The past making quality clothing was difficult, cutting it right, sourcing the right patterns designs materials, stitching it took care etc. In our world making quality clothing should be easy with all the technology but what we see in bad quality that you wash a few times and it is trash. It is uglier designs than in the past etc. It makes no sense. It is like a conspiracy where people don't want to sell quality clothes at a fair price. Like all companies got together and decided we will sell crap clothes at cheap prices and good clothes at extortion prices. There is zero correlation with actual costs.
EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
161–170 of 423 posts
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an EU consumer, I appreciate laws and regulations that ban selling cheap junk that might burn my house down or poison my baby. I take it you don't?
In my limited experience not all countries do think like this.
It's a cultural thing yeah. Americans genuinely do on the whole think that their approach is better. The good news I guess is that if you're an American and you think "Well I don't" you can (at least for now†) just leave.
† If you lived in the German Democratic Republic (aka "East Germany") in 1950 you could literally just walk to West Germany, by 1961 all other borders are closed and fenced and in Berlin the Wall is up and people who try to escape are being executed routinely. This didn't happen instantly over night, but it took about a decade to go from routine to "Vast majority of people who attempt it are killed".
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#163I’m curious if its actually difficult or trivial for Temu to enforce
It’s not simply difficult, it’s an existential threat to their current business model.
Unless I’m missing something obvious, enforcing regulatory compliance from the army of hustlers that is their vendor market would be expensive or impossible.
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wi…
So, like Aliexpress is considered more ethical at this point? Asking as I heard Aliexpress’ ware could sometime be produced forced labors from prison in the underlying retailers. Not that prisoners situation seems particularly fine across all EU and USA either.
More ethical makes it more palatable. The reality is that alibaba is a lesser evil
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#165Big corp penny slap on the fingers. I dont this amount will change behaviour or incentive to make larger profit.
The theory is that this won't be the only fine if Temu doesn't fix this. So yes, a slap on the fingers, but the fines should grow bigger if Temu doesn't address this.
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually both: they handed one-time fine for past behaviour (about 200 M€, not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years or so; cf. Apple tax breaks in Ireland); and threatening more fines if they don't play along in the future. One of the kinds of punishment that Commision can slap (subject to court oversight, ofc) is „daily fines”, which is a fine that accumulates with constant dail…
> not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years But the EU got some headlines and people believed they came down with an iron first so that's really the most important thing here In my world finest are served when they're actually paid, not threatened
In my world people are innocent until proven guilty before a court of law, twice. Yes, even business people. Executive branch shouldn't be able to just bankrupt a company and tell the owners to go through the courts to maybe recover the money in 10 years, if they're innocent after all.
There were several such cases in my country before we joined EU, most high profile one was against Optimus SA (predecessor to CD Projekt), where they just took people's money, without cause as they courts later found. Never again.
So the middle ground is, Temu can choose to play hardball all the way to ECJ, but if they are wrong (they are and they know it), the cost will be substantial (200 M€ + interest + daily fines + interest). So I think they'll enter talks, pay 200 M€ and pinky promise to delist offending items.
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#167Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#168Big corp penny slap on the fingers. I dont this amount will change behaviour or incentive to make larger profit.
I don't understand how €200M can ever be considered a "penny slap".
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no such thing as "Chinese Export". https://cemarkingassociation.co.uk/latest-news/ce-marking-an...
There is such a thing. The Chinese Export one was specifically created to intentionally be confusable with the real CE marking (Conformité Européenne). And it works exactly as intended. People see “CE” and think it’s the real CE one but it’s the intentionally confusable one. https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-c... https://starfishmedical.com/resource/conformite-europeenne-m...
There is a conspiracy theory for everyone it seems, even for the educated. No there is no "legitimate" Chinese-mandated CE that can ever be allowed in EU. It would completely destroy the trade relationship and cause Chinese underwriter labs to be completely banned from ever testing for CE marks.
HOWEVER, there are a lot of fake CE marks printed by dodgy companies who make the same shitty products that gets imported via Temu. They are already in the business of selling contraband and dangerous factory seconds, no need for conspiracies to give a legitimate twist to their contraband business.
Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products
#170Isn't there some kind of law to disallow imports without a CE / RoHS / etc label? Why allow it to enter the EU, and then fine the seller afterwards?
Who says the products don’t have fake CE labels stuck on? A CE label does not - as far as I can tell - have any security features.
Yup, CE is self-declatory. To prove it, you need to actually check the documentation from the manufacturer's web page. Usually there are numbers for individual tests on the product.