I’m curious what sorta finds you guys have had
Temu is just driving the social media impulse “buy buy buy you need it buy it now!!” Culture when in reality their stuff is crap, and even for the cheap prices… You probably weren’t going to buy it anyway. They are really striving in being a shitty company that’s bad for us and the planet.
Good video here that explains more of how they’re just manipulating us to buy more: https://youtu.be/7hGD5Cz_now
Their tagline “Shop like a billionaire” makes me sick. Fast fashion and stuff like Temu have become so predatory lately. Fuck FOMO tactics.
TikTok and them just fuel each other to create fake fomo and it’s so crappy. They target kids so hard and take advantage of them wanting to fit in, and get them to just spend money on crap they didn’t need to buy anyway. Not to mention they’ve pushed fashion cycles to be faster to make people think that top they bought 2 months ago is useless and should be thrown out.
The top from 2 months ago frequently does need to be thrown out, because it’s so poorly made it lasts only a couple of washes. Even the waste-pickers in the Ghana landfills don’t want it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/7hGD5Cz_now
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Capitalism in a nutshell. “Yeah it kills the planet and harms others and there may be forced labor involved, but idc, that’s other people’s problems”.
Not guilt tripping btw, just stating facts. I don’t and won’t buy for them.
I feel like AliExpress and temu aren’t really equivalent. Temu makes it seem like you’re, well I guess the tagline is shop like a billionaire. Aliexpress doesn’t exactly hide the fact it’s a cheap Chinese market.
Aren’t they the same sweatshop slave-labor factory goods though?
Not that it’s possible to completely avoid goods which are made via exploitation, but I assumed they’re just an alternate outlet / search page for the same distributors and factories.
Skeletons in their closet and actively using slave labor are very different things, not that I blame you entirely, it’s not your fault companies like nestle own so fucking much it’s impossible to keep track of.
I sometimes use AliExpress for DIY electronics like microcontrollers and other components. An Esp32 usually costs around 8-12 euros in Europe. On AliExpress I buy them for 3 (plus shipping). Its worth it if you are buying more than just a few. Shipping is usually slow but if its not urgent its cheap and so far of good/ decent quality.
I did also buy a small industrial camera on there which did not work. I contacted the seller and after some troubleshooting they agreed to ship a new camera to me (still waiting on that one) but in principle I am satisfied with the service for the price I payed.
I use AliExpress for electrical parts (except anything with memory), 3D printer parts, and small crap I don’t mind waiting for, but never anything I would be angry about if it never arrived. Also, nothing I consume or wear or need for safety, and I’m wary of anything that’s supposed to be plugged into the wall for long periods of time unattended.
I wouldn’t say I’ve been surprised, but my expectations are low. It’s all cheap stuff, but as long as you’re not needing the stuff you buy, it’s fine. Dollar store quality with the scent of plastic and cigarettes.
That being said, beware of scams. The one that seems acceptable to them is to list one cheap part for the listing, along with variations of the full device. That way it looks like the lowest price in search results, but when you click it, the selected variation is the cheap part. Like, you’ll search for “pliers set” and see a listing for $1, compared to others around $15. When you select it, the product page will have a carrying case for $1 and the various pliers for twice as much as the competition. What’s better is that the case will be selected automatically, not the thing in the picture you clicked on or the picture you see first in the product pages’ gallery.
There are also scam stores that pop up with super low prices compared to others on the site can disappear overnight and the cancellation/refund process is a super pain. Contact customer service once and just submit a claim with your CC company. Their refund process will try to keep telling you to wait for another week, and that includes the reps you get on chat. If you’re suspicious and still order, always follow the shipping info. They will estimate a reasonable delivery date, you’ll get a shipping notification, but it will sit in limbo. The shipping folks are separate from the scammers, so if you see the package actually move towards a shipping center, you’re in the clear. If it says they received shipping information for over a week, you got screwed.
Ignore flash drives/SSDs, batteries, and assume any flashlights are 1/100th the brightness claimed (literally). Oh, and watch shipping costs. Something with free shipping can be 10x the price of the product if you add a second one to your cart.
The one that seems acceptable to them is to list one cheap part for the listing, along with variations of the full device. That way it looks like the lowest price in search results, but when you click it, the selected variation is the cheap part.
This practice is so widespread on Ali that finding the best price/seller that is likely to get the item to you balance is ridiculously time consuming, a lot of the time the cheap item is something barely related to the item you’re searching for. It also seems to be creeping into Amazon at the moment!
Yeah, it really caught me off guard the first time I used the site. It was during one of those special celebration discount days where they had the audacity to mark items as literally $0.01 when basically nothing was that price.
For 3D printer filament, which is usually bought in 1kg/2.2lb spools, most places list a 2m sample or a 250g spool to game the search. And my other favorite is the whack-a-mole shipping setup where on variation might be free shipping, but choose a different color and the shipping jumps to $300+.
With Amazon, I’m seeing a ton more overpriced items discounted to still higher priced than their competition. If you look at their deals pages, you can find things like portable monitors for $70 (down from $150), but checking that category shows the same monitor (same specs under a different name) for $60.
Here’s as close as I can find right now, since all the lightning deals are ending for the day. There’s a USB laptop docking station that’s “discounted” from $139 to $70. There isn’t an exact match (there usually is), but similar products go for ~$60-$70 (2 HDMI, 4+ USB3 ports, 100W PD, ethernet). What’s funnier is that the specific company’s Amazon site has at least 4 identical docks at slightly different prices.
Actually there are some really good flashlights on AE. But you need to know which brands to look for and they’re not cheap.
True. They created their own problem by trying to up each other’s lumens claims over and over to the point where decent flashlights are claimed to have 5.6 million lumens and included 25000mAh 18650s.
Most of the $5+ flashlights are probably fine for most people’s needs. I have several and they’ve been fine for me. Different models, similar modes, similar brightness, and all fine for walking the dog or if the power goes out. Now, if I were relying on them for survival, I might think twice. All have held up fine, including the 12 year old one from dealextreme (pre-alibaba). But, since I don’t know if people are asking for recommendations where spec accuracy matters, I’m hesitant to recommend them to random people on the internet.
(I had to check, just for fun, and there are 18650 batteries listed as 19900mAh. Pretty impressive, since Panasonic is capped out at 3500-3600.)
Those platforms are notorious for selling counterfeit products. Whenever you see a deal that seems too good to be true, it more than likely is.
