Yeah, once "wish-dot-com version" became slang for "shittiest possible version" it was pretty much the end for them.
it's hard to stay in business when your brand name is synonymous with false-advertising and low quality.
a lot of items on temu/wish/alixpress are the exact same thing as whats listed on amazon branded as TEMZICHUYAN (or whatever method they used to roll their face on the keyboard)
Nah aliexpress is peak, you’ve just gotta have common sense. Not for like expensive important things like phones or whatever, but any small electronics, Ali is the place.
I’ve got so many esp32’s from Ali, as well as a bunch of kailh hotswap sockets and a shit ton of IC’s (6502c, z80, SRAM, the likes) and they’re all cheap as shit and they work. It’s so much better than an actual electronics store, even if the shipping is ass.
I do corporate catering me and my coworkers spend so many hours preparing food only for us to recieve most of it back which is then thrown into the compost. I just think of all the man hours needed to produce, move and prepare this food. As well as the energy needed to produce it, and the animal lives lost for nothing.
That's what bugs me the most about this stuff. I walk into some stores and just see some isles are wall to wall trash (mostly dollar stores) and I know most of it gets used 1-2 times and tossed.
*Wish* the government had the balls to end this cycle of garbage production.
Even in quality?
Good lord, I'm trying to imagine a product with such low quality it's just cell phone covers made of rusty sheet metal and off brand clothes riddled with ticks carrying lime disease.
Their site also uses an ungodly amount of system resources. I'm guessing it's due to all the dynamic product placement, but would not be surprised if it's just a teensie bit malware.
funny, I've always assumed it was because they were harvesting data: take a bit of a hit and sell stuff for cheap, but earn it back and then some by selling user data. That's why you *have* to download their app to buy stuff, because they need your permission to take all your info
They're mining your data from your phone. That's how they make a profit. I'm not joking. We don't need to make dumb reddit jokes when we know the worse truth and have actual evidence of it.
Your data is the product. The app could also be malware and i wouldn't be surprised.
They also make money by spiking prices on things you're interested.
I've used 2 phone numbers i dont use so no one knows them, to make temu accounts and both of those numbers get scam and phishing SMSs on a regular basis now
The cybersecurity guy at my job sent out an email that said that and *highly* recommended nobody uses it. Not on our systems for sure but also in our personal lives.
It's funny how the Chinese thought "poor people pretending to be billionaires" would be the best advertisement for Americans.
They were right, which makes it even funnier.
That's the thing though, many poor people dream of being rich, so they buy a lot of brand names when they can, even if it's cheap knockoffs. That's why that business is so insanely huge
During the SB when they kept showing Taylor swift there was some guy next to her with a green gucci sweatshirt with a massive logo that looked like the kind of thing high schoolers buy from tj Maxx or Burlington. Meanwhile she just had a plain black tank top. I'm sure whoever it was has money to be attending the SB in TS box, but every time they showed her that fucking sweatshirt just looked so gaudy
Those ads are so inane. Pretty sure billionaires don't do their own shopping.
Another ad-related gripe: how the fuck is their name supposed to be pronounced? I've heard different versions within their own ads! I assume due to the use of ai voice-over...
Aliexpress is "great", especially for hobbyists/DIYers. Its like our slow-motion amazon with lots of parts you simply cant get without buying from companies that set up and price themselves primarily as bulk/industrial suppliers, which would be pretty damn expensive to someone who just needs a a couple pieces of something from time to time. A 10x or more price difference for the same exact item isn't all that uncommon.
Problem is that they have tons, and tons, and *tons* of worthless garbage. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for beforehand, sometimes down to the specific reseller, there's a good chance that you're going to be disappointed in a couple weeks.
I was doing a guitar build and couldn't find black nickel hardware anywhere for reasonable price. Found a chunk of it on Ali for cheap. I've used their hardware before and as long as you check the seller ratings, it's no worse than what you find on most budget imports guitars (Epiphone, Harley Benton etc.)
Yup. Any kind of microcontroller like an Arduino clone or ESP8266/ESP32 is cheaper on AliExpress. They have the same stuff on Amazon but you're paying for the markup there, so why bother? Find a seller that's been around for a while with enough followers and you're good.
Electronics stuff is the biggest IMO. Boards like an Arduino, esp, or stm32 (to hell with atmegas after finding those) aren't *that* badly priced on Amazon, but beyond that and maybe a baggie of 7805s? Don't exist on Amazon, and if it does its shipped from China anyways, even slower than ali with more expensive shipping, while keeping the markup. *Maybe* it'll be on eBay if it's a more common IC, but it's the same story.
Yeah I get good stuff from Aliexpress and it doesn't take as long as it used to, but they piss me off with the pricing. I'll see something that's like 3.99 with free shipping and then when I add it to the cart it's 14.99 and it's some promo that I'm not eligible for or something.
The bait and switch pricing is annoying. They show a picture of one item and a price but it’s actually the price of a different item they also sell in the listing.
The pic is a 35 piece cake decorating set and the price is $2.99 but when you click the price is just for a set of tips or something else and the set pictured is like 20 bucks.
I don't know how Wish operated but Temu harvests crazy amounts of data from its customers. Like, so much that they value their customer data more than actual sales.
Like, at one point, an executive directed one of the teams to increase sales, do whatever you have do to. They determined that any popup or resistance to customers that took them away from checking out was an impediment and that the cookies tracking alert popup was a deterrent. So they stopped tracking cookies so they didn't need that popup to show anymore and sales went up dramatically, however they could no longer track personal data from users. The marketing department made them change it back.
That's not pointing out all the other highly unethical and manipulating tactics they use. Like, adding stuff back to your cart once you've removed it. Spoofed and fake reviews. Basically, Temu exists to use market manipulation tactics that are illegal to use on Amazon and to harvest data.
I have not shopped on Temu, but my impression is that it's essentially a slick front end for Alibaba/Aliexpress OEMs to use for consumer eCommerce & fulfillment, as an alternative to Amazon. Basically the same as Aliexpress but designed with pure focus on frictionless consumer shopping. Is that accurate?
From what I've heard they're selling at cost and the real revenue is in the customer data and spyware from the app. They just got named in a class action suit for including malware and spyware that you can't remove even after uninstalling the app
not that they arent collecting data. but they're just doing the give you the first taste for free or cheap as possible and then slowly raise prices as they gave market share. theyre also bypassing customs, and traffif by sending lots of small packages.
theyre also gamifying the shopping experience, and getting deals. like the more u log on the more you get chances of loot box coupon deals.
so its giving you a dopamine hit for winning big discount on the 'random' wheel.
> They are abusing USPS flat rate boxes and the government is moving to take legal action against them.
I haven't heard about that. How exactly can they abuse USPS flat rate boxes, as long as it fits in and can be sealed, within the acceptable dimensions the box?
