• themurphy@lemmy.ml
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    27 days ago

    Temu is insanely popular. Don’t underestimate this. Yes, it’s pure crap, but people buy it. They earn bucks.

    Meaning, it’s not a valid argument to say it’s crap, and then it’s not a problem. Temu is a problem.

    But then we have to start another discussion about the free market, because then Temu is valid.

    Then what? Legit question, I don’t have the answer to.

    • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      The thing is that it’s not PURE crap.

      It’s kind of like going to a flea market. Most of it is crap and you can still find some decent and good stuff that’s way cheaper than it should be.

        • nednobbins@lemm.ee
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          26 days ago

          I don’t need to guess. I know from having been to China and having talked to people.

          It’s mostly a combination of 3 things:

          1. Tons of infrastructure. If you decide to start manufacturing some random thing you can easily get all the stuff you need to get started.
          2. Regulations are generally very favorable to small startups and businesses. This is partly why so much of the stuff on Temu is crap.
          3. A huge population. That’s the main source of ultra cheap labor. Farmers in rural China can still make as little as $1.90 per day. All a factory owner needs to offer is more than that and they’ll have a line of applicants.
        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          22 days ago

          I cannot obtain food and housing without work. I am being coerced to work under duress. I would like to get off this planet now. Like right now.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      27 days ago

      I got some temu stuff. A 7$ bag heat sealer. Works perfectly fine.

      However, I do not abide surveillance pricing. I can defeat the surveillance pricing but the procedure annoys me, so I’ve gone back to aliexpress which is easier to defeat.

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          26 days ago

          It’s a process for me, I open hundreds of tabs, save all URLs, strip trackers from URLs, remove duplicates, then I reload all tabs into a fresh, empty multiaccount container, then I use a scraper addon called gatherfromtabs to pickup all the prices, then I log and setup everything up to the last page of the sale, I tally up all the totals in excel, order by price, usually 100s of ads, find the absolute 3 cheapest ones, review the ads really thoroughly to avoid scams and then buy 10-20x of whatever this item was to make it worth my time.

          This process will become more difficult over time.

        • moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          26 days ago

          Create a new account each time with a new email address (outlook works fine). Profit of unlimited “new customer offer”. You can even do it for each article you purchase.

          With this, I bought a lot of 1 cent crap when it was a thing.

      • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.ml
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        26 days ago

        ya with how expensive plastic crap is nowadays in most stores, why not just buy from a place that sells the same thing that represents more closely to the price of manufacturing them? Of course I wouldn’t buy any tech stuff from there, but a simple plastic container? Temu for sure!

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      Where there was once Tupperware, and makeup, there is now temu