Is it just me?
7Given their carpetbombing of the advertising spaces across the Net, I’m pretty sure that most Netizens have at least heard of Temu by now. My immediate reaction, without visiting, was “OFN, we did not need another Wish dot com popping up.” And after actually taking a look, the impression I get is “We’re Wishier-than-Wish”. Anybody out there actually buying this carp? If so, how fishy does it smell to you once it’s actually in hand?
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Nope. Super cheap products, but the company has about a 1.4 rating on BBB. Many products are made by forced labor in China.
And if that isn’t enough, other phone apps downloaded from Pinduoduo (parent company of Temu) have been caught with an embedded malware/trojan horse program that lets it access other apps on your phone. No one has found malware in a Temu app - so far. But if cheap products are worth the risk of giving the company access to your other Apps - like banking info …
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/tech/china-pinduoduo-malware-cybersecurity-analysis-intl-hnk/index.html
@rockblossom to be contrarian, what isn’t made by forced Chinese labor these days? Anything that uses a battery is mined by kids in Zimbabwe, smelted by slaves in China, and then calibrated for proper use in East Asia or Central Europe.
My Texas burger is made from Angus beef bred in Europe, raised in Canada, and “freshly” flash frozen. My shirt was made in Mexico from American materials and a Seattle designer. I’ve become accustomed that I just can’t get a domestic product unless I’m willing to pay way too much. (My friends have a honey farm and sell flavored honey in small batches, but they charge eight times as much as store brand honey imported from South America; they flavor it to justify the price since developing the flavoring costs way less than maintaining bee health.)
@pakopako Just to be clear, I find Temu/Pinduoduo/PDDHolding to be problematic because of their sales model, some of the sources for cheap products, and Pinduoduo’s programming code, not because it is based in China or sells Chinese-made products. I buy things from Chinese companies, the vast majority of which are safe to deal with and as ethical/unethical as the average American company. Too many red flags for me on this one, but if others chose to buy from them, it’s not my business.
I guess I have my own little hole in the internet, but I’d never heard of it until someone mentioned it here.
@blaineg I was wondering if maybe the advertising level was a regional thing, and maybe we got skipped or something, but it turns out I have seen their ad. I’m glad lonocat shared the ad below, or I would have wandered off wondering what it was all about.
(It certainly hasn’t been advertised to me nearly as much as Liberty Liberty Lib-er-ty insurance…)
@xobzoo It’s probably more due to my lack of TV watching. I hate commercials enough that I generally watch stuff via streaming or my file server.
@blaineg @xobzoo
I first saw their ads online.
@blaineg I don’t have a TV, so I only see ads with YouTube or other places online.
(I have since switched to the Brave browser, and no longer see ads on YouTube. My brother has been jabbing at me to do it for a long time; I finally went to the effort of switching. So far it seems very worth it.)
@xobzoo UBlock Origin on Chrome, Firefox, whatever also completely blocks Youtube ads.
Temu had 2 commercials during the Super Bowl
I think that that is how most people first heard about them.
@lonocat Thank you for that! (you’ve saved me the distraction of tracking it down on my own)
Apparently I have seen one of their ads. Once. (Maybe twice.) I sure didn’t remember the name at all, though. I just recognize the sound and visual style of the ad now that I see it again.
I’d like to think it’s because advertising doesn’t work on me, but really it’s because they built that ad to appeal to someone very different from me.
To be fair, they’re REALLY cheap products.
$5 sneakers, $1 soaps, etc. - you are getting quantity over quality. (And yeah, wishier wish, babaier Alibaba, etc etc. I’ve got enough cheap crap lying around, space is getting to be a premium.)
Some of the products are actually the same ones you get from some of the amazon dealers or zulilli or 1 of those other websites like that.
Stupid tablet period
There were a couple of reporters somewhere in the Midwest who didn’t ordered from it and did a on air open up of the things they got and told. How much they. Paid for it. It appears that some of the items are not so horrible probably the same with. Wish stuff (never ordered from there ) others are pretty junky it really varies
The couple of items that I ordered from them it was kind of odd.I could find the one item on a bunch of other websites for about 15 or $20. More? So I said? What. The heck let’s try this and then I filled the cart up with enough stuff to get the discount off or all the other stuff I put in there. Was free. The only items I kept with the stuff that I put in there to make it free. The items that I got on purpose went to the goodwill because it was too much trouble to return and not worth the cost of doing it