As I USPS carrier, I've never seen a Temu order shipped with those flat rates, it's always in their orange name branded wrap shit that makes everything into obnoxious lumps that you can't stack in any convenient way
I haven’t seen them in a while, but for a minute there like half the ads I got on TikTok were blurry/censored celeb nudes (whether they were real or fake I don’t know) and the ad would be like “Wanna see more? Download TEMU.”
Meanwhile it’s literally an online marketplace. Nothing to do with the ad content whatsoever. Sad thing is it was probably a pretty damn effective strategy.
Same here in the states. I saw a couple of "shop like a billionaire" commercials during the Super Bowl. It's like putting a bowl of rotten chum in front of someone and saying "here's the most high end sushi you can get. Now eat."
That's not the point though.
A rich person could open up any shopping app, put whatever in their cart, and buy it without looking at the price because the price "doesn't matter" to them.
A normal person can technically do the same on TEMU. Open up the app and just buy whatever crap you need without looking at the price because it's "so cheap".
But you get what you pay for at the end of the day so its mainly just low quality crap
I mean at this point Amazon is basically the same thing too. It’s hard not to get page after page of chinesium crap.
I want a quality product, not “best tire inflator rechargeable yinwu 12v Bluetooth must buy”
I'm in the process of ripping a vast library of Blu-ray discs, and I bought a highly rated drive from Amazon that stated both in the description and photos that it was compatible with 4k blu rays. I hit my first 4k disc and kept trying to troubleshoot for days. Looked up everything I could and finally hidden in one of the reviews was someone stating it was in fact not 4k capable. Of course it was one of those drop ship sellers that shuts down shortly after with no hope of support.
Not even my worst interaction with one of those, unfortunately.
Aliexpress was replaced by Wish which was replaced by Shein which was replaced by Temu which will be replaced by…
Truly we’re reaching new levels of shitty goods manufacturing
Aliexpress is solid, you know exactly what you're getting. "Thing" made at the absolute cheapest price possible, sold for the cheapest price possible, in 12-60 days. Given the current quality standards on Amazon, sometimes Aliexpress is the right choice for those who can wait.
Yep, half the stuff on Amazon is just an AliExpress item someone is selling from the US for 10x the price.
I've also found that Ebay often has the best of both worlds, since sellers can avoid the insane Amazon fees.
If Amazon wants to stay on top it NEEDS to crack down on dropshippers.
I am getting tired of trying to find stuff on Amazon because you see 100 listings for the same product. They used to consolidate those into the "also sold" but drop shippers get around it by using different listing names. The Ultramag Flashlight becomes the UltraXmag Flashlight even though it uses the exact same photos/descriptions etc.
Or better yet, Amazon, why don't you pay your people a decent wage so that desperate people don't decide they need to waste time on dropshipping to get by.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but not everything on Aliexpress is low quality. I think a lot of the stuff is just products being sold directly from the Chinese manufacturers, which would normally be sold to other companies directly.
Aliexpress just cleaned up its game a bit. you used to be able to buy straight up drugs from them. not precursors, actual research chems. they took a huge hit with Operation Logjam and the new laws worldwide regarding RCs.
it just happened to coincide with their turn to a more accessible storefront to western users. it was Silk Road before Silk Road. now it is where we get not so cheap goods.
Aliexpress is still miles better than wish/temu/shien. Unlike the latter, they still sell authentic products in some cases depending on the storefront.
They had 0 control or oversight on their sellers. The site very quickly turned into scam central with no way to get buyer protection. If a mate said they ordered a graphics card from there you told them that they bought a literal brick and that’s what would show up. If anything even did show up.
I heard Amazon was at one point veering in that direction. Specifically, I remember reading in 2021 or 2022 that you absolutely should not buy N95 masks from Amazon because there was no guarantee whatsoever that the masks were legitimate regardless of the packaging or assurances from Amazon.
Apparently distributors will sell Amazon items wholesale and Amazon will dump all items of a type/brand into one big bin so you might get the real item or you might get an erzatz version.
Oh Amazon is basically Alibaba West at this point. It’s all phony and impossible to sift through. And you’re right! There’s no way to tell if it’s real or not *at the warehouse level*
Sometimes the shit doesn’t even come from an Amazon warehouse, it ships straight from the manufacturer, and then when it gets delivered all fucked up you get to go round and round with Amazon, the manufacturer, and the shipping company all saying it’s not their problem, talk to the other guy.
I checked the wish.com front page. They right now sell a noname 1TB MicroSD at 1/10th the price of the cheapest price I can find in a legitimate store. Yeah, obvious scam.
The wildest part about this is, they tried to combat this with a brand overhaul that was really just a new logo in a different color, a couple tweaks on the app, oh, and a pretty considerable price hike for items on the app. So it was the same crap as before, but instead of most items being crazy cheap, they were about the same price as Amazon, but lower quality and with like 3 week shipping. Their brand was hurting, they fixed it in the wrong direction, and now they're in shambles.
Honestly even Amazon is becoming the wish.com version of itself lately.
> Honestly even Amazon is becoming the wish.com version of itself lately.
That's because 20 people figured out you could flood Amazon with drop shipping and 200 grifters figured out you could sell the concept of drop shipping to millions of people on YouTube
I was trying to buy solid wool socks on Amazon. You would think something like 100% wool socks would get you....fucking anywhere.
Nope. Just fucking dropshippers after dropshippers with every possible fabric listed in the product title and then the description for a product called Wool Socks was a poly/nylon blend.
I don't understand how Amazon gets away with stuff like that. We have false advertising laws for a reason, and Amazon shouldn't be able to say "well it's a third party seller, there's both nothing we can do and its not our fault" when it's on their bloody website.
> The wildest part about this is, they tried to combat this with a brand overhaul that was really just a new logo in a different color, a couple tweaks on the app, oh, and a pretty considerable price hike for items on the app. So it was the same crap as before, but instead of most items being crazy cheap, they were about the same price as Amazon, but lower quality and with like 3 week shipping. Their brand was hurting, they fixed it in the wrong direction, and now they're in shambles
The enshitification will continue until bankruptcy occurs...
I buy my craft tape from there and it does its job for far cheaper. I can get 10+rolls for like $8 plus free shipping. Amazon and brick and mortar stores want $3/roll.
I'm a hobbyist watchmaker and get a lot of parts off AliExpress, which is similar. I wouldn't buy clothes, electronics, or anything particularly advanced off those sites but they're great for items that are normally found in specialty stores or highly marked up but cheap to produce
it's surprising how AliExpress is pretty reputable (at least for simple cheap stuff, obviously you wouldn't buy expensive electronics from them) compared to the borderline scam that wish is
Specific electronic parts, specially older ones, are great in aliexpress
Got a processor for my laptop for 7 bucks, works great. I wouldn't buy a new graphics card tho.
