My experiences with TEMU

[exxos]

I wouldn't ordinarily do these sorts of "reviews". But considering how much I despise of evil bay...

First of my girlfriend has been ordering from TEMU for the past several weeks. Mostly little trinkets and knickknacks which may or may not be actually useful :lol: :roll: Some stuff does actually arrive damaged but they refund pretty much instantly. You don't really have to worry there.

So my story starts when she said you could get eight items absolutely free if you buy another two items. I actually thought there would be some con to it all. So I signed up and started adding in my trolley basically random things that I thought would actually be useful should they really turn up.

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Of course I certainly don't believe there is £300 worth of items. I sure don't believe the value they list them at is anywhere near accurate either.. But more on that later..

So today the stuff actually turned up ! :shock: :shock:

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The thing is as well though, I got about £2.60 rebate because the items I purchased went down in price after I purchase them. I also got £4 back because of late delivery. So I paid a total of £8.88 for everything in the image!

Of course you cannot really expect miracles in terms of quality. I got two bags of drill bits as I have mostly broken everything under 5mm in every drill bits that I have anyway. So the two packs of drill bits are actually multiple sizes and have about 50 bits in each. I also got a small socket set because I only really have one and it is covered in oil from working on the van :lol: :roll: As to if the hole saws or knife sharpener is any good that is yet to be seen. So those eight items upon registering were actually free.

The downside to me with TEMU is just the sheer amount of "offers and discounts " you get bombarded with each day. It basically upped my girlfriend because she is constantly getting vouches for like 90% off stuff all the time. TEMU will pretty much do anything to get you hooked and buying stuff.. Generally stuff you don't really need.. Just to get the discounts.. Not saying the discounts are bad.. It just turned into a bit of a load of drama being bombarded with discounts several times each day.

I mean you can add items into your basket and if you wait, you will get a discount. Then the next day you'll get a bigger discount.. And then you will start getting offers for 90% off. They really are trying absolutely everything under the sun to get you buying stuff. They also have daily discount pages and a load of "spin the wheel discounts". It really is quite bizarre the amount of angles they are trying to basically give you free money kind of thing.

While I certainly cannot complain about getting discounts, I mean who would ? I think a lot of the prices are inflated to start with. I purchased some batteries a few weeks ago to upgrade my LED torch. I think they was £8, which was actually cheaper than evil bay. But then a few days later they went down half prices silly like £2 so I purchased a couple more. Incredibly good discount and pleased with the purchase. However if I just wanted to buy something quickly, TEMU pretty much lets you down because a lot of the prices do appear to be inflated until you get the discount.. Which is good if you can wait and mess about..

There is certainly a good selection of random and weird things on there. And you certainly can get good prices if you are prepared to mess about. For me personally, while there is potentially a lot of things of interest, there is it really anything I actually need from there. I mean if they sold a box of 50 parcel tape cheap, then I would probably buy it from TEMU. However they don't really do any bulk items. I guess you really have to look at it like a shop like pound land or something.. Cheap stuff.. Great offers.. But do you really need it...

So I think TEMU is just trying to get you to buy stuff by any means necessary. This includes shoving discounts in your face repeatedly until you basically give up on buy the things, as they are cheap... I'm not saying the deals are bad, obviously you can honestly get some good deals if you throw enough time at it to get the best prices. My girlfriend certainly has got some useful bits and bobs which I did not even know existed but have become incredibly useful now. Though it seems it can become rather addictive if you are not careful.. And if you are buying a bunch of stuff which you don't really need.. Is it really "good value" at the end of the day..

Of course leaving stuff in your shopping basket often gets you discounts. But also a good feature is if you buy stuff, and the price drops a couple days later not item, you actually get refunded if you request it on the price difference! Of course everyone knows it's annoying when you buy something and then it drops in price the next day! Wine the case of TEMU if that happens, you can actually get reimbursed the difference !

I would certainly paste very close attention to what you are buying . I thought I was buying a toolbox which looked "round". Apparently I did not read the description and I was just looking at the pictures for tools.. It wasn't actually a toolbox, it was a flask with a toolbox image!! :lol: :roll: but in my defence, after about half an hour of flicking through endless items I really wasn't paying much attention to anything.. Again because I did not really expect the stuff to turn up.

I'm not trying to put anyone off trying TEMU. It certainly is a interesting marketplace with multiple ways to get discounts on items. So if anyone signs up, see if you can get your "8 free items" and let us know how you get on. I basically chose random stuff because I did not believe I would honestly get the stuff. But at least others can choose more wisely knowing that there is a good chance the stuff will actually turn up.

[rubber_jonnie]

I buy quite a lot from AE, and for the most part it's cheap and OK, and in some cases, such as the GD-Emu and Saturn/Dreamcast PSUs, they were really nice.

The adage of 'You get what you pay for' certainly rings true, but when you can find the self same items on eBay for twice the price, then AE is definitely worth a shot.

As for Temu, I have some deliveries due today, and possibly tomorrow, so I'll have to reserve judgement on the quality of the items as I don't yet have them, however it's looking like delivery times are similar to AE, however as @exxos says, the constant bombardment with ads and discounts is definitely a push to get you hooked, and not entirely welcome.

