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Comment by adoxyz | Hacker News Reader

I really don't get the appeal of Temu. I checked it out a while back and it's literally the lowest quality garbage at the lowest price possible. I was curious enough to see what I'd receive if I bought anything from them and spent like $10 on 7-8 products. They did arrive within 2 weeks but were absolute garbage that went straight into the recycling bin.

Am I missing something?

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You don’t indicate what you bought, but when I buy parts or components from Ali express its generally things where quality doesn’t matter or where quality goods would be prohibitively expensive. Like a $10 sensor that just needs to be roughly accurate. Amazon is just as much Chinesium unless you pay way more for brand names so I don’t see what the issue is with cutting about the middle man for applications where quality is not critical.

I don’t know if it applies to TEMU and AliExpress, but their originals (Pin Duo Duo and Taobao) cover different markets, with PDD being significantly lower in quality (and price). You can get sensors that work roughly fine on Taobao but with PDD you’d get one emitting seemingly random values priced at like $3.

Looks like someone did a white label of Ali express . I can’t believe these junk stores get meaningful VC money

They're public and generating billions a year in revenue. Check out PDD's quarterly earnings.

Amazon sells most of the same stuff.

The appeal is that if you buy cheap stuff from Amazon you can get it for cheaper on Temu but have to wait 2 weeks instead of 2 days.

Amazon 2 days? I haven’t seen that since before the pandemic

Where? I'm in southern Ontario Canada, and my orders usually take 2-3 days and I'm not even using Prime.

Turns out there's no value in holding something in a warehouse when you have it ordered.

I think all Prime gets you is:

1. if the product is in a distant warehouse, Amazon will bring it over by plane instead of rail/truck.

2. Your orders are de-prioritized if they're over-subscribed (e.g. Christmas holidays, pandemic online shopping, Prime day)

My last three Amazon orders took between something like a week and a half and three weeks. They probably were actually my last three Amazon orders. I'd rather go to the store.

sounds like they were drop-shipped from Asia

Amazon products, or third-party using Amazon as a store-front?

In my experience, a median item costs $15 on Amazon and $3 on Temu, while both being stuff manufactured in China for cheap.

Some stuff, like electronics, can be petty decent from unbranded sellers. And some people are broke and need the cheapest clothes money can buy, regardless of the quality.

>the lowest quality garbage at the lowest price possible

A cynic would say you get it perfectly, and that this is the way retail has been since maybe the 80s?

they sell mostly end of line stuff. Hence why they can sell very cheaply as factories would otherwise just clear them by the lot or dump them. as such most are cheap products but you do occasionally get decent items (e.g. factories retooling for a 10,000 MOQ run but buyer only needed 9000 or something).

They don't seem a lot cheaper than Aliexpress other than the bundle deals with are the lowest quality stuff.

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