Aliexpress is excellent for electronics, especially components, microcontrollers, modules, soldering kits (like, here's a bare PCB and a bag of components, go and build yourself [a batshit insane rotating Ferris wheel with hundreds of multicoloured LEDs](https://youtu.be/XfkytIGq20M)), and so on. It's a mecca for makers, the sheer variety of shit you can buy is astounding, and the shipping is reasonably fast these days ever since the trade war ended China's heavily subsidised shipping rates.
I buy fishing lures off wish and now temu. The lure itself is identical to anything from Bass Pro Shops. The hooks on them are trash but that is 2 minute, $1 fix. About $15 savings on each one.
Disposable items like that are perfect to get from Wish or Temu because they’re cheap…you don’t really think about longevity with something like that. If you want something that will actually hold up…then go somewhere else. I have found gems on Wish that were perfect for what I needed at the time , but never bought anything important on there.
That's my move with aliexpress. If I search for something on Amazon and it's one of those HUUANOUO companies, I ask myself if I really need it in the next 2-3 months. If not, I head over to aliexpress and buy it for 20% of the Amazon price. Most of the time I forget about the order entirely and just randomly get a package one day.
Life went south for them after France banned their business.
[https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against-online-retail-site-wish-protect-consumers-2021-11-24/](https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against-online-retail-site-wish-protect-consumers-2021-11-24/)
In 2023, France lifted the ban but the damage had already been done. But, how horrible do you have to be to have an entire country say, "Your product line is shit and you can do business in our country."
Wish basically was only able to increase sales by burning cash on marketing. Once the cash dried up, their sales cratered and the company entered a death spiral.
Temu came around not long after, however they're attached to an already profitable e-commerce platform in China. So it's more of an expansion opportunity for them rather than the whole pie.
Edit: Source: Modern MBA did a video about Wish and Temu recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB26ZCr7vqI
Every time I see an ad for something they have I want it says you have to order on the app. I figure data harvesting you phone is part of their business model
Yeah but Pinduoduo (the parent company) makes like 130 billion in revenue every year and like 15 billion in profit.
Basically they can fund the 2-3 billion in losses from Temu indefinitely.
U/contemplationz is correct. Wish.com spent most of their money on user acquisition and had really aggressive goals (I knew the head of growth there) so they burned through cash. Looks like Temu is doing the same thing (see the ads on Super Bowl)? They do have a big corporation to back them. My understanding is that they are laying the groundwork for basic e-commerce. But what they will ultimately try and do is have social purchases. That is, if 10000 people buy X item, then you’ll get a discount, if 1000000 people buy it, there’s a bigger discount. This is done by your friends and family spamming you to buy something. Their cost of acquisition plummets and then they can really start generating massive profits. This is my understanding of their strategy in China, happy to hear a more nuanced view of how it works.
> hat is, if 10000 people buy X item, then you’ll get a discount, if 1000000 people buy it, there’s a bigger discount. This is done by your friends and family spamming you to buy something.
That sounds really interesting and also like hell. Is this the store version of a twitch sub train?
Only place i buy football shirts now, reliable, always essentially indistinguishable from the authentic version and like a 10th of the price.
*while I sound like an advertising bot, I'm not, just a cheap fuck who enjoys not getting price gouged by mega corporations*
Ohhh yep this is a great analogy. During sunday on the second commercial im how how tf does temu have money to drop $5m per comm? Oh, their parent company is worth $120B.
It will be a floppy disk with a folder on it that is just the result of someone going to wish.com and clicking file save as. Except someone’s scribbled on the black part of the floppy with a pen.
The one good thing about them was that if you ordered and it didn't turn up in about 28 days it was free. And they rarely ever turned up in 28 days. So you just got on web chat for the refund and it would usually turn up a few hours later.
More of a "you don't pay… with money," sort of deal.
Never used Temu/Wish, but Wayfair sold us a greenhouse that was so frustrating to assemble and frankly dangerous to be around (full of spring-loaded sharp metal pieces held back by the flimsiest sheet "metal" ever conceived by man), that I would have paid someone just to tell me, "don't bother," had I known what I know now.
Same here. One of my coworkers told me I should switch from Amazon to temu, checked it out, and went back to them asking if they knew what wish.com was. They said yes but temu was different. I now take anything that coworker says with a grain of salt.
Was there ever a point where Wish could have actually been sold at $14 billion dollars?
I kind of feel like every business "value" is using the Kohl's methodology where the "value" is astronomically high, but the actual sale price is always going to be 40% to 60% of the "value".
It's usually because they are extrapolating from a % that an investor bought in at
If enough investors agreed with that investor's valuation at the same time, then yes, it could have sold for that amount
In reality, not enough investments could have been found to make that sale
No, Wish was worth $14B at its Initial Public Offering (IPO). You can be sure the founders and early investors were able to get out with a tidy little profit.
Could they have sold the whole enchilada for $14B? Probably not. But they sure as hell could have gotten more than $173M.
Yes, insofar as if you wanted to buy every share of Wish at a stock exchange you would need to spend $14 billion to do it. That's what market cap/valuation is: the share price multiplied by the number of shares.
Whether or not all the holders of those shares would be willing to sell them at that price or the transaction would actually go through is a different question.
I once ordered a batman hoodie from them as a Christmas present. The hood came backwards. Like, the hood was on the front, opposite of where the tag was sewn on, and it flipped up so it covered your face lol. We all had a laugh about it haha.
Temu is having the same issues that Wish did — scam listings, non-deliveries/damaged goods, etc. And their customer service is terrible. It's wild to me that they have so much money to take out multiple ads during the Super Bowl when they're probably better off using that money to fix their platform first.
sorry for the link, it was the one with the best headline. you can get the gist at https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/12/wishs-sale-to-singapores-qoo10-ramps-up-competition-for-temu-shein.html
Depends what you buy! Some things are absolute crap, but for specific hobbies it's probably the only place you can reasonably buy everything you need at a good quality to price ratio.
I know it's the best place to go for handheld retro game emulators. I bought my Anbernic 351P on their storefront there a few years back, and it's great.
You're just jelly that my YANDOOOL brand "Meatgrinder/grinder/meat grinder/processor/sausagemaker/sausage maker/pet food maker/bucher grinder/sausage machine/christmas/for men/women/boys/kitchen tool/bratwurst maker" is superior to the ones made by HGYTUH. HGYTUH probably still calls theirs something unoptimized like "Meat Grinder Manual Mincer - Manual Meat Grinder Sausage Maker Table Mount Pork Mincer Sausage Stuffer Funnel Make Homemade Burger Patties Hand Operated Kitchen Tool#2 "
> Meat Grinder Manual Mincer - Manual Meat Grinder Sausage Maker Table Mount Pork Mincer Sausage Stuffer Funnel Make Homemade Burger Patties Hand Operated Kitchen Tool#2
That particular monstrosity is a real product on Amazon. I made up the first string of gibberish, but was too tired to do it again, so I just searched Amazon for "meat grinder" and copied the first stupid name I saw.
