Do you like gambling? Try out this new store and you'll have the opportunity to wonder if the product you ordered is actually the product you saw on the site!
Do you like buying the worst quality shit imaginable that will break after one use? Boy do I have the site for you!
Is your favorite pastime wasting natural resources to ship cheap fabric and plastic you don't need across the ocean? Well then, let me introduce you to Temu!
My rule of thumb is if it's spammed all over YouTube, then It's going to be shit in some way. Temu, TikTok, Raid Shadow Legends, Better Help, that stupid cereal brand that was advertised for a while, etc.
Ive bought a few bundles of things from the app. The products from the app are very hit or miss. Ive gotten a few good deals, I got a really solid nintendo switch pro controller knockoff for like $14 that works great. A lot of the stuff will not match the pictures at all. You'll get different sizes or colors. Their clothes have also been reported to contain unsafe volumes of lead so I can't recommend. Ultimately it's a bit of a gamble.
I thank the OP for giving us the opportunity to call out a company so singularly bad for the future of humanity…but it did remind me a lot of astroturfing-style marketing I’ve seen on other social media.
Yeah feels like an honest question as well to me. I don't get all the downvotes and hate for this post. It doesn't seem anything like shilling. I've never shopped Temu but I've seen the ads, made my assumptions, and now this discussion gives me more information on it rather than doing trial/error. How is a question like this a bad thing?
I do understand the visceral responses based off Temu's most likely lack of safety and ethics, but at the end of the day it's everyone's own personal call on how responsible they want to be with their purchases - caveat emptor I guess.
It's the same shit that's flooding Amazon right now. It's just cheaper to buy directly from China. A lot of the electronics will likely reflect the lower price point (I got a pair of Lenovo earbuds which are decent for the $10 I paid and actually don't seem to be knockoffs, but they're not exactly high quality). Some electronics will likely be scams, and anything with memory should probably be quarantined and wiped so you don't accidentally install a keylogger onto your system.
Clothing will be sized oddly or contain errors as they're being pumped out by what are basically sweatshops at high volume.
I mean, it's really hard to be ethical about buying clothing at all at this point without doing a ton of research - even established clothing brands have been caught out using factories with sweatshop conditions. But at least those established brands are likely to have some quality control that prevents harmful chemicals from being used - not necessarily so with Temu, they're very reactive (will recall when pointed out to them but not proactively checking) so that's another avenue to consider.
I've ordered from them a few times. I wanted to see how bad the products are and they give new members a pretty good deal.
The products are generally better than wish, but they are still hit or miss. Think dollar tree quality for most things. I can't recommend electronics. Most of them are extremely cheap and won't last. There is a lot of etsy art/designs stolen and resold. Prints tend to be lesser quality because they don't have access to the original files.
They will spam you with notifications/emails whatever else they can and constantly tell you there are deals to get free things, but most of the time it stops you from getting the free item without inviting people or making multiple orders. Many of their big coupon offers they advertise like $200 off coupon is actually multiple little coupons that equal $200 off, but you'd need to spend hundreds to actually redeem them all.
Still, I've gotten some things from there that aren't bad. Those cardboard cat scratchers? You can find them for 1/3rd of the price and they are the same quality as any major store.
I will always recommend to shop local if you can, but a lot of us don't have that choice, and some of us can't afford it anyways.