- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Budget-conscious buyers hunting for rock-bottom prices at Temu may be getting more than they bargained for, a recent U.K. news program has found.
In “The Truth About Temu: Dispatches,” Channel 4 reporter Ellie Flynn found dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals in items from a $4 “silver effect” necklace to a $14 children’s jacket.
Operated by PDD Holding under the auspices of WhaleCo, the Chinese-founded marketplace has gained a massive following over the past two years, with one-quarter of the British population downloading the app and some half a million users worldwide.
Temu’s explosive rise has everything to do with the impossibly cheap prices it offers on everything from swimsuits to electric scooters, which can cost 10-40 percent less than on Shein, even for identical goods. That and the gamification of commerce—think discount roulette wheels and countdown timers—that once led GlobalData Retail analyst Neil Saunders to describe it as “addictive as sugar.”
Temu is just a marketplace. Think “Amazon with only third party sellers.”
If heavy metals are a problem, that’s not a Temu problem, that’s a China problem.
It’s also a Temu problem as they’re the sellers of said products and should be verifying that those products are not made of toxic materials.
Then I am quite certain it is also an Amazon problem, and an eBay problem, and an AliExpress problem. Singling out Temu is disingenuous.
Yes, it is also all those seller’s problem as well. And I’m not sure shy you seem to think that’s an issue. It’s not.
Because the headline frames it as a purely Temu problem and with Temu-exclusive products, when all these other marketplaces should be included as they sell the same things. They should have compared them with other marketplaces as well to show whether or not it’s a broader “online marketplace” problem.
Your phrasing is technically correct but it omits that perhaps the scale of the problem is different among different marketplaces. Perhaps this is evident in the predominant selection of items and their prices. Thus you’re trying to make it sound that you’re gonna get the same amount of poison when you buy a jacket on Amazon and Temu, when you have a pretty good chance to buy a western brand on Amazon and you have zero chance to do that on Temu.
That’s a fair point on item selection. You get the major brands that are better about getting their supply chains. So the overall proportion is different, though still a significant problem.
My point was more about buying the same cheap jacket on Amazon as you’d find on Temu or AliExpress, which is what I see most of on Amazon.