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Not really in reality. Or do you think all the factories in China are operating in the same way?
It might come as a shock, but China also makes quality products as well as garbage. Companies that use the same supplier for years will send someone over multiple times a year to ensure standards are being maintained.
Temu is just a platform for anyone in China to list something.
Yeah. I've heard of many cases of businesses shopping around locally and in different countries to find the highest quality manufacturers. Very often they have no choice but to choose China, because for many industries - they're simply the best at it. At this point they have generations of families who are experts at it. It's no surprise.
Just look at their version of TikTok, Douyin. The most popular videos are of people working hard showing their talents in factories and on assembly lines. (Makes sense that's what the CCP wants their citizens to get influenced by)
Well In their tik tok the children’s algorithms are made to show science math and interesting things and the kids here get tie a plastic bag around your head and do a one foot backflip challenge it’s a joke man
The heck. It makes sense. I tell my kid the content he’s watching is so moronic it extracts brain cells. So they dumb down the stuff in western countries? Genius.
That's kinda beside the point, we've completely dismantled product safety in this country. Fake and returned products just get mixed in the same bin at Amazon, you simply have no idea what you're buying. Use another retailer? Amazon is doing their logistics, so it doesn't matter. Go to a local store? probably doesn't matter, they can get anything from the internet and bypass product safety entirely.
Electrical goods and anything that touches or enters your body need to be regulated and those regulations are written in blood. The UK has massive issues with counterfeit products and even just random tat, with no product testing, being widely available. We have normalized the libertarian approach to a degree the hardest core anti-government types would be proud of.
No one knows the numbers, but low quality unregulated products are everywhere. China can produce goods of very high quality, they make wonderful camera and drones, they make iphones and all sorts of luxury items. We're just at the point where you don't know what you're buying.
They're trading from within the UK on some trading estate in Bracknell... allegedly. Order the item and you'll find it's loaded on to a plane in some Chinese city you have never heard of.
I cant comment on the dismantling of product safety as I'm not aware of any loosening of regulations in my sector. It does seem like people are happy enough buying random shite off amazon etc though. After having a few shitty random Chinese brands I personally avoid amazon. Have no faith in their reviews either
It just doesn't really matter, if you buy stuff from amazon, it might well be a counterfeit. Even if you get it from them directly, even if it looks perfectly legit. The way their logistics network has been built, makes it impossible to guarantee you're getting something real.
Having supplied Amazon I know this is all too real, and I've gotten fed up of explaining to people that the fake Ninja Air Fryer gets put in a joint stock location with the real ones, so you can't even trust the Ninja shop on there.
Only buy what you're willing to be fake
It's kind of ironic.
When Amazon first moved from books to other goods, I'd always buy Amazon because, firstly, it was cheaper than bricks and mortar and, secondly, I knew I was getting exactly what I paid for.
These days, for anything important, I'd prefer somewhere like Argos over Amazon so, again, I know exactly what I'm getting. I'd never buy a phone or computer components for gaming at Amazon, for example, I just don't trust it.
I do still use Amazon but only for knick-knacks and lower budget stuff.
Argos just left Ireland, so we don't have that now unfortunately.
At least with Amazon you can get the ISBN Specific version of a book you need, but even then you have to trust the condition.
I only use it for stuff I assume to be cheap, like door hangers or radiator pipe covers
It probably IS counterfeit. Amazon has a huge problem with their marketplace. They aren‘t policing it properly, if at all. Same for the product reviews. Same for bought („sponsored“ lol) search results.
And it‘s going to be the end of them. I got out of Prime and stopped buying at Amazon months ago.
Yeah it’s very easy to just not buy anything from Amazon and avoid this problem entirely. If you want a good product, buy it directly from the brand (not via Amazon) or go to a shop. Amazon is just scammy, no idea why people still use it.
This is why trademark is a thing. So the average person in a hurry can get assurance of expected quality. Tat for tat price, not gonna kill them for premium or trusted branding.
This has been pretty undermined by Amazon (sigh). The trusted partner program thing requires a US registered trademark, so that it can be recognised and build up that trust (or not trust).
Que tens of thousands of random six letter US trademark filings, so they can be used on Amazon under the program.
Do you not have a QWZRTL vacuum cleaner? Or a brilliant and handy FYRTLI coffee machine?
Yup, I've seen enough recalls on e.g. chargers sold by established and reputable high street stores and supermarkets that I wouldn't necessarily trust such stores to sell safer products than, say, Anker via Amazon. But I would recommend against buying "100% GENUINE!1!!" Apple/Samsung/etc branded chargers from marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Temu for prices that are too good to be true.
Agree with this, had a USB C power cord by one of these Amazon brands catch fire beside me as I worked on Friday funnily enough - actually why this thread caught my eye. Looked it up on Amazon and it is still selling tons a month with 4/5\* reviews. The thing literally caught fire and burned my hand getting it unplugged before it caught anything else.
Even for handmade goods, it doesn't take long before the person who hand-makes pottery to realise that they're bored of hand-shaping hundreds of saucers every day, and that they might as well make a mould.
And before long, that mould is cranking out thousands of 'hand made' saucers in a mini-factory. Yet they're still selling it as hand made because the original one the mould was made off is hand made...
It kind of is, you ever noticed how when you search for something on Amazon (or Etsy) there are tons of the exact same product images under different brands? I just go directly to AliExpress these days if its not something branded or electronics I don't want to catch fire
Even then Amazon sells people fake products, so its not really a great place to buy unless there is no other option
TBH I trust Aliexpress more than Amazon at this point. For the simple reason that Aliexpress sellers are generally more honest about the quality of the goods they are selling.
I know that amazon is basically temu/aliexpress these days, it's why I don't use it in my personal life. Still use it at work purely out of convenience though, plus quality matters less to me when it's not for me personally lol.
I was mainly saying that China doesn't just make garbage which is what the person I replied to was saying.
There is however an awful lot of stuff available in shops (physical and online) that is essentially the exact same thing that you get from the likes of Temu and AliExpress but with the middle-man markup.
Definitely, no way to avoid it entirely. But I find reviews of individual websites far more reliable than amazon reviews. You usually get some semblance of customer service as well.
Plus the barrier to entry is marginally higher, its a bit more effort to make, even a shopify store, than selling on amazon.