I think £8.88 is a good price for what you have, but I really doubt it being worth £300!

I'll post again when my stuff arrives.

[exxos]

I buy quite a lot from AE, and for the most part it's cheap and OK,

I used to buy a lot from AE.. But I have to always fight my way onto the site these days. Clicking away popups, constant email verfication, then its in some other language. I just don't want the hassle of having to go through all that just to quickly search for something.

But also since postage has been added on and VAT now, With TEMU you just need a £15 order for free postage and some things can be a fair bit cheaper. Of course you're not going to get a bunch of CPU's from TEMU. But for stuff my girlfriend buys, she finds TEMU just being overall better value than AE.

She used to buy a lot of stuff herself from AE in the past. I am tending not to use AE anymore, as just to many fake CPUs and such, and is trying to find better suppliers for stuff these days. I may have to pay a bit more, but if more stuff works and doesn't really cost much more. Hunting around for the same parts repeatedly over and over by different sellers has just got ridiculous over time.

Of course I doubt TEMU is ever going to be anything like a discount electronics marketplace like AE. But I wish TEMU would do bulk deals on even general items like sticky tape or card boxes or something. But it's probably not going to happen as they are shipping from China anyway.

I'll post again when my stuff arrives.

:thumbup:

[rubber_jonnie]

I buy quite a lot from AE, and for the most part it's cheap and OK,

I used to buy a lot from AE.. But I have to always fight my way onto the site these days. Clicking away popups, constant email verfication, then its in some other language. I just don't want the hassle of having to go through all that just to quickly search for something.

But also since postage has been added on and VAT now, With TEMU you just need a £15 order for free postage and some things can be a fair bit cheaper. Of course you're not going to get a bunch of CPU's from TEMU. But for stuff my girlfriend buys, she finds TEMU just being overall better value than AE.

She used to buy a lot of stuff herself from AE in the past. I am tending not to use AE anymore, as just to many fake CPUs and such, and is trying to find better suppliers for stuff these days. I may have to pay a bit more, but if more stuff works and doesn't really cost much more. Hunting around for the same parts repeatedly over and over by different sellers has just got ridiculous over time.

Of course I doubt TEMU is ever going to be anything like a discount electronics marketplace like AE. But I wish TEMU would do bulk deals on even general items like sticky tape or card boxes or something. But it's probably not going to happen as they are shipping from China anyway.

I'll post again when my stuff arrives.

:thumbup:

Odd that you have to fight your way onto AE, its never usually an issue for me. I usually get one pop-up and after I dismiss it it's all good. Temu is definitely worse for that sort of thing.

The one thing that does annoy me about AE is the 'colour' buttons to pick what you want. The product page shows you the most complete package, but unless you select the correct 'colour' you don't get what you think you're ordering.

I didn't notice this on Temu, but it may be there.

[exxos]

Odd that you have to fight your way onto AE, its never usually an issue for me.

Just tried it again..
Oddly this time its still on English, it never normally is.

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I usually get one pop-up and after I dismiss it it's all good. Temu is definitely worse for that sort of thing.

Yeah, TEMU you have to fight your way through discounts and coupon pages.

The one thing that does annoy me about AE is the 'colour' buttons to pick what you want. The product page shows you the most complete package, but unless you select the correct 'colour' you don't get what you think you're ordering.

Yeah I know what you mean. I think AE does not really have any proper selectable option so the cells are just using "color" as item selections. At least ebay has custom drop down menus for that. But AE seems to be a bit backwards in that respect. I wish they would stop screwing about with the layout!

In fact evil bay has become rather irritating since they change the layout about a week ago. I just want to "zoom out" all the time now on my PC. I don't want buttons taking up half of my screen. I get we are in the age of the mobile but I just find mobiles incredibly inefficient and annoying to use all the time. I rather have something where I can have maximum information in the least amount of scrolling. Like I use evil bay much anymore anyway but it just makes me even less motivated to buy things because of the stupidly large horrific layout now. I mean what happened to websites adjusting to the resolution it is being viewed in.. Seems to be a lost art these days :roll:

[rubber_jonnie]

Oh, the only things I get popping up are like that first image, I don't get the email verification codes at all.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so my first Temu package arrived, 4 solar lights for the garden and 4 4GB micro SD cards. Just under £30 delivered, and whilst the products are actually ok, value wise, nothing spectacular that I'd run around saying "You must shop at Temu it's fabulous value".

I can say that the 4GB cards (I get through a lot of these for SD card solutions for retro kit) are genuine and not smaller capacity modified, so that's something.

The Garden lights look fine, usual Chineseum type plastic, but nice bright LEDs and nighttime detection works just fine.

The next package is due today...

[exxos]

Which lights did you get ? I saw some in a set of 4 or something. Tempted.. I got a wateringcan solar light thing coming :)

[rubber_jonnie]

Which lights did you get ? I saw some in a set of 4 or something. Tempted.. I got a wateringcan solar light thing coming :)

It was these: Solar Lights

[rubber_jonnie]

So, my 2nd Temu delivery arrived just now:

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I think for the money they are just great :) Quality is OK and function seems fine, though the mixer requires some more tinkering,