Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are joining forces against dangerous products from global online stores such as Temu and Shein.
The three countries' environment ministers are pushing jointly to get the EU to take tougher action against retail giants. For example, they want to investigate whether it is possible to ban them from putting certain products up for sale.
"Global online platforms like Temu and Shein are flooding the market with products that are not safe for consumers and our children. We must do something about it," says Norwegian Andreas Bjelland Eriksen on his way to an EU meeting in Brussels on Thursday, side by side with Swedish Romina Pourmokhtari (L) and Danish Magnus Heunicke.
"It's very serious things that we notice that these platforms do not think they have a responsibility for. Then it's up to the legislator to take a step forward and handle this problem before the products spread in our societies," says Pourmokhtari.
The EU Commission warned in early February of tightened controls on packages from China due to criticism of Temu and Shein.
Sweden, Denmark, and Norway now want the EU Commission to also investigate what can be done about online retailers' way of marketing their products.
For anyone who thinks this is an overreaction, here is an example of a Temu jumper catching on fire, and causing severe burns to an eight year old. She now has to have skin grats for the next decade of her life. Such an incident would not have occurred if it had met fire safety standards.
Temu aquarium decorations have invasive algea on them, also the plastics are toxic in warm water. It killed my father's fish. It was an overnight massacre.
I'm so sorry to hear that kind of horrible stuff. 😢 Things that are supposed to be beautiful should not lead to tragedies. (Also I'm very sorry, I don't know why I'm this emotional, probably caffeine overdose again)
There are some things that I will only buy through Chinese retailers, to cut out middlemen. There are somethings that I would never buy from a Chinese retailer.
Temu and Shein not only deliver products of bad quality, they also regularly commit customs fraud by declaring goods cheaper than they are or sending packages with more contents than declared to customs. Or they divide a single product into different parts to circumvent customs regulations.
Every single day, Temu and Shein are sending 400,000 parcels to Germany, 600,000 packages daily to USA. Every day, over a hundred Boeing 777 freighters have to take off for this purpose alone. Customs controls are totally overwhelmed by these quantities.
Basically anything you'd buy off say Amazon from a 5 letter company.
Why it's liked? It's essentially the same stuff as 5 letter Amazon companies/some Etsy stuff/imported eBay stuff without the middleman, so I don't pay drop shipper or Amazon taxes.
Ali Vs Temu:
I've not used Temu but from what I've read previously better selection on Ali, Choice items have better customer service.
I always check AliExpress for anything thats relatively simple in construction but complicated to make, the kind of thing that chain stores will buy by the 100,000 at a time, put their own sticker on it and call it their store brand. The factory makes the 100,000 for the chain store, changes the paint color and cranks out 1000 for themselves to sell on AliExpress.
I live in New Zealand and there's a general lack of supply for various things. This means high prices low choice. Things like spare electrical components, cables, specific bike tools and whatnot are quite cheap and they ship fast.
I'm generally sus, moreso I suspect the capacity will be crap rather than anything particularly dangerous, but I'm generally cautious. I've a couple of small electric items, one is a known brand.
Specifically I'd avoid batteries, SD cards, power bricks because there are too many fakes in general (mind you, I'd only buy lithium cells from specialist trusted battery sellers, I mostly only buy sd cards in store and only buy name brand power banks).
If they could do this in USgilead, but oh no- TikTok is more pivotal than anything on this planet to ban. Meanwhile Redditors are jumping ship to lemmy (it’s a good thing), but please america let’s continue to have Temu and SHEIN on our american phones that “protects” us in the name of “security and safety”. It blatant contradiction of it all that just makes me so angry.
IMO people are naive to see something for so cheap and to assume that there is no chance of it being made of lead or bringing whatever other litany of monkey paw curses to whoever buys it.