Can confirm. Used to work for an audio company. We had a speaker rep come in and show us videos of their Chinese based factory. Was state of the art. Very clean, used high quality materials. Workers even had homes onsite, with free food and tennis courts, etc.
Chinese manufacturing varies massively. I’ll admit, high quality factories are less common than low quality factories. But to say everything from China is bad isn’t true.
yeah buddy thinks DJI makes there drones in the same factory as temu, lmao it almost feels borderline racist to assume everything from china is garbage
Agreed, Temu has some quality branded items on sale too from the official brand page, but it's usually way too pricey for most people browsing for a deal. I got some really nice office supplies from them, the cheap stuff are cheap for a reason.
People have an image of really old factories full of workers on assembly lines choking on fumes, that's only true for some of them lol. Some are nicer than factories here.
Well, they're *supposed to*... But is anyone actually doing the spot testing necessary to confirm that?
You might have someone to sue if you suffer consequential damages as a result of a faulty product bought from a UK shop, but that may not be a lot of comfort if you're dead or seriously injured.
That just seems to be recalls, though; what proportion were initiated as a result of the UK retailer or importer discovering the problem through their *own* testing, and what proportion were initiated as a result of a *customer* reporting - to the retailer, or to their local Trading Standards department - that they got an electric shock or that their house burned down?
Big name shop? Probably
Abraham's stall down in the market? Probably not.
Cheapo corner shop down in Skeg? Probably not. Wouldn't be the first time local brick and mortar have been targeted for selling 'fake' goods in recent years.
It's why I buy from ebay, I pay the tat price, expecting tat, unlike amazon that will try and tart it up a bit.
Argos is a solid choice for electronics now because you know they are going to QC things better.
China does have quality goods. You just gotta shop around. Helps to that a lot of niche stuff you can only get from China, or pay a hefty premium here. I recently got into custom mechanical keyboards and oh boy is it expensive. In China though I can get quality kits, switches, modding tools, and keycaps all with free shipping for cheap.
To the surprise of absolute nobody.
Who would have thought that some of the most inexpensive, regulation-avoiding items in their store are made from equally inexpensive materials of dubious origin.
It's no wonder we all have plastics floating around [in our bollocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1dcqxcy/microplastics_found_in_every_human_semen_sample/?ref=share&ref_source=link).
Look, if you can point me to a British website that will sell me a British machine that automatically wanks me off for £15 delivered, I'm all ears, but until then, AliExpress is getting my custom.
We all know the rest of the world isn’t like China! That’s the only place in the world where plastic is dumped into aquifers, burned in our air, and used for all packaging.
You might hope not, but you likely have plastic in your bones, blood, and yes, even sperm
If you are a monk on some mountain in Tibet you might be safe but we all drink from the same effective water supply. Even if you are a bottled water ponce you will still eat food and drink other products that have been produced with regular water.
Not really, because it weakens trust in Amazon as a supplier. If the delivery were only slightly less quick and easy, they'd be haemorrhaging sales to other suppliers who can provide better guarantees of product provenance.
You don't need to receive many "1TB SSDs" that are actually 64GB thumb drives to think "y'know, I'm going to shop at Scan".
However, Amazon is lucky that the competitors haven't got it together to try to establish a distribution network that isn't completely balkanised – so they wind up stuck with the likes of Yodel half the time.
Same. I haven’t bought from them for years. Mainly because of their labour practices, but also because their site is just flooded with all sorts of cheap knockoff crap. Scrolling through some of the products, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for Wish.com or AliExpress.
The only thing is I now struggle to find things from any other sites. I don't really have a go to that's not the same crap. Then if you google whatever you are looking for it's mostly Ali express, Temu and Amazon results.
Most stuff is made in china. The key part is whether what is being sold conforms to EU safety standards. Stuff being sold directly by Amazon itself should.
Temu is like Wish, Amazon Marketplace and eBay, there’s no easy way to regulate that.
I actually placed orders from some fuses from Amazon as a test (BS1362).
I bought 3A and 1A fuses, both said to be Bussmann fuses. I wouldn't have thought Bussmann did 1A fuses as they're not really in spec.
I received 3A ones marked Bussmann, but the 1A ones where marked with some name I never heard of.
The 1A ones worked perfectly in line with that BS fuse profile.
The 3A "Bussmann" ones completely refused to blow and got extremely hot.
So much same junk on amazon all which can be found on aliexpress wish temu without the random letters names for bugger all thesedays it's a fucking mess
If you buy from Amazon sellers who's brands look like "sggdvedwe" then yes, but not if it's a well known brand with a reputation to uphold. for example as I had to buy some, you can't compare generic hose fittings from no name "brands" to those of Karcher, Hozelock, or Gardena.
Even the cheap tat from discount shops like B&M, The Range, Home Bargains, All the poundshops are just the Temu crap bought in bulk with their logo slapped on it.
Same for most low and middle-range products sold in shops. Out from the same exact third-party production line, just labelled differently before shipping it to different brands for distribution.
This does not mean that everything is crap, but that it is not an online vs retail issue.
I don't understand when people say this. Literally everything I buy from Amazon is from reputable brands and I won't buy anything without doing at least some cursory research first.
Read some of the explanations above you as to *why* you're *not* necessarily getting branded goods even when you *think* you are. Amazon themselves don't check the authenticity of all their suppliers. Supplier sends 50x "Apple" chargers, they all get put in a big bin with ALL the other "legit" chargers. They get picked by the picker. It's happened to me more than once with memory cards and hard drives that i purchased FROM AMAZON THEMSELVES *NOT* some dodgy re-seller on amazon site.
Maybe I've just got lucky but I buy thinks like cables and chargers from Anker or UGreen from Amazon pretty often and have never had any issues with any of them. I don't think I'd ever buy actual Apple products from Amazon though. I'd either go for a reputable third party or buy directly from Apple.
You may have gotten "lucky" or you may, like me, just not have noticed. The SanDisk fake memory cards are almost identical to the real thing. I only found out mine were fake when i put them in my "good" camera and it didn't like it. Showed it to someone in the biz and they said "It's fake". I love Anker products as well but they are quite common for fakes also apparently .I'm not saying every single branded product from Amazon is fake, but don't be lulled, like i was, into a false sense of security because "you bought direct from Amazon".
