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

EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 423 posts

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#61

Post by tpm »

spwa4 wrote: post #20

So they let sellers from china, and reseller platforms, get away with violating safety laws for 3 years (just Temu), have 50 BILLION euro in revenue (about 3-4 billion in profit for the platform itself) from those products and then charge them 200 Million for the crime? Can European companies demand equal treatment? Wait, no, I know the answer to that.

Nobody was ever stopping individual member states from prosecuting Temu - they just don't do it because I don't know why, it's too much work? So finally after decades (because this is a decades-long issue with Aliexpress etc) they set up a EU-wide framework and once it starts acting, it's again EU's fault it took so long? They can only do what the member states delegate to them.

But it will eventually get better because in addition to DSA there are other steps; the importers have to declare a responsible person in the EU, the packages will get more expensive etc.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#62

Post by handle584 »

psychoslave wrote: post #44
embedding-shape wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably yeah, Amazon already had long exposure to the regulations from EU and European countries, they surely have some won lessons from these years, compared to Temu which is relatively new and might still be learning how things work, apparently. Temu is what, 3-4 years old or something?

Isn’t Temu basically Aliexpress with some "new shiny" frontend? Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.

Not really, Aliexpress is from Alibaba, who has been in the exporting business for many years. While Temu is from Pinduoduo, a competitor to Alibaba known for malicious business practices including exploiting an Android 0-day vulnerability [0].

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/andro...

Edit: I should add that Pinduoduo also ended up being fined over $200 million after a couple fist fight with auditing officials in China [1]. Stay safe, EU folks.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/fistfight...

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#63

Post by bastawhiz »

rendaw wrote: post #54
HPsquared wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are more than a choking hazard; they can cause severe internal chemical burns, gut perforation and so on initiated by electrolysis.

I think the idea is that the baby would be in the bassinet, the parent would have the remote, not the other way around.

It's well within the realm of possibility that a parent, holding the remote, approaches the bassinet and sets the remote down in a location where it's reachable by the child. Perhaps even in the bassinet! And especially so if the wireless remote is the only way to operate the bassinet: are you going to walk across the room to turn it on?

Not to mention, new parents are often some of the most sleep deprived. The burden should be on the manufacturer to make these safe. And it's not even that hard: just use one of the clasps on the battery compartment that requires a coin or key to open rather than just your fingernails.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#65

Post by markus92 »

dylan604 wrote: post #16
mdrzn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you won't be able to sell in the EU market anymore

Doesn’t Temu direct ship to the customer? What if they ship in plain unmarked packaging and keep changing the address of the sender? Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu? That sounds like a logistical nightmare. This sounds like old school thinking where you can stop whole containers full of stuff from a single supplier.

Temu has EU warehouses they appear to ship from: all return addresses I've seen are EU addresses.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#66

Post by tpm »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #17
mdrzn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you won't be able to sell in the EU market anymore

Say they carry on.... How does EU actually stop people ordering from their website and getting items posted to their house?

There are still borders and customs inspections, that's how.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#67

Post by johanvts »

sunshine-o wrote: post #43

Yes, but who is fining the commision? The best way to fight Temu would be to maintain a society where young people are not so desperate that the only comfort they can afford is to order the cheapest crap online.

The TEMU shoppers I know are all older and plenty rich and just basically don’t realize/comprehend that there is a cost to shopping low quality toxic garbage beyond what the see on their receipt. I don’t think cost of living crisis is fueling TEMU, its the desire for unbounded consumption + gamification of shopping.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#70

Post by maccard »

noir_lord wrote: post #40
maccard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have the fakes problem but Amazon in the UK has a growing amount of stuff that is just resale of stuff from temu. I suspect if you tested the top 10 chargers on Amazon that weren’t anker, you’d find the same problems.

One of the many reasons (up to and including US foreign policy) I don't buy from Amazon any more. I'd sooner give Argos the money, they aren't that much more expensive (if at all) for the common set of things they sell and I can walk and pick it up same day. They broke the first rule of e-commerce - "Don't make the customer think ".

I agree. They’ve also devalued prime - I used to know that prime meant next day, now it just means “free delivery” but it could be 2+ weeks depending on where it’s coming from.

argos are great. I ordered something from them for next day delivery and I had it 20 minutes later. The nearest Argos to me is about 15 minutes away so they must have been sitting waiting for orders.

Post reply on HN