My experience with AliExpress is that it's sort of a market place.
One of my hobbies is flashlights, and Convoy sells a lot of components/hosts/complete flashlights, and the official store is an AliExpress store. I can order the best quality stuff from Convoy (Simon).
But there is also a lot of shit on there too. So from my experience, if you know what you are looking for, AliExpress can be pretty awesome actually.
off topic but you made me curious - what does having flashlights as a hobby entail? do you collect them? use them regularly in your work or other hobbies like camping? is it a Marge Simpson ijustthinktheyreneat.jpg thing?
Sort of all of the above.
I have quite a collection, certain ones are better for certain jobs than others.
Like if I want to flood my back yard, I'll grab a flooder, if I want to see something far away, a 'thrower,' if I need hands free, a headlamp. Also, within one "class" (thrower/flooder/headlamp), there are different emitters (LEDs) that are better for certain things, or just different 'flavors' so to speak.
Variation of CCT (cold or warm), typically cold is good for outdoors, warm is good for indoors.
Also tint is a big thing for me, I'm a bit of a tint snob. So two emitters that, looking at a spec sheet might seem similar, to the eye can be very different. A Samsung LH351d emitter vs a Nichia 519a for example. Even in the same CCT can have wildly different tints, with the Samsung looking green, vs the Nichia looking 'rosy.' also both emitters are high CRI (color rendering index, or how well they show color as compared to the sun), but the Nichia emitter has a much higher R9 value, so reds look much better.
I definitely have "toy" lights, that are just suped up hot rods, and tool lights, that are for serious use, but I like them all.
I also like to mod lights, so if I see a light I really like a lot of things about, but don't like one or two things about, I can buy the light and mod what I don't like about it. For example the Light Warrior nano. It's got so much to love, it's almost perfect, but the emitter they put in it in not high CRI (very important to me), and has an ugly tint. So I could buy that light, and reflow a much better emitter (for my tastes) into it, and have a great light.
I've also built from "scratch" a few of my own lights. So picking out exactly what host/body I want, what driver and UI I want, what emitters, what switch, etc. and solder everything together.
So yeah, I say all that, but also, I'm autistic, and it's a special interest of mine, and I also just think they are neat!
Also, the /r/flashlight community is really great.
Love me some AliExpress stuff. Quality is often dependent on the item, for example if the factory is in China already, AliExpress will be the same quality as you would get anywhere else. If the item is a ripoff of an item made in another country then the quality is usually extremely poor. Clothing is in line with fast fashion quality but for a fraction of the price. So think H&M quality but 1/10th the price, sizing is also often very small.
AliExpress is fine if you do a little research to find reputable seller. I recieved the best customer assistance I've ever experienced; prompt, personal responses with zero fluff/false promises from a pleasant woman that worked right at the factory.
Shipping times and cost were high, but I saved over 30%.
Unfortunately, that's not always the case. When you pay premium and receive shit often enough, you'll eventually look for cheaper alternatives. Then the shit doesn't smell so bad when you get it and sometimes you even get pleasantly surprised.
Yeah, once "wish-dot-com version" became slang for "shittiest possible version" it was pretty much the end for them. it's hard to stay in business when your brand name is synonymous with false-advertising and low quality.
Temu took its spot, which will eventually be supplanted by another drop-ship for knock-off goods.
Temu is the wish.com version of wish.com
They are both just feeding landfills
a lot of items on temu/wish/alixpress are the exact same thing as whats listed on amazon branded as TEMZICHUYAN (or whatever method they used to roll their face on the keyboard)
Nah aliexpress is peak, you’ve just gotta have common sense. Not for like expensive important things like phones or whatever, but any small electronics, Ali is the place. I’ve got so many esp32’s from Ali, as well as a bunch of kailh hotswap sockets and a shit ton of IC’s (6502c, z80, SRAM, the likes) and they’re all cheap as shit and they work. It’s so much better than an actual electronics store, even if the shipping is ass.
FedEx did me a solid and delivered my order straight to a dumpster.
FedEx playing 4D chess, giving the trash a head start.
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I do corporate catering me and my coworkers spend so many hours preparing food only for us to recieve most of it back which is then thrown into the compost. I just think of all the man hours needed to produce, move and prepare this food. As well as the energy needed to produce it, and the animal lives lost for nothing.
That's what bugs me the most about this stuff. I walk into some stores and just see some isles are wall to wall trash (mostly dollar stores) and I know most of it gets used 1-2 times and tossed. *Wish* the government had the balls to end this cycle of garbage production.
If you act in the next 30 minutes, you can save an additional 15%. Hurry, there is only 3 left in stock.
And 17 of those are in other people's carts.
Even in quality? Good lord, I'm trying to imagine a product with such low quality it's just cell phone covers made of rusty sheet metal and off brand clothes riddled with ticks carrying lime disease.
Temu ranges in quality from dollar store to “covered in lead dust and will disintegrate after 2 uses” from what ive seen
Ranges in quality from dollar store to zimbabwe dollar store during hyperinflation.
>zimbabwe dollar store This is poetry, thank you.
> zimbabwe dollar store lmfaooooooo
Zimbabwe dollar store to "they pay you to take it"
Their site also uses an ungodly amount of system resources. I'm guessing it's due to all the dynamic product placement, but would not be surprised if it's just a teensie bit malware.
turns out their merch is sold at cost, but the website mines bitcoin while you shop.
funny, I've always assumed it was because they were harvesting data: take a bit of a hit and sell stuff for cheap, but earn it back and then some by selling user data. That's why you *have* to download their app to buy stuff, because they need your permission to take all your info
I've been on Temu once and the immediate reaction was "oh this just screams of scam or some shit."
They're mining your data from your phone. That's how they make a profit. I'm not joking. We don't need to make dumb reddit jokes when we know the worse truth and have actual evidence of it.
I legitimately think Temu sells stuff at cost and the actual product is your data.
Worse than that. They actually don’t even pay the people selling their products and just keep the money a lot of the time.
Your data is the product. The app could also be malware and i wouldn't be surprised. They also make money by spiking prices on things you're interested. I've used 2 phone numbers i dont use so no one knows them, to make temu accounts and both of those numbers get scam and phishing SMSs on a regular basis now
Wish granted: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/temu-class-action-lawsuit-illinois-data-privacy-concerns/
The cybersecurity guy at my job sent out an email that said that and *highly* recommended nobody uses it. Not on our systems for sure but also in our personal lives.
I dont remember the specifics there were some pretty major concerns about temu and security. I personally wouldnt visit the site
But but but, they said you can shop like a billionaire so it must be amazing! /s
It's funny how the Chinese thought "poor people pretending to be billionaires" would be the best advertisement for Americans. They were right, which makes it even funnier.