What data are they collecting by selling cheap salad bowls to people?
I've heard this a bunch of times but honestly, if you buy anything on the internet it's being logged and tracked by someone, so I don't understand why Temu is worse than something like Amazon in this regard.
My main concern would be using harmful materials either in food related items or kids toys.
They have a thing where you get 20 pounds if you recruit 5 new people to the platform. People have reported having money taken from them from temu its pretty obviously a data farm but if you buy stuff with paypal its not really a big issue.
Temu is worse in this regard because people assume its doing so. The 20 or 100 or whatever pounds they give you IS real, they actually give you 20 pounds for recruiting 5 people to the app. This is ofcourse too good to be true your data and other peoples data is not worth that much so people assume that there must be other more sinister machinations behind the scenes that we dont know about.
Idk if temu is as bad as people say it is but I uninstalled it regardless
Companies like Deliveroo and Uber did the same when they were new.
What specifically are Temu doing with customer data that is concerning when compared with other apps and services?
It has the data of nearly 500 million people. They're not going to try and steal your bank passwords but they have to pass it onto the Chinese government. And obviously nobody has ever used data to do things like sway elections or anything.
What ever happened to the kite mark and the CE mark? Maybe it’s just the middle aged rose tinted glasses, but I feel like we used to have regulations for stuff like this, and you couldn’t really buy dodgy shit unless it was out of the back of some van at a car boot sale.
I used to work for a UK manufacturer that jumped through all the right safety hoops (at considerable cost). We ended up having to compete with Chinese importers who just slapped the safety markings on products that were in no way compliant.
Tory government didn't give a shit.
Product safety was just slowly dismantled. People stopped being killed by bad wiring and lead paint, so protecting people from it got de-funded and diluted. It's just become normal that if you're buying stuff, it might be fake.
BSI kite marks went out of fashion for the UKCA marking, and CE markings are mostly self regulating. if you want quality you look for UL marking, or if you're cheap Intertek.
UKCA marking is the UK only version of CE marking. When we left the EU it was due to become a requirement but in many industries they now allow CE marking in its place.
Every company that spent out getting UKCA certifications basically wasted money that BSI and similar certification companies were happy to hoover up.
The CE mark isn't quite what you think it is. Anyone can put the CE mark on a product because there isn't a requirement for independent testing to get the CE mark. Unlike say a UL listing or TUV certification, whereby the product must go through testing and the product gets an ID with that certification accessible to the public.
A lot of companies offload the CE testing to a third party, so they can remove themselves from the QA/Liability loop.
Of course, if there's a problem with the product, then the testing company says that the released product is different from the one they tested...
The Chinese can produce extremely good products to a consistently high standard if they want to. Then when a particular product becomes popular there will be dozens of poorly made, dangerous copies made by unscrupulous manufacturers in search of a quick buck with no regard for safety standards.
I watched a documentary about Temu and one of the products offered were mountaineering carabiners with fake certification stamped on it. No serious mountain climber would buy them, but that won't stop people reselling them as genuine.
Anything you can think of has probably been faked by a Chinese company if there's a decent profit margin in it for them. Even pharmaceuticals.
Way too many people think China is some sort of underdeveloped country.
I can go on AliExpress right now and order genuine precision devices from Texas Instruments going for $1000 a piece and a $5 pair of shoes that will disintegrate upon touching it. Both made in China.
Place where I worked used to routinely test toys and stuff for heavy metals in paint, usually cheap imported tat picked up from markets by environmental health officers, all went by the wayside with the single market and things being tested before import (CE mark).
All gone now of course and probably on a much bigger scale with mass import via amazone etc.
Buying direct from China is great for certain types of products, things that can be cheap or would already be cheap by western standards generally (e.g. Lego or similar, small plastic pieces, fabric etc). Or things where the vendor themselves are the same and they just sell there cheaper (e.g. Phones or other specific tech). Speaking from experience of using AliExpress fairly frequently. On the other hand anything where quality control matters is a big no, especially when its something you would use on your body...
Harvesting data has been a secondary profit avenue for ages so singling out Temu seems weird. If you've ever applied for a job online there's a really high chance that all your info is out there to buy.
Whenever I look online to buy anything, it it’s not a reputable uk store I don’t buy even if it’s half price
>Oh look, I have a £12 pan set….
Fuck that shit, I’ll stick with my far better pans that won’t poison me
Anyone really shocked by this? Wish and AliExpress have been doing the same and getting away with it for years. Temu are just doing it the same way. Btw don't buy electronics off their, especially phones, or anything connected to the internet, because if they're not just overpriced junk anyway, they'll have security issues or be harvesting as much data as it can.
You won't be surprised at the amount of retailers that have opened up this online marketplace for direct B2C sellers that just sell the cheapest, most massed-produced tat to people. For example, the amount of office furniture you see that is just the same "industrial-styled" thing with different names slapped on it, and then I see those on B&Q's website (that has gone the marketplace route, Amazon, eBay, Temu, etc).
What's even more annoying are brands that reduce their quality to try and make their items either cheaper to sell, or protect profit margins, after competing and having a reputation for being high quality. Fixtures and fittings have gone that way, cables, adapters, sockets, tools, etc is stuff that just feels flimsy.
And then people still buy the cheap Chinese shit because it's cheaper and it doesn't even run through their mind that they can just afford to throw it away when it breaks within months. For that matter fuck Shein as well.
"Burned by nail glue"
I'd like to think anyone with a bit of brains would understand that, when it comes to cheap tat sites like Temu and Wish, there are certain things you don't buy because they will most likely be a hazard to your health...
So anything that's going on, or in your body. Especially anything that may involve chemicals (glue, hair removal cream, etc)
Anything electronic, especially if it involves batteries
Batteries
Anything that will be load-bearing or be holding weight
Anything that will see a lot of physical use.
They're good for cheap tat to put on display or for cheap shit you're hardly going to use. Some cheap car accessories aren't too bad either. That's about it.
Ali Express is better for all that other sort of stuff because there are genuine brands that do sell genuine products on there. But I'd still advise only buying chemical-based products locally or importing them from genuine retailers in countries where these products will be properly regulated (I.E USA, Canada, Pretty much the rest of Europe (or at least EU member states), Japan, Australia, etc).
