In any way you know of. I find people here are more aware of politics and ethics behind big companies and this is what prompted my question but I’m also curious about any other differences.
I’m in Australia and I’ve only used Ebay and AliExpress so far. I find AliExpress has more variety and somewhat cheaper prices but I don’t know why or anything else.
When I first heard about Temu it was always in relation to dodgy products and sex toys so I didn’t pay much attention to it, however lately I keep hearing about people buying regular stuff without issues. Never tried it myself though.
I shop eBay for legit parts, used stuff, and tires.
The other two are trash.Depending on what I’m looking for, eBay has been great for finding used CDs, games, and electronics for a lot cheaper than anywhere else. As for the other 2, you’ll just get cheap quality junk that might even be harmful (as with the case of the Australian child who got seriously harmed by a temu product).
Temu uses actual, honest to God, slave work
Stay away from Temu. Also, same with Foxcon that Apple uses. We really have a medieval world we’re living in.
Yep, also Cisco equipment. Yikes.
Honest slave work?
It’s like normal slave work, but they don’t try to hide it.
Ali Express = Straight from the Chinese factory town to to you. There are various things to watch out for. Like with electronics components the shops sell the stuff that didn’t pass quality assurance testing for whomever ordered a manufacturing run, and now the factory is selling the rejects via AE shops.
Temu = Ali Express but now with more slavery
EBay = Anyone can do eCommerce but reputation carries enough weight that at least things usually aren’t scams. A lot of it (like many amazon sellers in the US) are just middlemen for AliExpress, Temu, or similar but hopefully they get sniffed out eventually. It’s like it’s not the wild west any more because the railroad came through, but the laws between sheriffs are still real different.
Ahhh so many things screwed up with the fashion industry. Especially with how much cheap clothing overstock is left at stores and how much is discarded so quickly after being purchased.
And it’s all the same crap that’s on Amazon, just without their markup.
I’ve spent at least $5000 on aliexpress over the past few years, maybe more. I’ve never had an issue that wasn’t resolved with a refund or a replacement. They’re pretty reliable and I’d recommend them to anyone. They stock a wide variety of components and parts if you’re building electronics or just general DIY / 3d printing / home stuff.
Temu feels way more sketchy. They try to shove more stuff down your throat, and they even have little mini games where you can try to earn free things. They’re way more about just pushing cheap shit. I tried them once, felt dirty and have never gone back.
For somebody from a country that doesn’t have access to McMaster-Carr, Alibaba and Aliexpress are a fairly cheap and reliable way to get stock material for DIY projects.
I don’t know what local sellers of raw materials are thinking with their pricing. 3x Higher prices for the same shitty aluminum or brass stocks. Get fucked, I’m not made out if money.
Yeah, same here actually. Ali express is a legit business, that seems to be in it for the long run and cares about selling a decent product. Temu felt so scammy it wasn’t funny.
Temu looks SUPER sketchy to me. All of those “down load our app!” and “Just one more for 70% off!” deals and so on. I’ve never been to Temu, found an item, and checked out.
AliExpress and Ebay actually let you BUY things.
I haven’t used Temu to compare, but AliExpress’s website bombards you with about 3 coupon or app popups upon loading it as well. That and the constant combo deals they’re pushing with a browsing UI straight from my nightmares.
I’ve never seen those in AE. Must be my ad blocker. I have to purposefully dig the messages to find cupon deals, not that I ever used any.
The browsing UI, well, I’ll give you that one. It sucks. Especially the search function, it won’t show you the product you just saw five minutes ago even if you type its exact listing name on it.
I’ve never orderes from AliExpress, but I considered buying from Temu a few times. Every time something popped up in an add that looked good it told me I had to download the app first, and then app kept trying to get me to buy other things instead of what I came there for. This is why now I refuse to buy from any website that makes me download an app to even see what they have for sale.
I’ve never had any issues with eBay, and I’ve used it a bunch.
Ali Express is legit, by the way, I’ve bought a lot of stuff from them over the years, including smartphones and carbon fibre kayak paddles, so some high value items.
My only complaint is the shipping time is a bit of a crapshoot.
Temu is like Wish but turned into an addictive gambling game targeted at children. (IDK if targeted at children is the right word but that’s the vibe it gives me)
Okay so the vibe I’m getting from all comments is that Temu is the shadiest of all and worse than Wish (another site I forgot about, along with Shein)
Half my Facebook timeline is relatives sharing Temu referals hoping to get a free 5 bucks worth of stuff on Temu.
I’d say it targets people that are easy to scam and likes cheap stuff that’s too good to be true but they’re gonna buy it anyway.
AliExpress and Temu are somewhat similar, as in cheap products of questionable quality.
This of course depends on what you are looking for. I’ve found for electronics repair, AliExpress is legit. No idea about Temu for electronics though.
eBay is completely different. Sure, there are counterfeit items on there, but by and large it is a legit marketplace.
Fun fact: I’ve had the same eBay account since 2003.
Fun fact: I’ve had the same eBay account since 2003.
They say 1999 in my account. :)
But it was actually much earlier. I guess they deleted some database (back in the days when data was still deleted).
Damn mine says 2000 here. I’ve had an ebay account for a quarter of a century. Jesus. I don’t know what’s more surprising, how old I am or how old ebay is.
AliEx stole from me in 2020 and did not fix legitimate issues. I’m not someone that makes problems, returns stuff, or complains. I did $136k on eBay over the course of 2 years as a pro seller. I know the full spectrum and what it is like to be a seller. No one steals from me twice online. I have never used AliEx since.
