When I want something cheap, I usually hit Aliexpress (website). As I was looking at the Aliexpress app page on the Google Play Store to check its privacy details, TEMU came up as a recommended app.

Now, my wife has used TEMU in the past, but since she often can’t find her way around things, I downplayed her negative experience as “user error”. That said, I went to the TEMU website and started looking around.

I found something that was a reasonable price, but then get this message saying I could get this item free through the app… sigh. OK. I sign up with my usual fake/random credentials and add this “free” item to my cart.

A spinning prize wheel comes up. Hey, I can get THREE free items now! Sweet. I spend the next 3 hours looking for stuff I can actually use, doom-scrolling through everything from women’s underwear to t-shirts with assault rifle print. Literally something for everyone. LOL

Then I select my third “free” item, and another spinning prize wheel comes up. “100% off the next $35”. Ok.

I didn’t need more stuff, but hey, 100% off sounds like more free stuff!

I spend another hour looking, keeping an eye on the amount “saved” (apparently $600+, for stuff that is sold on Aliexpress for maybe $25).

When I finally get to check out, I get another spinning prize wheel. “100% off $100”!! Goddamn, I’m on a roll here. How do these guys make any money?!!

More time looking… I must have spent well over 4 hours on their app. Time to check out.

$67? Huh? What about 100% off and all that nonsense? Enter your phone number*

  • You must agree to get promotional texts, or you can’t check out… hmm, maybe my wife wasn’t wrong.

In any case, there was no way to actually get anything “free”. I deleted the app, deleted my account, and will never touch this scam ever again.

Do people actually end up getting anything from Temu? I thought AliExpress was bad, but the experience is 1000x better.

    • Showroom7561@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I bought a bunch of bike stuff from Ali recently, including short-sleeved jerseys. Really inexpensive stuff, but surprisingly good quality. Got some other bike stuff, which saved a ton of money vs. getting them from Amazon.

      I honestly would have expected the same quality from TEMU, but the experience is so, so much worse. Any money I might have saved would have been lost trying to navigate around their scummy runarounds!

      It’s hard to understand how a company can become so successful doing things like that.