Good. They're pushing overpriced low-quality junk. If you want to buy from Temu but want a better chance at reasonable prices, shop AliExpress.
IMO Temu and Aliexpress/Alibaba market themselves in a very different way. In many ways I consider Aliexpress to be more reputable just because they don't try to pull the wool over your eyes with their products. With Temu they try to make it seem like the products are just as good as what you get at Walmart. With Aliexpress at least they just straight up tell you they are a "front" for all the factories in Shenzhen.
I found Aliexpress to be great for retro gaming consoles, for anyone interested and willing to wait, you can get an "R36S" which can play all the old gameboy games and other retro games for ~$30.
The other advantage with Alibaba is you can interact directly with the companies doing the manufacturing.
Several years ago, I was frustrated with the insane costs of hockey sticks. I'd been going through sticks at about a 6-8 month clip since high school and having to buy $300 hockey sticks every six months was not something I was happy about.
I got on Alibaba, sent out several emails saying I was an equipment manager for a US based hockey team. The team was looking to get some stock sticks for backups since players were going through sticks like crazy.
I emailed two companies who did carbon fiber manufacturing. One company made one-piece composite sticks that were blank. You could tell them what length, flex, lie and blade pattern you wanted and then if you wanted 12K or 14K carbon fibre. I got two 12K blanks. They were impressively durable and lasted for well over a year. Almost twice as long as my expensive retail sticks. They were a little more whippy than I was used to, but it was easy getting used to it.
The other company was a bit shady. The first email I got back was someone asking me how many top of the line Bauer sticks I needed. I asked him how that was possible and he just said he had access and just give him the specs and they'll send them out. I ordered two of those to boot thinking it was a pretty big gamble. Turns out they were legit. My buddies who used the same retail model couldn't tell the difference. We went over the graphics and couldn't see any difference either. Ironically, I still have one of these Bauer 1X Lite sticks that I use when I get down to a single stick and I'm waiting for the newer ones to ship.
Interestingly enough, by the time I had gone through three of the sticks, suddenly there were several companies popping up offering "blank" sticks for a fraction of the cost of the retail sticks. Effectively doing the same thing I did, but now as legit hockey companies trying to save players some money. All told, I think I spent around $500 for the 4 sticks I bought. A fraction of what retail sticks would've cost. I haven't gone back and ordered more sticks, just because there's so many pro stock stuff out there and so many other companies selling these blanks now.
Compared to everything else it feels pretty minor but I'm fairly worried about the handheld retro gaming market. I really enjoy it as a hobby but it seems like almost all of those devices will no longer be profitable / worth buying if the tariffs are enforced on them.
I've been really enjoying my recent Anbernic RG 406V and it can play pretty much all the systems I want it to so I guess I'll just stick to that if the handheld market collapses.
The "de minimis" exemption, which previously allowed low-value packages (under $800) from China to enter the U.S. duty-free, is being phased out. This change, announced by the White House, will impact popular e-commerce platforms like Temu and Shein, potentially leading to higher prices for consumers. The de minimis exemption is being ended because it's being seen as a trade loophole that allows low-value goods to enter the country without paying import duties. The change is expected to take effect on May 2, with a new system in place to collect duties on small-value packages.
Well you have until May 2nd to order tarrif free fyi. Most people dont realuze this.
There's a different cost vs. shipping tradeoff between the two. I use Temu for little electronic things (OLED panels with breakout header pins, microcontroller boards, breadboards, etc). For that purpose, Temu's prices are much better than any domestic seller, for a product that is exactly the same for my purposes. And, unlike Aliexpress, it won't take a fiscal quarter for your stuff to arrive.
AliExpress shipping has gotten noticeably faster even over the five years that I've been using it. Just about everything arrives within a week now.
I'm having the same experience. On one of my packages, the sender address was a local warehouse. I suspect Ali is warehousing outside of China.
I have ordered loads of stuff off Aliexpress, in the exact category you described. Never taken more than ~1 week to reach. Aliexpress shipping is actually quicker than Amazon if you don't have Prime.
AliExpress stuff arrives within a week nowadays. I am in the EU and often it even ships from a warehouse in the EU.
When was the last time you used it? It was definitely true a few years ago.
There's an art to buy good products from AliExpress. You must order by number of items sold. See bad reviews. See the seller rate.
They are making each time more difficult to assert the product quality. I'm super careful, but still sometimes buy from seller SHOP123456789
Part of my AliExpress purchasing workflow is checking reviews for the item I'm about to buy on Amazon, as they're (usually) higher quality than the "just received item, 5 stars" reviews on AliExpress.
The idea that Temu is gonna end is nonsense. First of all, the US is just one market for them. They're red hot in many countries in latin America, Asia, Africa and so many others. Moreover, I guess they'll eventually find other ways to sell products in the USA, in one way or another.
What's the difference between them and Wish.com then? Wish eventually failed, but Temu still seems to be trucking along.
Temu has direct access to producers of the items they sell. They know what categories are profitable, having incredible logistics directly tied to Chinese industry. Wish, from what I can getter, was just an American middle man.
Temu vs. AliExpress is usually a shipment speed vs. cost tradeoff. Their catalogues also differ quite a bit in some areas, so sometimes one has to use one or the other.
I feel like AliExpress has improved in this area though, likely due to pressure from Temu.
A few months ago, I had an AliExpress order beat an Amazon order to my house. I wasn't using Prime, but the AliExpress order did ship from China. It took about a week.
I've had so much good luck with AliExpress. I wouldn't order anything I might need to return. But I've never received something that needed that. I can't begin to describe how disappointing these tariffs are going to be for me. It's not as if I can or ever will be able to buy these things locally.
Is it any difference than shopping from Amazon, except you don't have to pay the dropshipping markup?
Worse support. Amazon usually will try and make you whole-ish, aliexpress is like lmao
That is not my experience with AliExpress. I usually just got my money back when I complained.
They just make it very hard to complain. And it always is necessary to do a lot of back and forth
It probably varies based on item price and how obvious the issue is. I had two sub-$10 items arrive visibly broken recently and got refunds in under 5 minutes.
They're more likely to only give a few dollars back rather than a full refund
You have to call their bluff when they try to pull that, they don't want you to ship stuff back either. I got a full refund after a few back and forths of "are you sure you want to ship that back for a refund??".
Hmm, with one exception, every time I've had an issue it was resolved with a full refund within 5 minutes. They do make you give them a picture of the issue.
Not only that, their ads are incredibly invasive, often taking over the majority of a page.
Whoever's doing the "design" on Temu and Ali seems to think all Americans want to feel like they're in Vegas while shopping. It's very obnoxious, to the point that people have created plug-ins to clean things up (e.g. AliTools Shopping Assistant, AliRadar).
Thanks for pointing that out. Several times I’ve seen adapters or tools I could use only to click them and it sends me to a sale list I can’t find the original product in. How hard is it to have a grid of clickable jpegs