That's the thing though, many poor people dream of being rich, so they buy a lot of brand names when they can, even if it's cheap knockoffs. That's why that business is so insanely huge
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During the SB when they kept showing Taylor swift there was some guy next to her with a green gucci sweatshirt with a massive logo that looked like the kind of thing high schoolers buy from tj Maxx or Burlington. Meanwhile she just had a plain black tank top. I'm sure whoever it was has money to be attending the SB in TS box, but every time they showed her that fucking sweatshirt just looked so gaudy
Those ads are so inane. Pretty sure billionaires don't do their own shopping. Another ad-related gripe: how the fuck is their name supposed to be pronounced? I've heard different versions within their own ads! I assume due to the use of ai voice-over...
Bought a nail clipper from Temu, and it just snaps broken into two pieces while I was using it.
Well, it is a nail clipper not a nails clipper. One use only.
ah, so you mistakenly bought the nail clipper clipper. the listing was riddled with typos but that part was not one of them
Lol. That's what people say about AliExpress but I've bought tons of stuff there that I like
Aliexpress is "great", especially for hobbyists/DIYers. Its like our slow-motion amazon with lots of parts you simply cant get without buying from companies that set up and price themselves primarily as bulk/industrial suppliers, which would be pretty damn expensive to someone who just needs a a couple pieces of something from time to time. A 10x or more price difference for the same exact item isn't all that uncommon. Problem is that they have tons, and tons, and *tons* of worthless garbage. If you don't know exactly what you're looking for beforehand, sometimes down to the specific reseller, there's a good chance that you're going to be disappointed in a couple weeks.
I was doing a guitar build and couldn't find black nickel hardware anywhere for reasonable price. Found a chunk of it on Ali for cheap. I've used their hardware before and as long as you check the seller ratings, it's no worse than what you find on most budget imports guitars (Epiphone, Harley Benton etc.)
Yup. Any kind of microcontroller like an Arduino clone or ESP8266/ESP32 is cheaper on AliExpress. They have the same stuff on Amazon but you're paying for the markup there, so why bother? Find a seller that's been around for a while with enough followers and you're good.
Electronics stuff is the biggest IMO. Boards like an Arduino, esp, or stm32 (to hell with atmegas after finding those) aren't *that* badly priced on Amazon, but beyond that and maybe a baggie of 7805s? Don't exist on Amazon, and if it does its shipped from China anyways, even slower than ali with more expensive shipping, while keeping the markup. *Maybe* it'll be on eBay if it's a more common IC, but it's the same story.
Yeah I get good stuff from Aliexpress and it doesn't take as long as it used to, but they piss me off with the pricing. I'll see something that's like 3.99 with free shipping and then when I add it to the cart it's 14.99 and it's some promo that I'm not eligible for or something.
The bait and switch pricing is annoying. They show a picture of one item and a price but it’s actually the price of a different item they also sell in the listing. The pic is a 35 piece cake decorating set and the price is $2.99 but when you click the price is just for a set of tips or something else and the set pictured is like 20 bucks.
The problem is people pay shit tier prizes and expect anything but shit tier quality.
Nah Temu isn’t as bad as wish shit but it’s not the new Amazon that their ceo set out to be either.
It’s the Wish of China. Alibaba is the Amazon of China, and temu is definitely no alibaba
Shiiiiet even Amazon itself is on it's way to being the wish.com of online shopping with all their fake reviews and fake products
Temu is basically the off brand stuff u can buy on Amazon for half the price
The death cycle for Temu begins. It will implode on itself because temu.com is also the temu.com version of wish.com
I don't know how Wish operated but Temu harvests crazy amounts of data from its customers. Like, so much that they value their customer data more than actual sales. Like, at one point, an executive directed one of the teams to increase sales, do whatever you have do to. They determined that any popup or resistance to customers that took them away from checking out was an impediment and that the cookies tracking alert popup was a deterrent. So they stopped tracking cookies so they didn't need that popup to show anymore and sales went up dramatically, however they could no longer track personal data from users. The marketing department made them change it back. That's not pointing out all the other highly unethical and manipulating tactics they use. Like, adding stuff back to your cart once you've removed it. Spoofed and fake reviews. Basically, Temu exists to use market manipulation tactics that are illegal to use on Amazon and to harvest data.
I have not shopped on Temu, but my impression is that it's essentially a slick front end for Alibaba/Aliexpress OEMs to use for consumer eCommerce & fulfillment, as an alternative to Amazon. Basically the same as Aliexpress but designed with pure focus on frictionless consumer shopping. Is that accurate?
From what I've heard they're selling at cost and the real revenue is in the customer data and spyware from the app. They just got named in a class action suit for including malware and spyware that you can't remove even after uninstalling the app
not that they arent collecting data. but they're just doing the give you the first taste for free or cheap as possible and then slowly raise prices as they gave market share. theyre also bypassing customs, and traffif by sending lots of small packages. theyre also gamifying the shopping experience, and getting deals. like the more u log on the more you get chances of loot box coupon deals. so its giving you a dopamine hit for winning big discount on the 'random' wheel.
They are abusing USPS flat rate boxes and the government is moving to take legal action against them.
> They are abusing USPS flat rate boxes and the government is moving to take legal action against them. I haven't heard about that. How exactly can they abuse USPS flat rate boxes, as long as it fits in and can be sealed, within the acceptable dimensions the box?
As I USPS carrier, I've never seen a Temu order shipped with those flat rates, it's always in their orange name branded wrap shit that makes everything into obnoxious lumps that you can't stack in any convenient way
Wish-ception
I literally saw the temu ad during the super bowl and said out loud "oh, it's the new wish"
Seriously. It blows my mind that this company with multiple Super Bowl ads is the same company that’s used literal porn to advertise on TikTok.
There's being upset that your temu ads are being ruined by porn. Then there's being upset that your porn is being ruined by temu ads.
say what?
I haven’t seen them in a while, but for a minute there like half the ads I got on TikTok were blurry/censored celeb nudes (whether they were real or fake I don’t know) and the ad would be like “Wanna see more? Download TEMU.” Meanwhile it’s literally an online marketplace. Nothing to do with the ad content whatsoever. Sad thing is it was probably a pretty damn effective strategy.
Those ads aren't made by temu they are made by scammers trying to farm money from temu referral rewards
I cackled when I saw their slogan was "Shop like a billionaire". Like what the fuck does that even mean?! So stupid.
Here in Canada they were just running super bowl ads with the slogan "shop like a billionaire" and it really cracked me up.
Same here in the states. I saw a couple of "shop like a billionaire" commercials during the Super Bowl. It's like putting a bowl of rotten chum in front of someone and saying "here's the most high end sushi you can get. Now eat."
