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Comment by throwa356262 | Hacker News Reader

Is temu much worse than amazon here?

Probably yeah, Amazon already had long exposure to the regulations from EU and European countries, they surely have some won lessons from these years, compared to Temu which is relatively new and might still be learning how things work, apparently. Temu is what, 3-4 years old or something?

"compared to Temu that does not give a damn by design" would be more accurate.

I mean the same goes for most US companies, every time they first arrive in Europe they stumble around breaking laws and what not until they get fined to act properly, happened a bunch of times before, most famous examples being Uber and AirBnb, but Amazon been in trouble for the same thing in the past too.

I'd still say Temu and Wish are in a whole other league compared to other predecessors (AliExpress, Banggood, miniinthebox, etc.).

Isn’t Temu basically Aliexpress with some "new shiny" frontend?

Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.

Not really, Aliexpress is from Alibaba, who has been in the exporting business for many years. While Temu is from Pinduoduo, a competitor to Alibaba known for malicious business practices including exploiting an Android 0-day vulnerability [0].

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/andro...

Edit: I should add that Pinduoduo also ended up being fined over $200 million after a couple fist fight with auditing officials in China [1]. Stay safe, EU folks.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/fistfight...

So, like Aliexpress is considered more ethical at this point? Asking as I heard Aliexpress’ ware could sometime be produced forced labors from prison in the underlying retailers. Not that prisoners situation seems particularly fine across all EU and USA either.

More ethical makes it more palatable. The reality is that alibaba is a lesser evil

Like the other commenter said, all you can say is less evil. Basically everything from China is made by factory workers working 12 hour shifts with 1 day off every 14 days, or programmers working 12 hour a day with 1 day off every 7 days. So forced labors from prison is not that bad comparing to daily life there, just another one of these first world problems.

AFAIK Temu is like the fleamarket for excess Chinese production.

They get stuff that the factories can't sell for any reason and just shove them out the country as cheaply as possible.

Certainly in the UK, we don't have the same issues with terrible Chinese fakes that I hear about from US Amazon users.

Amazon UK these days is definitely full of Chinese reproductions and drop shipped knock offs.

Whether they're dangerous I don't know, I've not tried them.

We don’t have the fakes problem but Amazon in the UK has a growing amount of stuff that is just resale of stuff from temu. I suspect if you tested the top 10 chargers on Amazon that weren’t anker, you’d find the same problems.

One of the many reasons (up to and including US foreign policy) I don't buy from Amazon any more.

I'd sooner give Argos the money, they aren't that much more expensive (if at all) for the common set of things they sell and I can walk and pick it up same day.

They broke the first rule of e-commerce - "Don't make the customer think".

One of the best usb chargers for the money is the 40W IKEA charger. I trust their quality control.

I wasn't aware that Ikea sold a charger, so I googled it - this is the very first result: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/product-support/...

The fact they're even doing a recall tells you they care.

When people buy from Alibaba and resell it on Amazon, they're not bothering to issue recalls.

The good people at qzzdfghjww company would NEVER sell a defective product.

I agree. They’ve also devalued prime - I used to know that prime meant next day, now it just means “free delivery” but it could be 2+ weeks depending on where it’s coming from.

argos are great. I ordered something from them for next day delivery and I had it 20 minutes later. The nearest Argos to me is about 15 minutes away so they must have been sitting waiting for orders.

I don’t know about fakes, but browsing Amazon DE feels like browsing AliExpress when looking for any technology products. Especially cables, adapters and such.

There's a lot of work to be done.

Yes.

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