Exporting their industrial waste as a product is definitely removing crap from their environment. I imagine this has been going on for years. The genius is they get you to pay for it.
Everyone for at least 50 years has known that things produced in China are cheap, toxic, and brittle. Even their steel is garbage. Why would products on a platform with zero accountability be an improvement?
A company I worked for had to actively check who was buying our products
The Chinese would go to all sorts of lengths to get at it.
Just to reverse engineer it and flog it cheaper.
This isn't meant to sound pompous, but how can people not look at the prices they charge and not smell a rat? It's too good to be true. It's either going to be awful quality, made with slave labour, or both.
Taking a different angle, Temu is an interesting indicator that the Chinese economy is having issues. With domestic demand crumbling, many Chinese manufacturers are offloading their overproduction abroad for crazy low prices to simply keep their factories turning over. We are witnessing this with Chinese EVs. Domestic sales of EVs are greatly deflated, so they're offloading them, primarily to Russia.
What's the difference between offloading a product and exporting a product? If Chinese EVs are in demand in Russia doesn't it just make sense for them to be sold there? A Zeekr 001 in Russia costs about 50k.
It's like when people were frothing at the mouth over BYD getting the electric bus contract in London. Like there are any domestic EV manufacturers that could supply them.
I'm so shocked at this information. Who would have ever known that a place which defo steals your credit card info and sells it to malicious people and sells you stuff for stupid prices is unsafe? 😨
Whaaaaaaattttt?!!!!! You mean the item I bought that normally costs £20 plus but I paid £1 was full of random dangerous bullshit who would have guessed
I'm concerned that people apparently don't have the critical thinking skills to consider that, perhaps buying dirt-cheap crap from dropshipping sites comes with some level of consequence or risk? Has that just... never crossed their minds?
This is stuff made in China for standards in China … which pretty much don’t exist, right? Buying something chemical like that is a big risk.
I hadn’t really thought about the cheap shitty jewellery being full of lead, but I guess that’s not surprising.
I’m not shocked at all that everyone is repeatedly writing how unshocked they are despite every comment before them already specifying how unshocked they are
>Chinese retailer 'harvests data' from buyers
Errr... what is PRISM?? There is no bigger orwellian surveillance hell than the system unleashed on us by the USA and its' anglo thralls and they actually have power in western societies to harm your chances to get a job.
It really disturbed me how quickly I saw Temu get a foothold and how it's like 'we basically took Shein and made it worse for everyone somehow like apparently no one fucking learned a thing. Like within minutes youtube was overun with OMG TEMU IS AMAZING ALL HAIL TEMU and it's gross.
Temu is great for ornaments, lego/brick/arts and craft kits but I wouldn't trust it for clothe sizes, products based on or requiring safety or anything liquid based or for children.
I've got a lot of cool arts and craft stuff from there for almost no money and it's all been high quality.
As for selling my data, I went on Ebuyer for computer cases on my laptop last night, today I'm getting computer deals on Facebook/Instagram on my mobile, so META is still stealing your data without permission and selling it to advertisers.
Wait, are you telling me that stuff made as cheap as possible by slave labour ISN'T high quality and doesn't meet strict safety standards? I'm shocked!
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I am shocked, shocked to discover that shockingly cheap tat from Temu is dangerously and shockingly cheap tat.
Wait till you find out 90% of the stuff you buy online and in shops are from the same Chinese factories lol.
Not really in reality. Or do you think all the factories in China are operating in the same way? It might come as a shock, but China also makes quality products as well as garbage. Companies that use the same supplier for years will send someone over multiple times a year to ensure standards are being maintained. Temu is just a platform for anyone in China to list something.
Yeah. I've heard of many cases of businesses shopping around locally and in different countries to find the highest quality manufacturers. Very often they have no choice but to choose China, because for many industries - they're simply the best at it. At this point they have generations of families who are experts at it. It's no surprise. Just look at their version of TikTok, Douyin. The most popular videos are of people working hard showing their talents in factories and on assembly lines. (Makes sense that's what the CCP wants their citizens to get influenced by)
Well In their tik tok the children’s algorithms are made to show science math and interesting things and the kids here get tie a plastic bag around your head and do a one foot backflip challenge it’s a joke man
Even if TikTok here showed such educational videos, anti-intellectualism is so rife here that people (kids and adult alike) would ignore them.
The heck. It makes sense. I tell my kid the content he’s watching is so moronic it extracts brain cells. So they dumb down the stuff in western countries? Genius.
[удалено]
Actually quite interesting watching the Linus Tech Tips videos about getting their screwdriver designed and built. Had the odd problem with that.
That's kinda beside the point, we've completely dismantled product safety in this country. Fake and returned products just get mixed in the same bin at Amazon, you simply have no idea what you're buying. Use another retailer? Amazon is doing their logistics, so it doesn't matter. Go to a local store? probably doesn't matter, they can get anything from the internet and bypass product safety entirely. Electrical goods and anything that touches or enters your body need to be regulated and those regulations are written in blood. The UK has massive issues with counterfeit products and even just random tat, with no product testing, being widely available. We have normalized the libertarian approach to a degree the hardest core anti-government types would be proud of. No one knows the numbers, but low quality unregulated products are everywhere. China can produce goods of very high quality, they make wonderful camera and drones, they make iphones and all sorts of luxury items. We're just at the point where you don't know what you're buying.
It's almost impossible now to find any supplier on amazon that isn't Chinese.
I’ll have you know XDBFLMXUEUQKR is a very well-respected brand.
Yes I prefer to buy my power cables from DINPRONGY instead of NIMBYON.
gross, NIMBYs
They're trading from within the UK on some trading estate in Bracknell... allegedly. Order the item and you'll find it's loaded on to a plane in some Chinese city you have never heard of.
I cant comment on the dismantling of product safety as I'm not aware of any loosening of regulations in my sector. It does seem like people are happy enough buying random shite off amazon etc though. After having a few shitty random Chinese brands I personally avoid amazon. Have no faith in their reviews either
It just doesn't really matter, if you buy stuff from amazon, it might well be a counterfeit. Even if you get it from them directly, even if it looks perfectly legit. The way their logistics network has been built, makes it impossible to guarantee you're getting something real.
