My advice is to buy nothing from AliExpress or Temu.
Disagree, if you need a custom big machine made, there are some really good people on AliExpress.
I have had a couple of customized CNC machines custom built for a fraction of the price it would have cost to have it done over here. Even with the shipping costs it came out cheaper. And the people were really helpful, they use machines like mine all the time so they know their stuff. They offered really good advice and were excited to work with me. It’s a bit butt clenching to fork over a lot of cash and hope a big ass pallet shows up 4 months later, but they’ve come through for me every time. YMMV.
Temu on the other hand can fuck off. It’s just a scam site like Wish.
I mean yeah thats how it works if you outsource your work to low wage, low work safety countries. And the result is that the machine shop near you goes bankrupt and you are now dependent on large corporations that can wipe out whole business segments on a whim. Sometimes you just dont have a choice, but if you do, dont buy cheap stuff from far away or big corpos.
Yeah, nah, I’m not gonna pay 10x the price for a knockoff arduino from a local seller that just buys it from AliExpress anyway. There’s no better place to get electronic components and modules without bankrupting yourself
I can give Ali a pass for niche things, but Temu is straight up junk. The problem is when these cheaper products permeate everything while being pushed as high end. Etsy is basically useless now because of this. Almost everything on there is an overpriced knockoff.
None of this is necessarily AliExpress’ or Temu’s fault though. It’s just what happens in a capitalist system.
I’d rather pay 80% for things that have a 50% chance of turning out shit anyway. What makes you think Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart are any better?
Nobody should be buying an automatic litter box from any of these sites. They’re all coming from China with the same build-quality regardless of whom you’re buying it from. I do not get the hate against Chinese shops but loving American brands who do the exact same thing but can somehow get away with empathy from people
Products as a whole are going to shit in terms of quality. It’s part of the enshittification that late capitalism drives.
And automatic litter boxes have always been trash. I’ve had 2 in my lifetime and they were both bad. Just scoop that thing and call it a day!
The issue here though is that these were being sold by AliExpress through Amazon. Amazon has much more public trust than companies like AliExpress or Temu, so people aren’t going to be immediately suspicious of everything for sale on there.
Unless I know the manufacturer, I don’t buy from Amazon either.
It’s 95% junk. Need to start holding corporations responsible and not just going “oh, it’s a third party seller! It’s not our fault.”
They’re taking fuck knows how much in fees, and worth trillions of dollars. Fine them. Massively.
Even Amazon has gotten super sketch as of late. It’s hard to determine which products are good or not when the site is flooded with 500 duplicates from 500 clearly fake companies.
Sometimes that can be convenient if I’m knowingly looking for a cheap Chinese knockoff to serve some non-critical purpose. Once it’s clear there’s a single mass produced model being rebranded by everybody, you can shop based on shipping time or price or seller feedback or whatever. Or if there’s no hurry, you can go find the product elsewhere at the “slow boat from China” price.