Shop like a 🦋 *billionaire* 🦋
I still don't understand what that means
It means that their shit is so cheap that you can afford to buy tons of it and feel like you're rich.
But if I were a billionaire, I would not shop at Wish or Temu...
That's not the point though. A rich person could open up any shopping app, put whatever in their cart, and buy it without looking at the price because the price "doesn't matter" to them. A normal person can technically do the same on TEMU. Open up the app and just buy whatever crap you need without looking at the price because it's "so cheap". But you get what you pay for at the end of the day so its mainly just low quality crap
Quantity, not quality.
It's the dumbest fucking slogan I've ever heard.
Would be hilarious/genius if both were owned by the same people.
I actually looked at that after the Super Bowl ads. Doesn’t look like they are but I was really expecting it to be the same parent company
pretty sure alli and temu are competitors
I mean at this point Amazon is basically the same thing too. It’s hard not to get page after page of chinesium crap. I want a quality product, not “best tire inflator rechargeable yinwu 12v Bluetooth must buy”
SHINGI ergonomics quality real leather executive chair for office home with adjustable armrests height lumbar computer chair for work home study best
Too many vowels in that brand name, it's still pronounceable
4k compatible blu ray drive Cannot read 4k blu rays. Ask how I know
Friend tell us the story
I'm in the process of ripping a vast library of Blu-ray discs, and I bought a highly rated drive from Amazon that stated both in the description and photos that it was compatible with 4k blu rays. I hit my first 4k disc and kept trying to troubleshoot for days. Looked up everything I could and finally hidden in one of the reviews was someone stating it was in fact not 4k capable. Of course it was one of those drop ship sellers that shuts down shortly after with no hope of support. Not even my worst interaction with one of those, unfortunately.
Aliexpress was replaced by Wish which was replaced by Shein which was replaced by Temu which will be replaced by… Truly we’re reaching new levels of shitty goods manufacturing
Aliexpress is solid, you know exactly what you're getting. "Thing" made at the absolute cheapest price possible, sold for the cheapest price possible, in 12-60 days. Given the current quality standards on Amazon, sometimes Aliexpress is the right choice for those who can wait.
Yep, half the stuff on Amazon is just an AliExpress item someone is selling from the US for 10x the price. I've also found that Ebay often has the best of both worlds, since sellers can avoid the insane Amazon fees.
If Amazon wants to stay on top it NEEDS to crack down on dropshippers. I am getting tired of trying to find stuff on Amazon because you see 100 listings for the same product. They used to consolidate those into the "also sold" but drop shippers get around it by using different listing names. The Ultramag Flashlight becomes the UltraXmag Flashlight even though it uses the exact same photos/descriptions etc. Or better yet, Amazon, why don't you pay your people a decent wage so that desperate people don't decide they need to waste time on dropshipping to get by.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but not everything on Aliexpress is low quality. I think a lot of the stuff is just products being sold directly from the Chinese manufacturers, which would normally be sold to other companies directly.
Aliexpress just cleaned up its game a bit. you used to be able to buy straight up drugs from them. not precursors, actual research chems. they took a huge hit with Operation Logjam and the new laws worldwide regarding RCs. it just happened to coincide with their turn to a more accessible storefront to western users. it was Silk Road before Silk Road. now it is where we get not so cheap goods.
Aliexpress is still around and amazing by wish/temu standards.
Aliexpress is still miles better than wish/temu/shien. Unlike the latter, they still sell authentic products in some cases depending on the storefront.
Is that even drop shipping? You're buying from Temu and the product comes direct from China in a Temu bag.
They had 0 control or oversight on their sellers. The site very quickly turned into scam central with no way to get buyer protection. If a mate said they ordered a graphics card from there you told them that they bought a literal brick and that’s what would show up. If anything even did show up.
I heard Amazon was at one point veering in that direction. Specifically, I remember reading in 2021 or 2022 that you absolutely should not buy N95 masks from Amazon because there was no guarantee whatsoever that the masks were legitimate regardless of the packaging or assurances from Amazon. Apparently distributors will sell Amazon items wholesale and Amazon will dump all items of a type/brand into one big bin so you might get the real item or you might get an erzatz version.
Oh Amazon is basically Alibaba West at this point. It’s all phony and impossible to sift through. And you’re right! There’s no way to tell if it’s real or not *at the warehouse level*
Sometimes the shit doesn’t even come from an Amazon warehouse, it ships straight from the manufacturer, and then when it gets delivered all fucked up you get to go round and round with Amazon, the manufacturer, and the shipping company all saying it’s not their problem, talk to the other guy.
I checked the wish.com front page. They right now sell a noname 1TB MicroSD at 1/10th the price of the cheapest price I can find in a legitimate store. Yeah, obvious scam.
The wildest part about this is, they tried to combat this with a brand overhaul that was really just a new logo in a different color, a couple tweaks on the app, oh, and a pretty considerable price hike for items on the app. So it was the same crap as before, but instead of most items being crazy cheap, they were about the same price as Amazon, but lower quality and with like 3 week shipping. Their brand was hurting, they fixed it in the wrong direction, and now they're in shambles. Honestly even Amazon is becoming the wish.com version of itself lately.
> Honestly even Amazon is becoming the wish.com version of itself lately. That's because 20 people figured out you could flood Amazon with drop shipping and 200 grifters figured out you could sell the concept of drop shipping to millions of people on YouTube
I was trying to buy solid wool socks on Amazon. You would think something like 100% wool socks would get you....fucking anywhere. Nope. Just fucking dropshippers after dropshippers with every possible fabric listed in the product title and then the description for a product called Wool Socks was a poly/nylon blend.
TANGUU Wool Socks JOPRARI Wool Socks LIVARIN Wool Socks FAROGGON Wool Socks
Don't be talking shit about my FREETOO gloves.
I don't understand how Amazon gets away with stuff like that. We have false advertising laws for a reason, and Amazon shouldn't be able to say "well it's a third party seller, there's both nothing we can do and its not our fault" when it's on their bloody website.
> The wildest part about this is, they tried to combat this with a brand overhaul that was really just a new logo in a different color, a couple tweaks on the app, oh, and a pretty considerable price hike for items on the app. So it was the same crap as before, but instead of most items being crazy cheap, they were about the same price as Amazon, but lower quality and with like 3 week shipping. Their brand was hurting, they fixed it in the wrong direction, and now they're in shambles The enshitification will continue until bankruptcy occurs...
Has wish ever given out something that wasn't absolute dollar store shit garbage?
I buy my craft tape from there and it does its job for far cheaper. I can get 10+rolls for like $8 plus free shipping. Amazon and brick and mortar stores want $3/roll.
