Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

searchengineland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 721 posts

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#161

Post by jampekka »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #82
geor9e wrote: post #20

I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. Mostly little electronics parts and specialized tools for my workshop. Buying from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much. Obviously it's over now. Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a $75-$150 or more bill per package, even a 75 cent envelope will be charged +$75. I feel bad for…

I'm sorry for your convenience loss, but I'm happy for the environment. Not only because of the unrestricted consumerism, but also because of the environmental costs of logistics. I too have ordered fusible resistors from aliexpress that I could not find locally. But things I barely need, only for a small dopamine kick ? I do my best to not have a small baggie shipped from the other side of the planet for that. And n…

The resistors to your local store have to go through logistics as well. And doing the last mile yourself is a lot more inefficient than a post service doing it.

Transport is also quite small fraction of most products' environmental costs.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#162

Post by echoangle »

nottorp wrote: post #135
bufferoverflow wrote: post #50

I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad, you're out of luck". So I can't get a refund, I…

Temu/Aliexpress/etc are for buying very cheap clothing. 2 out of 3 items fit and 1 out of 3 is decent quality. That's still cheaper, depending on what tariffs your country is charging. I wouldn't buy something where a warranty would be useful from them. Ok, maybe very niche hobby products, but then I wouldn't expect a warranty.

AliExpress is great for electronics. Not the „I need a phone“ stuff (although for that it’s fine too, I think), but more the „I need an ESP-32 module“.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#163

Post by close04 »

IshKebab wrote: post #98
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had bad reviews been supressed by amazon several as well, so at this point I'm assuming any review system is theater.

Amazon definitely don't do anything like this.

Every review I left for Amazon products (Amazon EU) got rejected until it was diluted into nothing. The explanation was always vague, listing a dozen possible reasons, none of which fit what I wrote.

On non-Amazon products it's a coin toss for negative reviews. Many are published, some are not. Can't explain why.

Google is not better, negative reviews I leave on Maps are published very selectively. Maybe big-tech found a way to monetize this too. I know sites like Yelp are more or less an extortion business where you pay to get negative reviews wiped.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#164

Post by Freak_NL »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #62
astar1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

too little too late for Forever 21 and it's 350 locations which once employed 43,000 people at it's peak: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/forever-21-files-for-second-... The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago.

I'm surprised the Chinese sellers are able to compete for fast fashion. Clothes are the one thing I don't really buy online because getting sizing right is already hard even when you're not dealing with Temu-style "well actually we said there's a +- 25 tolerance in the fine print and this is within tolerance" bullshit. AliExpress is indispensable for small technical items. If they're available locally at all, shippin…

It's not fast-fashion they are competing with — they invented ultra-fast-fashion. Their platforms (Shein and Temu) are fully geared towards allowing manufacturers to jump on board the latest hypes and trends and have a saleable product on there within a week or so, to sell for a few weeks until it is no longer trending.

You want a 'My tariffs did that' T-shirt? Temu.

https://www.temu.com/search_result.html?search_key=tariffs%2...

Local store chains can't match that velocity.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#165

Post by Symbiote »

willvarfar wrote: post #118
petersellers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you are replying to isn't claiming that the seller pays the tariffs, they are saying that it's not in the seller's interest to notify buyers of the tariff charge because it's essentially free anti-tariff messaging once buyers are hit with the sudden fees.

but in the process all their customers will have been burned buying something from Temu and many will be wary of buying in the future even if the tariff situation improves etc?

That's certainly how it worked out in Europe, where the processing fee was much less (€5-10 usually).

Since 2021 foreign merchants can send the goods tax paid, they collect the VAT and send it to to EU country, so there's no fees at customs. It works perfectly fine, but many people don't realize it or don't trust this.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#166

Post by oliwarner »

ipsum2 wrote: post #71
bufferoverflow wrote: post #50

I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad, you're out of luck". So I can't get a refund, I…

Aliexpress has the same problem, quite frustrating.

Do you buy anything based on reviews there? They're obviously silly and exchanged for discounts and "coins" so I just ignore them in a way I don't elsewhere.

I quite like AE because you can avoid the app and returns on DOAs often just involve a refund without returning anything. There are silly annoyances, and sometimes buying locally is inexplicably cheaper, but for little electronics, they're hard to beat.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#167

Post by imposterr »

threeseed wrote: post #117
roxolotl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.

I've seen countless interviews of Trump supporters who believe that China is the one paying for it. Which I can completely understand because if it is a cost on them it would be typically be called a tax. That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but believe it's all just a negotiating tactic: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/

Some Chinese exporters are definitely splitting the cost of these tariffs with their American importer counterparts. While this isn't as significant as "China pays all the tariffs", it's also not "Americans pay all the tariffs".

Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#168

Post by philjohn »

nottorp wrote: post #135
bufferoverflow wrote: post #50

I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad, you're out of luck". So I can't get a refund, I…

Temu/Aliexpress/etc are for buying very cheap clothing. 2 out of 3 items fit and 1 out of 3 is decent quality. That's still cheaper, depending on what tariffs your country is charging. I wouldn't buy something where a warranty would be useful from them. Ok, maybe very niche hobby products, but then I wouldn't expect a warranty.

Not entirely.

For cycling there are now a group of trusted companies that many people purchase from - WinSpace, Magene, iGPSport, that stand behind their products.

I have a Magene p505 crank-based power meter - £250 delivered. It's as accurate as ones costing 4X as much, and has not shown any signs of issues in the year+ I've been using it.

The idea that AliExpress is just for cheap tat is less and less true, and products in certain sectors coming out of China are just much better value for money (and often, as good as, or better quality) than you'd find from homegrown companies. For cycling, especially Carbon Fibre parts, this isn't surprising - the sheer depth and breadth of composites knowledge from years of making bikes for western brands has paid off handsomely.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#169

Post by iLoveOncall »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #95
bufferoverflow wrote: post #50

I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad, you're out of luck". So I can't get a refund, I…

I had bad reviews been supressed by amazon several as well, so at this point I'm assuming any review system is theater.

I have written more than 200 reviews on Amazon in the past year and only one got rejected, and quickly approved I corrected one thing that was out of the rules.

More than 50% of those are below 3 stars. They don't suppress any legitimate reviews.

Re: Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

#170

Post by brnt »

vitorgrs wrote: post #113
beAbU wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't lump shein and temu in the same bucket. My wife is an avid shein user and from what I can tell the quality so far is really good for what you pay. Shein is in reality just an aliexpress/baba wrapper, but they put huge amounts of effort into accurate sizing charts for their clothing, and their customer reviews system actively incentivises buyers to upload pictures of themselves wearing the purchased clothing…

Shein biggest thing is actually AI/ML. As far I remember, what they really invested is on the service per see. Shein gather data from consumers on internet, on what's the latest trends/art, and just create clothes. And they do this like, always. There's no "Summer" or "Winter" season clothes. They just update them continually.

So, the same as Temu.
Post reply on HN