’t exactly pinnacles of human society, but I don’t get where the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing comes from.
Cool product. They’re adjustable and expandable. You attach them to your first and last belt loops, allowing you to slip your pants on and off without attaching or detachIng a belt. You just zip up and button your fly.
Exactly. Also, if you’re used to Amazon Prime, you may be put off by the 5 to 8 day shipping time frame. I ordered two new track suits from them, and they should arrive this week. I’ll post how good they are.
Agreeing with others, the cited issues seem like general “Big Business/Capitalism” issues more than “Temu is uniquely bad” issues. Companies evading taxes, bullying vendors, taking a loss to grow market share than raising prices after the competition has been pushed out, etc is nothing new. Temu isn’t really competing with your local store, more with Wish, AliExpress and Amazon. It’s all stuff from China, made by Chinese manufacturers and, if you were to find it locally, it’d be at discount and dollar stores which is the one retail segment that’s growing in the US so it’d be hard to argue that Temu is killing local businesses in the way that Walmart or Amazon has.
This isn’t to defend Temu. I just don’t see much of an argument for Temu being notably worse than every other capitalist mega-company.
And now it isn’t. So, iPad with Safari I can see item details, but desktop with Firefox I cannot. The details page opens, but then immediately redirects to a login page. Same behavior when using private browsing on Firefox. On Chrome I can go to the details page, and am not redirected
I found one item that looks like it will meet my charging needs. A reverse image search finds the exact same item on several other websites. It is twice the price on Amazon as Temu, but essentially the same price on Temu and Aliexpress.
This is for a wireless charging stand which supports a phone and the Samsung Galaxy watch, which uses it’s own special wireless charging standard, for some dumb reason. Just as on Amazon, some of the reviews are bizarre. One person gave it a bad review because their phone does not support wireless charging. Another person complained it has to be plugged in. It comes in versions that support the Samsung Galaxy watch, and versions that support Apple watches. It is not clear if people order the wrong one, or get sent the wrong one, but having a mismatch generates lots of bad reviews.
I know it’s going to be extremely light and fall over if bumped, but that might not matter. The big question is are the reviews about poor charging because the user has it plugged into an insufficiently powerful wall adapter (it does not come with one), or because the wireless charging circuitry is really bad? Either are possible.
I decided to risk buying my charging stand, but I did it on Aliexpress instead of Temu. It sure was annoying. Every single thing the site says is a lie, and a trick to get you to buy more.
Most items have a “Welcome price” which you only get to use on one item ever, or something. Each item also has a regular price. When you put an item in your cart you won’t get the welcome price, and you won’t get the regular price. You’ll probably get something less than the regular price. That meant I had to add items to the cart, then take them out to find out what the price was.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the lies. At final checkout the item prices all changed just a bit, so the total price went up about 5%. No idea what happened, but by that point it seemed like too much trouble to cancel the order over $0.75 (it wasn’t taxes).
As for the getting you to buy more tricks, Aliexpress would keep saying things like “spend only $1.11 more to save $2” so obviously I have to find something I want for $1.50, because it’s “free”. Except some items wouldn’t count towards the savings. Similar with free shipping at $10. Somehow my cart could have $18 of stuff, but no free shipping.
Finally I placed my huge $23 order, and a day later got an email that the one item I actually wanted, the charging stand, had been cancelled for “account security reasons.” Best I can tell, I had the “Welcome” price on that item, but my account wasn’t eligible for it. Aliexpress suggests I add it back to my cart and buy it again at twice the price.
I think I’ll order that charging stand from Temu, and see how that goes. It’s $2 less than Aliexpress.
Something I saw at Temu recently that I wanted. A while back I saw a image of a pair of ukiyo-e style images of the “woman yells at cat” meme hanging on a wall. (I actually accidentally found the original source of the images while looking for an example just now.) Temu has started selling them.
There is one thing that I want from AliExpress because that is the only place it is available. They will not let me purchase, for some reason. The purchase just times out, and then AliExpress sends me a fraud alert.
What could this possibly mean? Aside from pure scams, everything is sold for less than what it’s worth. Otherwise no one could sell anything, because no one would buy anything.
They have some nice stuff. I bought a 4 pack of guitar wall hangers. I didn’t really expect much for less than $2 each. The body is plastic, and the arms are rubber(?) coated steel. But they work great with a minimalist vibe. Also bought a bunch of paraphernalia of good quality. I’ve gotten into the sick habit of buying just enough to get the free shipping. I’ll get something I can really use, a then a bunch of goofy shit, such as this.
Because other places sell similar items for, say, $8, whereas Temu charges only $1 and takes a loss on most orders. They force their suppliers to sell their wares for free, basically.
I’ve seen several reports of slave and child labor related to products sold on TEMU (Also SHEIN, Nike and ADIDAS). Here are a couple of cites:
Then they are selling below what the items cost, not below what they are worth. Those are very different things.
I have two Temu-related questions:
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How is the name meant to be pronounced?
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Am I the only one who thinks that the thumbnail pics in their pop-up ads often look vaguely like sex toys?
Tee-Moo seems to be the common pronunciation from Youtube people presumably contacted by Temu to sponsor/shill their stuff. So I assume it’s correct.
I bought a small 12 volt belt sander. All I received was the sanding belts, no sander. I lodged a complaint, all I got was an email saying my order had shipped. My review was removed for no reason. The one thing I was glad I did was use a Visa gift card to make the purchase, not my credit card. I went online to check the gift card balance about 6 months after the purchase to find someone attempted to use it to make a $350 purchase from Temu. At the time I had a $17 balance on the card. Gave it to a homeless guy, he was very happy with it.