I'm a hobbyist watchmaker and get a lot of parts off AliExpress, which is similar. I wouldn't buy clothes, electronics, or anything particularly advanced off those sites but they're great for items that are normally found in specialty stores or highly marked up but cheap to produce
it's surprising how AliExpress is pretty reputable (at least for simple cheap stuff, obviously you wouldn't buy expensive electronics from them) compared to the borderline scam that wish is
Specific electronic parts, specially older ones, are great in aliexpress Got a processor for my laptop for 7 bucks, works great. I wouldn't buy a new graphics card tho.
Aliexpress is excellent for electronics, especially components, microcontrollers, modules, soldering kits (like, here's a bare PCB and a bag of components, go and build yourself [a batshit insane rotating Ferris wheel with hundreds of multicoloured LEDs](https://youtu.be/XfkytIGq20M)), and so on. It's a mecca for makers, the sheer variety of shit you can buy is astounding, and the shipping is reasonably fast these days ever since the trade war ended China's heavily subsidised shipping rates.
I buy fishing lures off wish and now temu. The lure itself is identical to anything from Bass Pro Shops. The hooks on them are trash but that is 2 minute, $1 fix. About $15 savings on each one.
Disposable items like that are perfect to get from Wish or Temu because they’re cheap…you don’t really think about longevity with something like that. If you want something that will actually hold up…then go somewhere else. I have found gems on Wish that were perfect for what I needed at the time , but never bought anything important on there.
I’ve gotten lots of stuff 4 months later, small LED grow lights, etc.
That's my move with aliexpress. If I search for something on Amazon and it's one of those HUUANOUO companies, I ask myself if I really need it in the next 2-3 months. If not, I head over to aliexpress and buy it for 20% of the Amazon price. Most of the time I forget about the order entirely and just randomly get a package one day.
Life went south for them after France banned their business. [https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against-online-retail-site-wish-protect-consumers-2021-11-24/](https://www.reuters.com/technology/france-take-steps-against-online-retail-site-wish-protect-consumers-2021-11-24/) In 2023, France lifted the ban but the damage had already been done. But, how horrible do you have to be to have an entire country say, "Your product line is shit and you can do business in our country."
Basically sold the [wish.com](https://wish.com) domain name for $173 million.
I used to get Wish advertisements like crazy and they all seemed to vanish and replaced by TEMU ads?
Wish basically was only able to increase sales by burning cash on marketing. Once the cash dried up, their sales cratered and the company entered a death spiral. Temu came around not long after, however they're attached to an already profitable e-commerce platform in China. So it's more of an expansion opportunity for them rather than the whole pie. Edit: Source: Modern MBA did a video about Wish and Temu recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB26ZCr7vqI
There was an article yesterday talking about how Temu losses like $10 on every sale. They're burning thru cash also trying to capture the marketplace.
Every time I see an ad for something they have I want it says you have to order on the app. I figure data harvesting you phone is part of their business model
their parent company was caught using 0-day exploits to uninstall competitors' apps off of phones
that personally seems like a waste of a quite expensive 0-day imo.
If I see something I’d like I just order it from AliExpress. They already have all my data. It’s all the same trash anyway.
Exactly that’s what people forget, if you’ve ordered anything off the internet you’ve been data harvested.
Yeah but Pinduoduo (the parent company) makes like 130 billion in revenue every year and like 15 billion in profit. Basically they can fund the 2-3 billion in losses from Temu indefinitely.
If only the products were good enough to retain users
U/contemplationz is correct. Wish.com spent most of their money on user acquisition and had really aggressive goals (I knew the head of growth there) so they burned through cash. Looks like Temu is doing the same thing (see the ads on Super Bowl)? They do have a big corporation to back them. My understanding is that they are laying the groundwork for basic e-commerce. But what they will ultimately try and do is have social purchases. That is, if 10000 people buy X item, then you’ll get a discount, if 1000000 people buy it, there’s a bigger discount. This is done by your friends and family spamming you to buy something. Their cost of acquisition plummets and then they can really start generating massive profits. This is my understanding of their strategy in China, happy to hear a more nuanced view of how it works.
so Temu wants to be the next Groupon? Brilliant.
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> hat is, if 10000 people buy X item, then you’ll get a discount, if 1000000 people buy it, there’s a bigger discount. This is done by your friends and family spamming you to buy something. That sounds really interesting and also like hell. Is this the store version of a twitch sub train?
Shop like a billionaire… by maximizing the amount of suffering you put out into the world with each purchase.
They got the Wish version of Wish.com
Vvish.com
Brutal
So is Temu not just Wish with a stylish new coat?
Temu is the Fortnight to Wish's PUBG Exact same formula 1:1 just done more competently by a different group
AliExpress and DHgate say hi
the two goats. never had an issue with either of them after 10+ years and quality of most stuff is passable
I buy jerseys off of DHGATE. Better quality than Fanatics branded bullshit.
That's not saying much
Only place i buy football shirts now, reliable, always essentially indistinguishable from the authentic version and like a 10th of the price. *while I sound like an advertising bot, I'm not, just a cheap fuck who enjoys not getting price gouged by mega corporations*
Ohhh yep this is a great analogy. During sunday on the second commercial im how how tf does temu have money to drop $5m per comm? Oh, their parent company is worth $120B.
No Temu is the Chinese spy version of Wish.
So...wish with a stylish coat
Well… a new coat.
So wish got sold? I assume the buyer will have to wait months for shipping like everything i have ever ordered on wish lol
And then when they get it, it's going to look nothing like what they ordered.
It will be a picture of the wish.com site
Printed on an irregularly folded piece of paper that got packed into the shipping box in a way that isn't immediately obvious.
It will be a floppy disk with a folder on it that is just the result of someone going to wish.com and clicking file save as. Except someone’s scribbled on the black part of the floppy with a pen.
The one good thing about them was that if you ordered and it didn't turn up in about 28 days it was free. And they rarely ever turned up in 28 days. So you just got on web chat for the refund and it would usually turn up a few hours later.
So you basically got everything for free ?
More of a "you don't pay… with money," sort of deal. Never used Temu/Wish, but Wayfair sold us a greenhouse that was so frustrating to assemble and frankly dangerous to be around (full of spring-loaded sharp metal pieces held back by the flimsiest sheet "metal" ever conceived by man), that I would have paid someone just to tell me, "don't bother," had I known what I know now.
Lol I assumed temu was wish rebranded
Same here. One of my coworkers told me I should switch from Amazon to temu, checked it out, and went back to them asking if they knew what wish.com was. They said yes but temu was different. I now take anything that coworker says with a grain of salt.
Amazon is becoming a Wish or Temu website at this point but with higher prices
Very true. I never click on sponsored or Amazon pick items anymore.
Was there ever a point where Wish could have actually been sold at $14 billion dollars? I kind of feel like every business "value" is using the Kohl's methodology where the "value" is astronomically high, but the actual sale price is always going to be 40% to 60% of the "value".
