Is Temu a Scam?

Hey!

Nice seeing you at the tail-end of the week versus the beginning! Still on a T-starting day so hopefully, it's not too much of a shakeup! Well if you’ve made it to Thursday my only words of encouragement are to suck it up and you’ll be on Friday before you know it.

Is Temu a legit shopping site or just a giant scam?

If you haven’t heard or seen yet then let me be the one to get you up to speed here. Temu is exploding everywhere right now. I’ve seen countless influencers on TikTok absolutely raving about their Temu hauls, finds, and niche items they are finding. Many of these videos are sponsored by the marketplace directly but a lot aren’t and are just people who seem keen on letting us in on their new “secret” shopping app. Temu is anything but a secret with the aforementioned sponsoring of many content creators and general marketing hype they are driving to carve a foothold in the US e-commerce battlefield, the retailer has been on quite the rise since their first big break out from a SuperBowl spot earlier this year.

Temu which is a play on Team Up Price Down is another e-commerce-based marketplace. Ideally an Amazon or eBay competitor. The main difference here is that Temu’s sellers are all mainly based in China and sell products directly from their factories there, hence being able to give us very hefty markdowns on everything they sell. Boy, let me say that those prices can get quite ridiculous at Temu. New Lenovo branded airpod knocks can go for as low as $10 on Temu. Clothes can go for even just pennies if you find them.

Now the price in itself of these goods should be some sort of indicator that something fishy might be going on here. However, this type of marketplace has actually been done before with some degree of success. Aliexpress & Alibaba both are similar marketplaces offering cheap goods directly from China backdooring the rest of the markup you get with American companies. They also get cheaper costs by not having to pay duties on just shipping in such small quantities of products individually as US companies getting shipments in bulk usually do. So the concept isn’t something new but Temu is certainly pumping a lot more marketing dollars into themselves relative to Aliexpress to really get their foot or leg in this case in the door.

Okay so the idea of shipping direct is being done so does that mean Temu is legit? On Trustpilot currently their rating stands at 3.5 very middle of the pack. For reference, Amazon is at about 1.5 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot. A lot of the complaints from Trustpilot range from extremely long shipping times (which is to be expected from anything being bought directly from China as Aliexpress also faces the same issue) to poor or even non-existent customer service to the items being bought being fake or not as described. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily surprising as similar complaints can be heard from Aliexpress as well. Aliexpress has 2.6 stars on Trustpilot currently.

With all this, I wouldn’t chalk it up to Temu itself being a giant scam. Temu like Amazon is a marketplace that has to monitor and control the sellers it lets sell on its platform. If Temu wants to continue getting bigger in America it might have to take a few pages from Amazon and start cracking on getting better customer service or even just creating some sort of customer service presence. Really the ability to get refunds almost without question at Amazon and the extremely fast delivery times is what probably keeps most other marketplaces from getting big enough to even be a spec in Amazon’s eyes.

Besides the products and services of the company, Temu has also faced some scrutiny from its data security. A few weeks ago the Temu app was in danger of being removed from the Apple App Store as its data tracking and handling practices were in violation of Apple’s App Store rules. After receiving the notice though the app was swiftly updated to fall in line. Lawmakers have put Temu in notice about data security almost in the same vein as TikTok. Some people say that the Chinese-backed company could give sensitive US consumer data to the Chinese government at any time, the same complaints that have been given about TikTok. While this hasn’t been proven to be true or that any data has been given. As a company that is outside the US if that were to happen there isn’t much that could be done to you if it does happen. Also though in the grand scope does it really matter if another government has your data? Facebook and countless other US companies have already had data leaks happen, so more than likely your data is probably out there somewhere. This isn’t to necessarily worry you but just to put it into perspective our data is out there and honestly isn’t that significant to most people trying to harvest this data unless you are someone really important. If you are conscious about your data though it is something to consider about Temu.

At the end of the day, I don’t think Temu itself is overtly trying to be a scam but you’re gonna pay for what you get. Yeah, the prices are extremely cheap but you’ll make up for those costs at the risk of longer ship times or not even getting your items, poor customer service, and possibly getting items not how you thought they’d be. If you just want generic products, gizmos, or clothes I think Temu is probably a cool place to browse if you’re patient. Is the Apple laptop selling for $20 on Temu a real Apple laptop? I’m going to say 99% probably not. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to just be mindful of your data that is on Temu. Otherwise though happy shopping!

Send me any deals you find! Especially any Merch deals on certain Artists you think I like!