Having supplied Amazon I know this is all too real, and I've gotten fed up of explaining to people that the fake Ninja Air Fryer gets put in a joint stock location with the real ones, so you can't even trust the Ninja shop on there. Only buy what you're willing to be fake
It's kind of ironic. When Amazon first moved from books to other goods, I'd always buy Amazon because, firstly, it was cheaper than bricks and mortar and, secondly, I knew I was getting exactly what I paid for. These days, for anything important, I'd prefer somewhere like Argos over Amazon so, again, I know exactly what I'm getting. I'd never buy a phone or computer components for gaming at Amazon, for example, I just don't trust it. I do still use Amazon but only for knick-knacks and lower budget stuff.
Argos just left Ireland, so we don't have that now unfortunately. At least with Amazon you can get the ISBN Specific version of a book you need, but even then you have to trust the condition. I only use it for stuff I assume to be cheap, like door hangers or radiator pipe covers
As if I needed another reason to avoid them haha, that's atrocious
It probably IS counterfeit. Amazon has a huge problem with their marketplace. They aren‘t policing it properly, if at all. Same for the product reviews. Same for bought („sponsored“ lol) search results. And it‘s going to be the end of them. I got out of Prime and stopped buying at Amazon months ago.
Yeah it’s very easy to just not buy anything from Amazon and avoid this problem entirely. If you want a good product, buy it directly from the brand (not via Amazon) or go to a shop. Amazon is just scammy, no idea why people still use it.
This is why trademark is a thing. So the average person in a hurry can get assurance of expected quality. Tat for tat price, not gonna kill them for premium or trusted branding. This has been pretty undermined by Amazon (sigh). The trusted partner program thing requires a US registered trademark, so that it can be recognised and build up that trust (or not trust). Que tens of thousands of random six letter US trademark filings, so they can be used on Amazon under the program. Do you not have a QWZRTL vacuum cleaner? Or a brilliant and handy FYRTLI coffee machine?
Yup, I've seen enough recalls on e.g. chargers sold by established and reputable high street stores and supermarkets that I wouldn't necessarily trust such stores to sell safer products than, say, Anker via Amazon. But I would recommend against buying "100% GENUINE!1!!" Apple/Samsung/etc branded chargers from marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Temu for prices that are too good to be true.
Agree with this, had a USB C power cord by one of these Amazon brands catch fire beside me as I worked on Friday funnily enough - actually why this thread caught my eye. Looked it up on Amazon and it is still selling tons a month with 4/5\* reviews. The thing literally caught fire and burned my hand getting it unplugged before it caught anything else.
The death of Etsy due to drop shipping and cheap tat has been hitting the headlines recently.
Etsy was so good when it was actual handmade goods, but that was a very long time ago, it's been crap for years.
Even for handmade goods, it doesn't take long before the person who hand-makes pottery to realise that they're bored of hand-shaping hundreds of saucers every day, and that they might as well make a mould. And before long, that mould is cranking out thousands of 'hand made' saucers in a mini-factory. Yet they're still selling it as hand made because the original one the mould was made off is hand made...
It kind of is, you ever noticed how when you search for something on Amazon (or Etsy) there are tons of the exact same product images under different brands? I just go directly to AliExpress these days if its not something branded or electronics I don't want to catch fire Even then Amazon sells people fake products, so its not really a great place to buy unless there is no other option
TBH I trust Aliexpress more than Amazon at this point. For the simple reason that Aliexpress sellers are generally more honest about the quality of the goods they are selling.
I know that amazon is basically temu/aliexpress these days, it's why I don't use it in my personal life. Still use it at work purely out of convenience though, plus quality matters less to me when it's not for me personally lol. I was mainly saying that China doesn't just make garbage which is what the person I replied to was saying.
There is however an awful lot of stuff available in shops (physical and online) that is essentially the exact same thing that you get from the likes of Temu and AliExpress but with the middle-man markup.
Definitely, no way to avoid it entirely. But I find reviews of individual websites far more reliable than amazon reviews. You usually get some semblance of customer service as well. Plus the barrier to entry is marginally higher, its a bit more effort to make, even a shopify store, than selling on amazon.
Can confirm. Used to work for an audio company. We had a speaker rep come in and show us videos of their Chinese based factory. Was state of the art. Very clean, used high quality materials. Workers even had homes onsite, with free food and tennis courts, etc. Chinese manufacturing varies massively. I’ll admit, high quality factories are less common than low quality factories. But to say everything from China is bad isn’t true.
yeah buddy thinks DJI makes there drones in the same factory as temu, lmao it almost feels borderline racist to assume everything from china is garbage
Agreed, Temu has some quality branded items on sale too from the official brand page, but it's usually way too pricey for most people browsing for a deal. I got some really nice office supplies from them, the cheap stuff are cheap for a reason.
People have an image of really old factories full of workers on assembly lines choking on fumes, that's only true for some of them lol. Some are nicer than factories here.
Yeah but unlike buying from Temu if you buy it from a UK shop it has to meet regulations for the market.
Well, they're *supposed to*... But is anyone actually doing the spot testing necessary to confirm that? You might have someone to sue if you suffer consequential damages as a result of a faulty product bought from a UK shop, but that may not be a lot of comfort if you're dead or seriously injured.
More than you'd probably expect: https://www.gov.uk/product-safety-alerts-reports-recalls
That just seems to be recalls, though; what proportion were initiated as a result of the UK retailer or importer discovering the problem through their *own* testing, and what proportion were initiated as a result of a *customer* reporting - to the retailer, or to their local Trading Standards department - that they got an electric shock or that their house burned down?
Big name shop? Probably Abraham's stall down in the market? Probably not. Cheapo corner shop down in Skeg? Probably not. Wouldn't be the first time local brick and mortar have been targeted for selling 'fake' goods in recent years.
Different quality materials and standards depending on customer specifications
It's why I buy from ebay, I pay the tat price, expecting tat, unlike amazon that will try and tart it up a bit. Argos is a solid choice for electronics now because you know they are going to QC things better.
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That we are living in a toxic soup. We pretend we are safe and regulated but it’s not enough.
There's factories in China that are the size of small towns. It's a 19th century industrialist's wet dream.
Expect lower and lower quality Chinese shit to flood western markets. They are trying to manufacture their way out of a massive financial crisis.
