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Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads

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471–480 of 721 posts

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

#471

I wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands in between them. That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.

15 different variants of the same product, all obviously cheaply made from the same factory, with varying degrees of quality control and reviews strewn about the various “brands” of the product so that it’s much harder to have a negative review everywhere. Yeah, this sucks. Though the correct thing to do here is to enforce this hygiene on the platforms themselves. They have every resource and means to be able to prev…

Yeah, and it's not even necessarily a problem with the product itself. Sometimes I do want something cheap and disposable. The problem is that you have roughly zero information about the retailer, and manufacturer, and anyone in between. If one product listing gets bad reviews, someone can spin up 5 more listings with slightly different metadata. It's effectively a Sybil attack against the reputation system of the market.

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

#472

I wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands in between them. That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.

it's the whole point of the tariffs. China does an end run around all of our laws, consumer safety, human rights, workers conditions, intellectual property, all that, and in doing so they cut costs and beat domestic companies at the market. Tariffs are a tax we charge to represent those things they have immorally refused to do while participating in our market. A country can't effectively have things like a minimum w…

after 50 years of de-industrialization in US, it's a sad fact that US can no longer produce most of those items, yes it's totally gone. It will take a few decades to rebuild, if possible at all. For now, whatever those junks are at Amazon, there are not many options to procure them elsewhere.

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

#473

I wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands in between them. That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.

it's the whole point of the tariffs. China does an end run around all of our laws, consumer safety, human rights, workers conditions, intellectual property, all that, and in doing so they cut costs and beat domestic companies at the market. Tariffs are a tax we charge to represent those things they have immorally refused to do while participating in our market. A country can't effectively have things like a minimum w…

Do you mean this is the point of a carefully planned, deliberated, executed, and announced tariff rollout, or do you mean that's the whole point of tariffs as they are currently being implemented in the United States?

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 different variants of the same product, all obviously cheaply made from the same factory, with varying degrees of quality control and reviews strewn about the various “brands” of the product so that it’s much harder to have a negative review everywhere. Yeah, this sucks. Though the correct thing to do here is to enforce this hygiene on the platforms themselves. They have every resource and means to be able to prev…

I ended up drastically cutting back on Amazon purchases when they started getting flooded with brands like that. Its absolutely on Amazon to maintain quality. There are certain brands and types of products I'll order there because they're just harder to find otherwise, but its mostly a last resort these days given that Amazon doesn't care to curate what is on their "shelves".

I love it in terms of consumer experience. I like several products from AliExpress and the like, but sometimes find they're available for the same price or cheaper and faster with better customer service from Amazon. I don't care that they have generic brand names in either case

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

#475

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…

You really expect that kind of support from something ahipped across the globe for peanuts? Ali/Temu and the kind serve specific purposes and they do it well. I find reviews on those sites still useful, and at least on Ali there are a fair number of negative ones as well. Users tell if a specific part works with Home Assistant or zigbee2mqt. I suggest to sort by order number and not stars.

"That kind of support" is the absolute bare minimum. If you're not even providing that then you're not fit to sell anything, at any price.

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

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse support. Amazon usually will try and make you whole-ish, aliexpress is like lmao

That is not my experience with AliExpress. I usually just got my money back when I complained.

They're more likely to only give a few dollars back rather than a full refund

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

#477

I wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands in between them. That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.

it's the whole point of the tariffs. China does an end run around all of our laws, consumer safety, human rights, workers conditions, intellectual property, all that, and in doing so they cut costs and beat domestic companies at the market. Tariffs are a tax we charge to represent those things they have immorally refused to do while participating in our market. A country can't effectively have things like a minimum w…

What zamalek describes isn't just that China manufactures cheap products. The complain is more about retailers or marketplaces (particularly online ones) that encourage essentially anonymous, zero-cost seller accounts and product listings.

Traditional retailers like Target or Costco also sell a lot of cheap Chinese stuff, but they don't have quite the same level of junk in their listings.

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ended up drastically cutting back on Amazon purchases when they started getting flooded with brands like that. Its absolutely on Amazon to maintain quality. There are certain brands and types of products I'll order there because they're just harder to find otherwise, but its mostly a last resort these days given that Amazon doesn't care to curate what is on their "shelves".

[flagged]

I don't think its so easy to pull apart what people are buying and what they want to buy.

Amazon has a pretty crippling hold on the online retail industry, and they collect massive amounts of data to decide what to put in front of people.

Targeted marketing and the partnership between marketing and psychology is nothing new, it has gotten stronger though. I have a hard time looking at a market run like that as a roughly free market where the successful products indicate what buyers actually want rather than what they were best coerced (or "nudged") into buying.

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

#479
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you unpack the idea further? There are plenty of things where Temu charges $2.00 and I would be fine paying a 120% tariff on that to bring it to $4.40, because Amazon is charging $8.99 and retailers are selling a seventy pack for $30. But I would not be fine paying a $100 tariff to bring it to $102.

You did a great job explaining it, what more do you need to unpack?

Am I, in fact, going to be hit with a $100 tariff on a $2 item ($2+$100=$102) or a $2.40 tariff ($2*1.2=$4.40) ?

I am looking for language like "Whichever is greater" in the announcement and I'm not seeing it. Do importers choose which to go with? Do customs? It looks like before, shipments below $800 were exempt of all tariffs under the "De Minimis exemption", and that exemption is going away, but I'm still not clear on how the rest of this works.

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh... "Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of…

> Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.

>under diagnosis

Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow up products and services!

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