TEMU is pretty widely talked about as being a scam. Sorry you weren't in the know.

From what I have come to understand (from Lemmy), they make their real money off of your data, and are a privacy nightmare. I actually was ordering from them regularly until I learned that.

It's not literally a scam, in that I've ordered things and they've arrived (in a timely fashion, actually), but the "free" stuff is pretty close to being one. The free credits or whatever are so over the top as to be eye rolling, so while they probably are officially a scam, I just couldn't get too worked up.

Overall, it's basically a tiny bit cheaper than AE, a tiny bit faster, but with more limited selection and they make the annoying gamification on AE look like the height of restraint and class. I found my personal line for trading time and tracking for cheap prices, and it's between AE and Temu.

One tangential weird thing is that I've seen Shein, the fast fashion brand, has gone full "marketplace" and is now selling a lot of Temu like stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with clothes.

Temu is a scam and like most cheap junk sites they often use slave labor and lots of unethical practices. (Same with Ali express)

Also this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/shopping-app-temu-is-dangerous-malware-spying-on-your-texts-lawsuit-claims/ (the app is actual malware)

Honestly Temu is probably going to be banned. (And that's a ban I would absolutely support)

Man, the moment I saw the spinning wheel I noped out. I've seen that shit on pirating websites less than I've seen on Temu.

shakes fists back in my day we used dx.com and AliExpress.com. The hell is this temu shit?

Side note: seems dealextreme/dx is dead now

Do people actually end up getting anything from Temu?

My colleagues were just talking about it and they were saying they're getting packages almost daily... Meanwhile their local economy is shit.

As someone who has "won" the games (that aren't actually games) and claimed the prizes a bunch of times, I'd advise you just ignore them. The fish/farm/etc games, and the popups that claim free items, anything else. Close them, and just buy whatever you were going to buy. Unless you have a lot, I mean a LOT of people that are willing to sign up for temu as a first time user, using you as the referral, the only way to complete those so-called games is to spend around $800+ to earn your way to conspiring the game and claiming the free prizes. Prizes that if you pay attention, you could simply bought outright for somewhere in the range of $5-20.

And the stuff with the spinning wheels and whatnot, claiming this or that percentage discount, you'll get a cheap item for free(something that you could have bought for $3-4 max), but only by adding it to an order with a predetermined number of other items, which have had their prices dynamically increased, and will actually cost you more than if you had simply purchased all of the same items but by searching them up and just adding them to your cart normally. If you add some items to your wishlist, you'll start to see those items being offered to you in these supposed deals and discounts. You will also notice that if that item was $5 when you added it to your wishlist, the "deal" page might be showing it to you with a crossed out $50 price, and a new amazing discount price of let's say $9(I call this the J. C. Penny method). I tend to keep a large wishlist, with items that sit there for months while I decide if I'll get around to buying them or not, so this kind of fuckery with the prices sticks out to me a lot.

This all exactly the same for when they had the cash back deal. Place an order, and they credit your account with, well credit, that you can spend on more stuff. The more you spend in the order, the higher the percentage of cash back. But as before, the prices of the items you buy to earn that cash back are getting fucked around with dynamically, and increased as you shop. Not only that, but they change the way that you received the cash back. It used to be that after the order shipped, you go to a certain page and cash out your earned credit, and it is then available for use. Then they started placing limits on how much you could cash out per day. And then the last time I had used it, you instead only got a few cents per day, and you had to keep opening the app every single day and manually claiming those few cents. And if you forgot one day, you just lose that credit entirely.

Ask of this is to say, I absolutely promise anyone reading this, the games, deals, discounts, or whatever else they are promising you on temu, are absolutely, in no uncertain terms, not worth your time (even if you believe your time to hold no value), and will cost you more money than if you had simply purchased the items normally through just searching for what you want and adding it to your cart. Back when temu was still pissing away ass-loads of money to get people onto their platform, you could legitimately get free and/or heavily discounted items, as well as decent amount of cash back/credit. But that's is no longer the case. They got the massive number of users they wanted, now they are looking to actually make money from them.

The only reason I but anything on temu at all, where I would have bought it on AliExpress previously, is that temu will usually get the items to me between 1 and 2 weeks, while AE still often takes several weeks before the seller even THINKS about shipping the order, and then often an additional 3-4 weeks minimum for it to actually arrive. I had some stuff that I needed a bunch of, and they only had a few in stock on temu. So I ordered them all, then ordered more on AE right after. The temu ones came in 6 days. The AE ones took 2 and a half months. And before anyone asks, the identical item on Amazon was more than triple the price. Most of this stuff tends to be.

I ordered maybe 300+ items on AliExpress in 8 years. I will never touch temu, never.

I actually don’t mind AliExpress, but it’s just another one of those things where you’ve got to be careful about what you’re buying. Is it some miraculous thing for a dirt cheap price lower than any other place you’ve ever seen? Does the thing do things that no other thing has ever done? Is it in any way too good to be true? Then it almost definitely is. However I have been able to “skip the middle man” on some items that I found for sale in the US and gotten a fairly decent price cut, I just had to wait 2-3 weeks for it to show up.

I use temu for clothes and some bike stuff. Totally don't expect quality. Bought some amber lights, dont work.

I have ordered from TEMU. Yes, getting their free stuff sends you into a black hole. You have to wait a few weeks for most items to show up. It saves a few bucks. Gotta watch the clothing fabric, lots is “shiny polyester”. It’s great for cheap seasonal decorations. Used to be free shipping on a $10 order. Now it’s $15 I think. My partner has figured out you can return at least one item per order for free (and still keep the item) so if you play it right, order a small quantity every day and when you receive it, see what you can return. When you order, it will keep the shopping cart “open” for hours, so if you come back it just adds to the initial order. That’s why I said order a few things once a day. It take like 8 hours to close out the order window.

Anecdotally my boss at work bought some stuff from there with her debit card and had her account hacked, fraudulent charges etc. Another friend has bought things from there with a throwaway card and likes it lot. Caveat emptor.

I bought some cable organizers, power strip wall mounts etc. there. Generally does what it's meant to and sometimes cheaper than what are clearly the same products on ebay. Did not install an app. I'm willing to overlook some shadiness if the end result is I get things I need for less money.

I've ordered some household items (door stoppers, tools etc.). The prices were somewhat cheaper than AE, the quality was fine (some things were better than expected. Some very cheap items were... Let's say they were priced according to their quality. Thought other very cheap items turned out good, so it's a gamble) and shipping was OK. Never tried the app for privacy reasons, but the site seems ok-ish (it's a bit janky, but I suspect it's due in part to some privacy addon I use. In short:

1. Don't use the app.
2. Don't buy very cheap stuff unless you're willing to chance it.
3. The "prizes" either appear only in the app or can be disabled via ad blockers and/or privacy addons.