This is my shocked face. 😐
My rule for Temu is nothing with a battery or plug, no fluids or chemicals. It's good for cheap tools and not much else.
China does have quality goods. You just gotta shop around. Helps to that a lot of niche stuff you can only get from China, or pay a hefty premium here. I recently got into custom mechanical keyboards and oh boy is it expensive. In China though I can get quality kits, switches, modding tools, and keycaps all with free shipping for cheap.
I am shocked, _shocked!_ Well not that shocked. /Fry
Are you? I'm more shocked that it's in the daily mail, when did they start doing real articles ?
To the surprise of absolute nobody. Who would have thought that some of the most inexpensive, regulation-avoiding items in their store are made from equally inexpensive materials of dubious origin. It's no wonder we all have plastics floating around [in our bollocks](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1dcqxcy/microplastics_found_in_every_human_semen_sample/?ref=share&ref_source=link).
The plastics floating around in my bollocks are from very expensive, branded sources tyvm!
Who has to die to ban sites like temu, and all the sellers selling deadly or unsafe products on ebay seemingly without repercussion?
Look, if you can point me to a British website that will sell me a British machine that automatically wanks me off for £15 delivered, I'm all ears, but until then, AliExpress is getting my custom.
Really interested in that British machine lol
That article is very misleading they tested 23 humans, that doesn't mean everyone in the world has plastic in there bollocks.
Excuse me sir, we only read the headlines around here.
40 Chinese males in one single study = every man around the world has swimmers made of PVC. That's some very optimisic extrapolation going on
We all know the rest of the world isn’t like China! That’s the only place in the world where plastic is dumped into aquifers, burned in our air, and used for all packaging. You might hope not, but you likely have plastic in your bones, blood, and yes, even sperm
If you are a monk on some mountain in Tibet you might be safe but we all drink from the same effective water supply. Even if you are a bottled water ponce you will still eat food and drink other products that have been produced with regular water.
In China, where they have no food standards whatsoever
They most certainly do have food standards. They ripped off the EUs a decade ago and just add to it.
SNL has made jokes already about "minimal lead" in Temu products. This should not be a new revelation
Everything you buy from amazon etc is also from Temu, just sold at a higher price lmao.
"Everything" Sure it is. Amazon has fallen into the trap of making it hard to tell the fakes from the real but that's a long way from "everything".
It's not a trap, it's a deliberate strategic choice to profit from the ignorance of the average consumer.
Not really, because it weakens trust in Amazon as a supplier. If the delivery were only slightly less quick and easy, they'd be haemorrhaging sales to other suppliers who can provide better guarantees of product provenance. You don't need to receive many "1TB SSDs" that are actually 64GB thumb drives to think "y'know, I'm going to shop at Scan". However, Amazon is lucky that the competitors haven't got it together to try to establish a distribution network that isn't completely balkanised – so they wind up stuck with the likes of Yodel half the time.
I already avoid Amazon as much as possible because of this crap.
Same. I haven’t bought from them for years. Mainly because of their labour practices, but also because their site is just flooded with all sorts of cheap knockoff crap. Scrolling through some of the products, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for Wish.com or AliExpress.
The only thing is I now struggle to find things from any other sites. I don't really have a go to that's not the same crap. Then if you google whatever you are looking for it's mostly Ali express, Temu and Amazon results.
At this point Amazon is effectively AliExpress with a streaming service.
A streaming service I’ll check like 3 times a year then go to a better one immediately
Okay maybe not everything, but 70% on the stuff on Amazon is Chinese.
Most stuff is made in china. The key part is whether what is being sold conforms to EU safety standards. Stuff being sold directly by Amazon itself should. Temu is like Wish, Amazon Marketplace and eBay, there’s no easy way to regulate that.
Check out Louis Rossman's video on fuses bought from Amazon. They're no different to Temu or Wish at this point.
I actually placed orders from some fuses from Amazon as a test (BS1362). I bought 3A and 1A fuses, both said to be Bussmann fuses. I wouldn't have thought Bussmann did 1A fuses as they're not really in spec. I received 3A ones marked Bussmann, but the 1A ones where marked with some name I never heard of. The 1A ones worked perfectly in line with that BS fuse profile. The 3A "Bussmann" ones completely refused to blow and got extremely hot.
There are as yet undiscovered alien civilisations who are aware China makes a lot of stuff.
Real and fake products end up in the same bin, pickers take the first one to hand. You simply have no idea what you're buying from amazon.
Not a trap. It’s fully intentional - they want to make money.
So much same junk on amazon all which can be found on aliexpress wish temu without the random letters names for bugger all thesedays it's a fucking mess
If you buy from Amazon sellers who's brands look like "sggdvedwe" then yes, but not if it's a well known brand with a reputation to uphold. for example as I had to buy some, you can't compare generic hose fittings from no name "brands" to those of Karcher, Hozelock, or Gardena. Even the cheap tat from discount shops like B&M, The Range, Home Bargains, All the poundshops are just the Temu crap bought in bulk with their logo slapped on it.
Everything on temu will be marked up and on amazon but not everything on amazon is on temu.
Same for most low and middle-range products sold in shops. Out from the same exact third-party production line, just labelled differently before shipping it to different brands for distribution. This does not mean that everything is crap, but that it is not an online vs retail issue.
Thats not true in all cases. Although alot of amazon is people reselling off of temu and aliexpress
I don't understand when people say this. Literally everything I buy from Amazon is from reputable brands and I won't buy anything without doing at least some cursory research first.
Read some of the explanations above you as to *why* you're *not* necessarily getting branded goods even when you *think* you are. Amazon themselves don't check the authenticity of all their suppliers. Supplier sends 50x "Apple" chargers, they all get put in a big bin with ALL the other "legit" chargers. They get picked by the picker. It's happened to me more than once with memory cards and hard drives that i purchased FROM AMAZON THEMSELVES *NOT* some dodgy re-seller on amazon site.
Maybe I've just got lucky but I buy thinks like cables and chargers from Anker or UGreen from Amazon pretty often and have never had any issues with any of them. I don't think I'd ever buy actual Apple products from Amazon though. I'd either go for a reputable third party or buy directly from Apple.
