I shopped at Temu!

BitDepth#1474

THERE ARE lots of places to shop online, but the compelling allure of a wide range of choices in any product sector, excellent delivery reputation and payment security, lead most to rely on Amazon.

I'm as guilty as anyone else of this, and it's been more than two decades since I bought my first book from Mr Bezos's company.

Since then I've spent money sensibly and stupidly in roughly equal parts, compromised one credit card with an ill-advised purchase, and narrowed my purchases down to just a few trusted outlets.

Is Temu one of them?

I'm not quite sure about that, but here's what I can say.

Temu has a PayPal option. It's highly recommended that you pay that way, putting the digital escrow company between your banking details and the vendor's systems. Temu is the Western-facing subsidiary of PDD Holdings, who perfected this model for selling goods on the Asia-focused PinDuoDuo store.

Temu is a more aggressive marketer than Amazon could ever dare to be. Visit the website or use the app and it will track you mercilessly. Give the company your e-mail and you will receive e-mails at least daily, often multiple times a day.

Every e-mail will attempt to get you to visit the website or launch the mobile app and the company gamifies every visit with a chance to "win" deep discounts on entry.

The website also constantly pushes you to use the Temu app, about which privacy concerns have been raised.

I got everything I paid for, but it takes a while to arrive. The company shipped most of the product directly from China with only a few items arriving from their US warehouses.

There are no cool smiley boxes like Amazon's. Everything came in a plastic bag shoved into two bigger plastic grey shipping bags, one for each shipper.

The two products that were boxed were slightly dented and bent, which doesn't speak well of the prospects for sensitive electronic items.

So what did I buy? I chose commodity items that are hard to manufacture badly. Ten years ago, I bought a bulk package of microfibre cloths from Amazon (eight remain) that cost US$0.46 per cloth. From Temu, a ten-pack of grey cloths (which turned out to be smaller and thinner, something that's not obvious on the product pages) cost US$0.25 each, and a 20-pack of multi-coloured cloths cost US$0.47 each. The very same item is currently being offered in a "lightning deal" in a 50-pack for US$0.12.

Once you begin the shopping process at Temu, everything moves fast. Deals are on a timer, often counting down minutes of opportunity and the site isn't always terribly clear about what exactly you are buying. Clicking on photos of different sizes doesn't change the cost, which only adds to the general confusion.

Would I have preferred to buy those multi-coloured cloths on deep discount? Sure. Could I figure out what Temu was selling me while a timer is pointedly ticking down? Not without more experience than I brought to the table the first time around.

My choice of items reflected a similar caution. Most were stitched goods like the cloths, a couple of different notebooks and a pair of over-ear headphones.

One of the headphones was from Asus, but the others were unbranded, without even the window dressing of fake brands that Chinese manufacturers use to flood Amazon with identical items.

When it comes to headphones, I've drifted down from aspirations of high-end audio excellence to practicality. I buy cheap headphones on Amazon, and I bought cheaper ones from Temu. All will eventually wear and shred (ear pads are particularly irritating as they crumble), some will fall apart or crack. I am not persuaded that audiophile headsets represent an adequate value proposition to justify their significantly higher cost.

So who is Temu for? If you need commodity items that have a long manufacturing history (sewing and bookbinding are ancient by now), then you may find some great bargains, particularly if you buy in bulk.

Retailers looking for goods that they can hustle sales for at good prices will also find items, but restocking can be a challenge since some items disappear off the site.

Temu uses a technique called reverse manufacturing, monitoring what's selling on the site and what people are searching for online to provide the manufacturers who provide goods on the site with forecasting of what is likely to be in demand. If you're out of sync with the shopping zeitgeist, those bargain items simply stop being made.

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. An expanded version of this column can be found there.