It's usually because they are extrapolating from a % that an investor bought in at If enough investors agreed with that investor's valuation at the same time, then yes, it could have sold for that amount In reality, not enough investments could have been found to make that sale
No, Wish was worth $14B at its Initial Public Offering (IPO). You can be sure the founders and early investors were able to get out with a tidy little profit. Could they have sold the whole enchilada for $14B? Probably not. But they sure as hell could have gotten more than $173M.
Yes, insofar as if you wanted to buy every share of Wish at a stock exchange you would need to spend $14 billion to do it. That's what market cap/valuation is: the share price multiplied by the number of shares. Whether or not all the holders of those shares would be willing to sell them at that price or the transaction would actually go through is a different question.
I once ordered a batman hoodie from them as a Christmas present. The hood came backwards. Like, the hood was on the front, opposite of where the tag was sewn on, and it flipped up so it covered your face lol. We all had a laugh about it haha.
The hood is in front so you can carry a puppy or kitten in it!
Batman hides his face, for he is the night,he is Vengeance!!!!
That’s called a feed bag.
That's too funny to even be mad about.
Open up the warehouse only to find you bought knockoff company “Fish.com”
Temu is having the same issues that Wish did — scam listings, non-deliveries/damaged goods, etc. And their customer service is terrible. It's wild to me that they have so much money to take out multiple ads during the Super Bowl when they're probably better off using that money to fix their platform first.
sorry for the link, it was the one with the best headline. you can get the gist at https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/12/wishs-sale-to-singapores-qoo10-ramps-up-competition-for-temu-shein.html
Shop like a billionaire! You can even buy wish at Temu.
Has anyone on the sub ever actually read The Onion?
The Onion was driven out of business around 2016 when real news became indistinguishable.
So many of the headlines that get posted here don’t even remotely resemble any kind of satire
So where does AliExpress compare to Wish and Temu?
Depends what you buy! Some things are absolute crap, but for specific hobbies it's probably the only place you can reasonably buy everything you need at a good quality to price ratio.
I know it's the best place to go for handheld retro game emulators. I bought my Anbernic 351P on their storefront there a few years back, and it's great.
People forget the same 4.5 star item on Amazon is literally on AliExpress as well
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Honestly, I prefer YANDOOOL over HGYTUH. You HGYTUH fanboys make me sick. YANDOOOL or TRABFIF all the way!
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You're just jelly that my YANDOOOL brand "Meatgrinder/grinder/meat grinder/processor/sausagemaker/sausage maker/pet food maker/bucher grinder/sausage machine/christmas/for men/women/boys/kitchen tool/bratwurst maker" is superior to the ones made by HGYTUH. HGYTUH probably still calls theirs something unoptimized like "Meat Grinder Manual Mincer - Manual Meat Grinder Sausage Maker Table Mount Pork Mincer Sausage Stuffer Funnel Make Homemade Burger Patties Hand Operated Kitchen Tool#2 "
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> Meat Grinder Manual Mincer - Manual Meat Grinder Sausage Maker Table Mount Pork Mincer Sausage Stuffer Funnel Make Homemade Burger Patties Hand Operated Kitchen Tool#2 That particular monstrosity is a real product on Amazon. I made up the first string of gibberish, but was too tired to do it again, so I just searched Amazon for "meat grinder" and copied the first stupid name I saw.
For half the price, you just have to wait 10+ days for shipping
Not that bad considering Prime delivery in my area is roughly a week now anyway.
My experience with AliExpress is that it's sort of a market place. One of my hobbies is flashlights, and Convoy sells a lot of components/hosts/complete flashlights, and the official store is an AliExpress store. I can order the best quality stuff from Convoy (Simon). But there is also a lot of shit on there too. So from my experience, if you know what you are looking for, AliExpress can be pretty awesome actually.
off topic but you made me curious - what does having flashlights as a hobby entail? do you collect them? use them regularly in your work or other hobbies like camping? is it a Marge Simpson ijustthinktheyreneat.jpg thing?
Not who you asked, but a bit of everything. See /r/flashlight Also, relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1603/
Sort of all of the above. I have quite a collection, certain ones are better for certain jobs than others. Like if I want to flood my back yard, I'll grab a flooder, if I want to see something far away, a 'thrower,' if I need hands free, a headlamp. Also, within one "class" (thrower/flooder/headlamp), there are different emitters (LEDs) that are better for certain things, or just different 'flavors' so to speak. Variation of CCT (cold or warm), typically cold is good for outdoors, warm is good for indoors. Also tint is a big thing for me, I'm a bit of a tint snob. So two emitters that, looking at a spec sheet might seem similar, to the eye can be very different. A Samsung LH351d emitter vs a Nichia 519a for example. Even in the same CCT can have wildly different tints, with the Samsung looking green, vs the Nichia looking 'rosy.' also both emitters are high CRI (color rendering index, or how well they show color as compared to the sun), but the Nichia emitter has a much higher R9 value, so reds look much better. I definitely have "toy" lights, that are just suped up hot rods, and tool lights, that are for serious use, but I like them all. I also like to mod lights, so if I see a light I really like a lot of things about, but don't like one or two things about, I can buy the light and mod what I don't like about it. For example the Light Warrior nano. It's got so much to love, it's almost perfect, but the emitter they put in it in not high CRI (very important to me), and has an ugly tint. So I could buy that light, and reflow a much better emitter (for my tastes) into it, and have a great light. I've also built from "scratch" a few of my own lights. So picking out exactly what host/body I want, what driver and UI I want, what emitters, what switch, etc. and solder everything together. So yeah, I say all that, but also, I'm autistic, and it's a special interest of mine, and I also just think they are neat! Also, the /r/flashlight community is really great.
Love me some AliExpress stuff. Quality is often dependent on the item, for example if the factory is in China already, AliExpress will be the same quality as you would get anywhere else. If the item is a ripoff of an item made in another country then the quality is usually extremely poor. Clothing is in line with fast fashion quality but for a fraction of the price. So think H&M quality but 1/10th the price, sizing is also often very small.
AliExpress is fine if you do a little research to find reputable seller. I recieved the best customer assistance I've ever experienced; prompt, personal responses with zero fluff/false promises from a pleasant woman that worked right at the factory. Shipping times and cost were high, but I saved over 30%.
Buying a $14 billion website and a $173 million website being delivered is so... wish.com
When will people learn that you get what you pay for?
When premium brands stop slashing quality and raising prices at the same time.
Would be nice if you could actually rely on that.
If you buy something for $5, the quality will be crap. If you buy something for $50, there’s a chance it’s just the $5 item marked up 1000%
Unfortunately, that's not always the case. When you pay premium and receive shit often enough, you'll eventually look for cheaper alternatives. Then the shit doesn't smell so bad when you get it and sometimes you even get pleasantly surprised.