The Truth About Temu, the Most Downloaded New App in America

Time ^ | Dec. 29, 2023 | Andrew H. Chow

[libstripper]

The most downloaded free app on both the App Store and Google Play for much of the last two months wasn’t TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, but a shopping app that didn’t exist just four months ago.

Temu offers steep discounts on a slew of products, mostly shipped directly from Chinese factories or warehouses. In addition to incredibly low prices, Temu can no doubt attribute its popularity to its strategy of giving free stuff to users who promote the app on their social networks and get friends and family to sign up.

But the company—the U.S. offshoot of Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo—is also starting to develop a reputation for undelivered packages, mysterious charges, incorrect orders, and unresponsive customer service. Temu has already been subject to more than 30 complaints to the Better Business Bureau, and has a BBB customer rating of less than 1.5 stars.

[libstripper]

I have had the unexpected experience of having lots of Teemu ads suddenly pop up on my computer screen and came to wonder what it is and why. Looks to me from this article like it is another Chinese Trojan Horse, since it collects every bit of data that it possibly can and no doubt transmits it to the CCP. Worel, the products are almost all made in China, guaranteeing pretty shoddy workmanship and engineering, also with a substantial likelihood that a lot of slave labor is employed producing them. Further, and even worse, it represents a mortal threat to legitimate US businesses like Walmart and Amazon that sell a lot of US-made products and provide a lot of US employment. IMHO, the Department of Commerce ought to investigate it. Also, I refuse to do business with it. An old saying applies to it, "if it's too good to be true, then it's not true."

[Nextrush]

Temu is corporately headquartered in Ireland which has extremely low corporate taxes.

[JSM_Liberty]

People love cheap

[dfwgator]

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap

-The Kinks (Low Budget)

[Shady]

It’s spam, with that stupid spinning wheel! I wonder how many tracking cookies it installs with no hope of getting g rid of all of them. Run Spybot & CC Cleaner regularly!

[SaveFerris]

[Temu offers steep discounts on a slew of products, mostly shipped directly from Chinese factories or warehouses.]

I’ve seen the Temu ads. Sounds too good ..... to be true.

I suspect they’re gathering bank card information on a WHOLE LOT of folks and intend to commit mass bank fraud at some point in the future.

And disappear. /shiny side out

The prices are TOO LOW to be legitimate.

[Pox]

Those ads started a while back and when I noticed them, I figured that the prices meant straight from the Chinese mainland and likely poor quality due to rock bottom prices.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

[jdege]

I’ve occasionally bought stuff 9n Amazon that was shipped from China. And always regretted it.

Not so much that it was crap. Sometimes crap is fine. But multi-month shipping times is not.

Or, at least, it’s not when it is a surprise.

[SaveFerris]

[People love cheap]

I like The Cheap Girls

Before they changed their name to “Meryl Streep”

[Alvin Diogenes]

Temu is corporately headquartered in Ireland which has extremely low corporate taxes.

Ireland is also very close to full-on communism.

The Irish government is attempting to destroy freedom of speech, while demonizing their enemies as far-right hooligans and simultaneously allowing unrestricted immigration.

[Tell It Right]

If it's too good to be true, it's a lie from China. Or the Dims. Or maybe there's no longer a difference.

[montag813]

When China invades Taiwan and we attempt to respond, we will find that a massive cyber attack has infected all manner of distributed systems throughout the United States, courtesy of TEMU, TikTok etc al, gleefully downloaded by employees of power plants, defense contractors and the government.

[simpson96]

bookmark

[BigFreakinToad]

Temu is the delivery system for Disease X

[monkeyshine]

They sell low priced low quality products to people seeking personal fulfillment through consumerism.

[Dennis M.]

The article misses an important point. The US tax payer is paying for shipping from China. Forbes has an article on this.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-usps-epacket-gives-postal-subsidies-to-chinese-e-commerce-merchants-to-ship-to-the-usa-cheap/?sh=4979ae4a40ca

Nice to know, isn’t it.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“gathering bank card information”

I only use Capital One VIRTUAL credit cards on line. It’s a number tied to ONE merchant. Other merchants cannot use it. You can turn it off and on at will. You can set an expiration date. If it is stolen, you cancel that one number and your main number behind the scenes remains unscathed. You can set the card up for multiple uses or a one-time use. You can use their web page or mobile app to create and manage your virtual numbers.

It’s the best solution ever to web commerce. Highly recommended.

[yelostar]

Wikipedia

On 17 May 2023, Greg Gianforte, the governor of the US state of Montana banned Temu on government devices state-wide, along with ByteDance applications (including TikTok), WeChat, and Telegram.

WeChat - the messaging, social media and mobile payment app of the CCP surveillance state. If Temu can get lumped into a list with WeChat, it’s not good.

[Nextrush]

A model for our future perhaps.

[FarCenter]

Pinduoduo is sort of like Amazon marketplace. However, while Amazon marketplace connects retailers to customers, Pinduoduo and its Temu subsidiary, connects manufacturers to customers.

So a typical Amazon marketplace transaction would involve a retailer who gets goods shipped in quantity from China, either stocks and ships themselves or uses Amazon fulfillment services, and then does transactions via marketplace.

A Temu transaction would bypass the retailer and direct ship from the Chinese manufacturer to the US customer.

It’s not clear why Amazon doesn’t provide a manufacturer to customer model as well, but maybe manufacturers don’t want to handle shipping direct to customers and are happy to use Amazon fulfillment.

Alibaba, the other Chinese online retailing giant, also does manufacturer to customer transactions.