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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 recalls flammable glow-in-the-dark jumper after 8yo girl suffers burns - ABC News - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-07/temu-recall-flammable-glow-in-dark-jumper-australia-consumer-law/104787390
That includes Amazon, right?
...right?
The kalmar union begins...
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.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wirtschaft/temu-shein-engpaesse-luftfracht-100.html
I've bought so many minature items of typical things from them.....
Just ban the fucking shit is what I say.
China can make quality products but those aren’t sold on Temu.
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 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)
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.
I love AliExpress but no way in hell will I buy anything there that goes on my body, my food or my water.
Could you give an example of something you would buy from there rather than from somewhere else?
Like, why do you love it?
How is it different from, say, Temu?
Its surprisingly good for car parts and tools.
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 never used Temu I must admit.
Not OP, but
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.
Another big thing you might be missing: Amazon doesn’t exist in most places on earth. AliExpress does. And it has damn near everything when it comes to some categories. A lot of companies also sell directly on there, depending on your niche (coffee grinders, keyboard parts, 3D printing stuff, repair parts for whatever) straight from the source. For me a big one was metal models, the kind popularized by Metal Earth/Piececool.
The first time I received foreign packages of locally unavailable stuff from an online order in rural Lebanon was an almost magical experience. Even if it did spend two months rotting in customs.
Suddenly I went from having very few options for specific niche things, especially electronic parts, to being on the same playing field as everyone else on earth. I paid like 10 USD for an ATTINY85 from the local extortion shop, compared to like 20 USD for a pack of 10 from AliExpress. Quality? Please, the shop is buying them from there too. The ICs are fine.
I think AliExpress sells itself short, if you open the app it looks like they’re doing some sort of overwhelming and insufferable TEMU-style gamified slop-shopping “experience” on the front page. And sometimes you search for something and the one you want won’t show up, but will be in the sidebar of the page of one of the things you don’t want from that list. But it’s been a life changer for me after getting used to how it handles, I hear Amazon is much easier to use. Although you probably can’t ask the seller “hey can you paint this part differently” or “can you skip this accessory, I don’t need it” on Amazon.
Temu is predatory, offers fake discounts and only has poor-to-mediocre selection of goods and they arrive only a month after you ordered them (which I attribute to them getting the order, making it from scratch in a factory rather than storing anything, and directly sending it)
Basically anything you’d buy off say Amazon from a 5 letter company.
so nothing
It's the general you, but you're free to do you.
I have 2 AliExpress rules:
Nothing over 50 euros
Nothing that goes into my body, directly or indirectly.
It's probably fine as long as it's nonporous and has a flared base.
How about anything with a powerbrick or batteries?
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).
I do always find it morbidly amusing we care more about how horrifically unsafe the products are, but it doesn’t often get related to how awful it must be to work in a factory making this stuff.
I hear it talked about plenty.
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.
Same product ban on temu but allowed through any drop shipping local shop at thrice the price.
Germany here, we want in.