You may have gotten "lucky" or you may, like me, just not have noticed. The SanDisk fake memory cards are almost identical to the real thing. I only found out mine were fake when i put them in my "good" camera and it didn't like it. Showed it to someone in the biz and they said "It's fake". I love Anker products as well but they are quite common for fakes also apparently .I'm not saying every single branded product from Amazon is fake, but don't be lulled, like i was, into a false sense of security because "you bought direct from Amazon".
Who could’ve guessed that cheap Chinese shit is cheap Chinese shit
It’s not about the products it’s the data harvesting that’s what they want DATA
There are far cheaper ways to find willing marks on the internet.
You fail to understand the machinations of the Chinese state intelligence.
What data are they collecting by selling cheap salad bowls to people? I've heard this a bunch of times but honestly, if you buy anything on the internet it's being logged and tracked by someone, so I don't understand why Temu is worse than something like Amazon in this regard. My main concern would be using harmful materials either in food related items or kids toys.
They have a thing where you get 20 pounds if you recruit 5 new people to the platform. People have reported having money taken from them from temu its pretty obviously a data farm but if you buy stuff with paypal its not really a big issue. Temu is worse in this regard because people assume its doing so. The 20 or 100 or whatever pounds they give you IS real, they actually give you 20 pounds for recruiting 5 people to the app. This is ofcourse too good to be true your data and other peoples data is not worth that much so people assume that there must be other more sinister machinations behind the scenes that we dont know about. Idk if temu is as bad as people say it is but I uninstalled it regardless
Companies like Deliveroo and Uber did the same when they were new. What specifically are Temu doing with customer data that is concerning when compared with other apps and services?
> People have reported having money taken from them from temu Is this true though? Haven't seen any evidence of it myself?
It has the data of nearly 500 million people. They're not going to try and steal your bank passwords but they have to pass it onto the Chinese government. And obviously nobody has ever used data to do things like sway elections or anything.
"Premier Xi, I have discovered this incredible way of building a database of cheapskate idiots in the hated imperialist West." "But why?"
Target the stupidest for election propaganda? IDK.
We want ... information.
What ever happened to the kite mark and the CE mark? Maybe it’s just the middle aged rose tinted glasses, but I feel like we used to have regulations for stuff like this, and you couldn’t really buy dodgy shit unless it was out of the back of some van at a car boot sale.
I used to work for a UK manufacturer that jumped through all the right safety hoops (at considerable cost). We ended up having to compete with Chinese importers who just slapped the safety markings on products that were in no way compliant. Tory government didn't give a shit.
Product safety was just slowly dismantled. People stopped being killed by bad wiring and lead paint, so protecting people from it got de-funded and diluted. It's just become normal that if you're buying stuff, it might be fake.
BSI kite marks went out of fashion for the UKCA marking, and CE markings are mostly self regulating. if you want quality you look for UL marking, or if you're cheap Intertek.
UKCA marking is the UK only version of CE marking. When we left the EU it was due to become a requirement but in many industries they now allow CE marking in its place. Every company that spent out getting UKCA certifications basically wasted money that BSI and similar certification companies were happy to hoover up.
The CE mark isn't quite what you think it is. Anyone can put the CE mark on a product because there isn't a requirement for independent testing to get the CE mark. Unlike say a UL listing or TUV certification, whereby the product must go through testing and the product gets an ID with that certification accessible to the public.
A lot of companies offload the CE testing to a third party, so they can remove themselves from the QA/Liability loop. Of course, if there's a problem with the product, then the testing company says that the released product is different from the one they tested...
Oh man, I hope the magic all natural diet weight loss penis and knee enlongating pills I got for 7p from there is legit
Mine seem good so far, my penis actually touches the ground now! Though I am a bit concerned about my legs falling off...
Don’t worry, if your leg falls off you have en extra leg now to replace it!
Buy buy buy. We should be more conscious about our purchases.
most people get a dopamine rush from their purchases and packages sadly.
The Chinese can produce extremely good products to a consistently high standard if they want to. Then when a particular product becomes popular there will be dozens of poorly made, dangerous copies made by unscrupulous manufacturers in search of a quick buck with no regard for safety standards. I watched a documentary about Temu and one of the products offered were mountaineering carabiners with fake certification stamped on it. No serious mountain climber would buy them, but that won't stop people reselling them as genuine. Anything you can think of has probably been faked by a Chinese company if there's a decent profit margin in it for them. Even pharmaceuticals.
Way too many people think China is some sort of underdeveloped country. I can go on AliExpress right now and order genuine precision devices from Texas Instruments going for $1000 a piece and a $5 pair of shoes that will disintegrate upon touching it. Both made in China.
So the place that sells stuff made through slave labour is selling unsafe items? Is anyone actually shocked by this?
As opposed to the shit you buy in the UK that’s imported from and made in China, by slave labor?
I can't believe a Chinese retailer with execution worthy garbage commercials sold harmfully dogshit items to people and harvested data. So shocked
I can't believe people buy the utter shite you see on temu
Hey! I bought my blow up wife from there!
Place where I worked used to routinely test toys and stuff for heavy metals in paint, usually cheap imported tat picked up from markets by environmental health officers, all went by the wayside with the single market and things being tested before import (CE mark). All gone now of course and probably on a much bigger scale with mass import via amazone etc.
Buying direct from China is great for certain types of products, things that can be cheap or would already be cheap by western standards generally (e.g. Lego or similar, small plastic pieces, fabric etc). Or things where the vendor themselves are the same and they just sell there cheaper (e.g. Phones or other specific tech). Speaking from experience of using AliExpress fairly frequently. On the other hand anything where quality control matters is a big no, especially when its something you would use on your body...
Harvesting data has been a secondary profit avenue for ages so singling out Temu seems weird. If you've ever applied for a job online there's a really high chance that all your info is out there to buy.
>shocking documentary Is anyone else not, in fact, shocked by these revelations?
Whenever I look online to buy anything, it it’s not a reputable uk store I don’t buy even if it’s half price >Oh look, I have a £12 pan set…. Fuck that shit, I’ll stick with my far better pans that won’t poison me
Anyone really shocked by this? Wish and AliExpress have been doing the same and getting away with it for years. Temu are just doing it the same way. Btw don't buy electronics off their, especially phones, or anything connected to the internet, because if they're not just overpriced junk anyway, they'll have security issues or be harvesting as much data as it can. You won't be surprised at the amount of retailers that have opened up this online marketplace for direct B2C sellers that just sell the cheapest, most massed-produced tat to people. For example, the amount of office furniture you see that is just the same "industrial-styled" thing with different names slapped on it, and then I see those on B&Q's website (that has gone the marketplace route, Amazon, eBay, Temu, etc). What's even more annoying are brands that reduce their quality to try and make their items either cheaper to sell, or protect profit margins, after competing and having a reputation for being high quality. Fixtures and fittings have gone that way, cables, adapters, sockets, tools, etc is stuff that just feels flimsy. And then people still buy the cheap Chinese shit because it's cheaper and it doesn't even run through their mind that they can just afford to throw it away when it breaks within months. For that matter fuck Shein as well.
Why is an 11 year old allowed to buy things off the Internet
"Burned by nail glue" I'd like to think anyone with a bit of brains would understand that, when it comes to cheap tat sites like Temu and Wish, there are certain things you don't buy because they will most likely be a hazard to your health... So anything that's going on, or in your body. Especially anything that may involve chemicals (glue, hair removal cream, etc) Anything electronic, especially if it involves batteries Batteries Anything that will be load-bearing or be holding weight Anything that will see a lot of physical use. They're good for cheap tat to put on display or for cheap shit you're hardly going to use. Some cheap car accessories aren't too bad either. That's about it. Ali Express is better for all that other sort of stuff because there are genuine brands that do sell genuine products on there. But I'd still advise only buying chemical-based products locally or importing them from genuine retailers in countries where these products will be properly regulated (I.E USA, Canada, Pretty much the rest of Europe (or at least EU member states), Japan, Australia, etc).
Allowing retail to die off so we could replace it with hideously unregulated websites loaded with counterfeit Chinese crap was a fantastic idea.
I dont think this should be a surprise to anyone tbh
Chinese products are poorly made and their apps are just for data collection?! Colour me shocked
Exporting their industrial waste as a product is definitely removing crap from their environment. I imagine this has been going on for years. The genius is they get you to pay for it.
Everyone for at least 50 years has known that things produced in China are cheap, toxic, and brittle. Even their steel is garbage. Why would products on a platform with zero accountability be an improvement?
A company I worked for had to actively check who was buying our products The Chinese would go to all sorts of lengths to get at it. Just to reverse engineer it and flog it cheaper.
Trading Standards are asleep at the wheel on this shite. If it was a physical, UK-based retailer they'd be hung out to dry.
This isn't meant to sound pompous, but how can people not look at the prices they charge and not smell a rat? It's too good to be true. It's either going to be awful quality, made with slave labour, or both.
Isn’t Amazon selling the same sort of products as Temu through drop shipping? And I am sure they are also “harvesting data” ?
It still blows my mind just how recent Temu is. The company literally didn't exist until just after the Queen died.
Taking a different angle, Temu is an interesting indicator that the Chinese economy is having issues. With domestic demand crumbling, many Chinese manufacturers are offloading their overproduction abroad for crazy low prices to simply keep their factories turning over. We are witnessing this with Chinese EVs. Domestic sales of EVs are greatly deflated, so they're offloading them, primarily to Russia.
What's the difference between offloading a product and exporting a product? If Chinese EVs are in demand in Russia doesn't it just make sense for them to be sold there? A Zeekr 001 in Russia costs about 50k. It's like when people were frothing at the mouth over BYD getting the electric bus contract in London. Like there are any domestic EV manufacturers that could supply them.
I'm so shocked at this information. Who would have ever known that a place which defo steals your credit card info and sells it to malicious people and sells you stuff for stupid prices is unsafe? 😨
Whaaaaaaattttt?!!!!! You mean the item I bought that normally costs £20 plus but I paid £1 was full of random dangerous bullshit who would have guessed
I'm concerned that people apparently don't have the critical thinking skills to consider that, perhaps buying dirt-cheap crap from dropshipping sites comes with some level of consequence or risk? Has that just... never crossed their minds?
Well duh. These are dirt cheap products made to foreign (much lower) safety standards.
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This is stuff made in China for standards in China … which pretty much don’t exist, right? Buying something chemical like that is a big risk. I hadn’t really thought about the cheap shitty jewellery being full of lead, but I guess that’s not surprising.
Harmful metals + selling medical treatments for heavy metal poisoning = profit. <--Temu Board meeting
Lucky I ain't eating playing cards and a USB then isn't it
I’m not shocked at all that everyone is repeatedly writing how unshocked they are despite every comment before them already specifying how unshocked they are
Hopefully they get properly fucked and stop posting their stupid ads which go against YouTubes policy
Her ludicrously sized jeans are more toxic. Not good!
This headline is incoherent and refers to three different allegations towards Temu. All bad, but still, awful headline.
My girlfriend used TEMU once and got a load of her email and social media accounts hacked into. Not shocked to hear this...
My parents just bought something from Temu and now I read this
>Chinese retailer 'harvests data' from buyers Errr... what is PRISM?? There is no bigger orwellian surveillance hell than the system unleashed on us by the USA and its' anglo thralls and they actually have power in western societies to harm your chances to get a job.
Cheeky bastards farming all our data. Good job western companies don't do this...
Not to make light of a serious issue - but that must be one of the worst-written headlines ever. My brain hurt reading that.
It really disturbed me how quickly I saw Temu get a foothold and how it's like 'we basically took Shein and made it worse for everyone somehow like apparently no one fucking learned a thing. Like within minutes youtube was overun with OMG TEMU IS AMAZING ALL HAIL TEMU and it's gross.
Never have I ever wanted to give my money for the shite they sell! It shouldn’t be allowed in the UK in my opinion.
Temu is great for ornaments, lego/brick/arts and craft kits but I wouldn't trust it for clothe sizes, products based on or requiring safety or anything liquid based or for children. I've got a lot of cool arts and craft stuff from there for almost no money and it's all been high quality. As for selling my data, I went on Ebuyer for computer cases on my laptop last night, today I'm getting computer deals on Facebook/Instagram on my mobile, so META is still stealing your data without permission and selling it to advertisers.
Watch all the users delete their Temu app like dat! 🔥
Wait, are you telling me that stuff made as cheap as possible by slave labour ISN'T high quality and doesn't meet strict safety standards? I'm shocked!