That’s nasty, about what sort of amount did they steal and how? Are we talking hundreds or thousands? I’ve always been a buyer, never a seller so I’ve no idea how things work on your end.
Worked
In a nutshell, eBay isn’t viable as a business. All fees including shipping and taxes, with a perfect account standing still amounted to 40% margin across that whole timespan. No one can acquire product through legitimate distribution channels and afford commercial space and employee wages (even your own), and have enough margin to sustain a business for any length of time. eBay is only useful for liquidation of goods and for situations where exchange rates can be exploited like with China for the last 20+ years. It takes 3 months+ to close the books on any given item. They do not want you to know the total overhead you are paying to sell items.
With AliEx is was only around $50 and something like 3 orders. The amount is irrelevant to me. I spent several thousand dollars on there in total. Theft is all the same to me. That is a measure of true ethics. If I let it happen, it will happen again, and it will be entirely my fault for allowing it and doing nothing. I have ethical boundaries that life has taught me never to budge on. I operate under these same principals when I interact with others. I learned the hard way when I was a kid.
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Ebay is owned by Paypal or vice versa. That should tell you a lot. They’re a last resort for me. Always buy from actual consumers, not companies.
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Aliexpress takes forever and will change the price will nilly from when you are looking and place the order. If it’s a cheap item, it’s not much usually. Always check on what what you buy after you purchase in case it never comes or comes incorrectly. There is a time limit and they don’t let you know. I buy from them once every other month or so.
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Temu looks shady as fuck so I never tried them.
eBay and PayPal were independent companies. eBay purchased them in 2002 and spun them off in 2016.
I have low hundreds of transactions on eBay and am generally pretty OK with the experience. I don’t understand how people sell on there, especially new products. eBay takes a pretty big slice of the pie, followed by PayPal and friends. Buyers expect free shipping, which also eats into margins. If you choose to charge for shipping, eBay will also take the same commission percentage out of shipping costs. This means you still lose $$ shipping, but you are losing less than you would otherwise.
Selling used stuff makes a lot more sense financially, but eBay will almost always side with the buyer should a dispute occur and not all buyers are good faith actors. This keeps buyers coming to the platform, but it is hard on sellers.
Ebay might be owned by PayPal, but you are buying from real actual people. I’ve bought a lot of corporate surplus server equipment on Ebay. It’s not coming from a random supplier in China or a giant warehouse in the US. Most of my money (minus listing fees) is going to a small business that refurbishes old equipment.
I have bought equipment on Ebay and driven to a small recycling company one city over to pick it up in person.
It can be that way. But if something goes wrong, you’re screwed.
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temu and wish sell the same stuff as amazon for cheaper, so before zou go to amazon go there, at least some Chinese person will get rich of slavery and not amazon
My understanding is that AliExpress was originally aimed at B2B (business-to-business) transactions. So it kind of competed more with the traditional Thomas Register – connect a business that wants to find a supplier, though in this case it took a cut on each transaction, sort of a super-distributor. But it seems to have shifted to have more of a consumer focus. Certainly the few times I’ve taken a glance, there are pretty clearly plenty of consumer-oriented things on there today. AliExpress is China-based.
I haven’t ever done more than very briefly glance at the Temu website, but from my recent reading, it and Shein – which you didn’t mention, not sure if it’s available in Australia – they’re a B2C (business-to-consumer) thing, more like Amazon. They’re aimed at the value segment. My understanding is that one major factor that contributed to Temu and Shein doing well in the US was that low-value shipments from China to the US didn’t have to pay tariffs. I’d guess that this was to help reduce the transaction cost of international sales, since any kind of red tape is going to be magnified if you have to do it many times over. So a vendor in China directly selling a pair of shoes to someone in the US didn’t have to pay a tariff. Larger-value shipments, like a bulk import of a shipping container full of shoes, did. That meant that traditional importers, who would buy a bulk shipment abroad, import it, and then have it sold split up via domestic vendors, were at a disadvantage. I don’t know whether similar factors apply to Australian customs policy. These two are China-based.
Ebay is US-based, was originally an auction site that targeted secondhand stuff. You can get new stuff there now, and not just at auction (and Amazon now sells secondhand stuff, albeit only at fixed, non-auction prices, so I’d guess that they compete more-directly with each other). I’ve only used it when looking for exotic expensive stuff that one can acquire cheaply secondhand, or stuff that can’t be found new today.
Apparently Xometry bought Thomas
My understanding is that AliExpress was originally aimed at B2B (business-to-business) transactions.
Alibaba came first and was aimed at B2B. Aliexpress was their B2C spinoff.
Ah, gotcha, thanks.
Temu is literally just a front page for AliExpress (which is itself a public/consumer front end for Alibaba), so no difference there.You’ll probably find a lot of junk and some halfway decent products.No clue how Aussie eBay is, but here in the states it’s done a lot to clean itself up over the past decade. A few years ago, I never even considered it when online shopping because of how many dropshipping SEO-manipulating accounts there were. It was hard to find quality items from real accounts. Now, I do almost 100% of my online shopping on eBay. Mostly books, which are usually dirt cheap used.
Temu is literally just a front page for AliExpress
?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temu
Parent: PDD Holdings[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AliExpress
Owner: Alibaba Group
They both sell products out of China, and I can believe that the same products might be available on both, but I don’t think that they’re the same organization, if that’s what you’re saying.
You’re right, I was thinking of Alixpress and TaoBao being two front ends for Alibaba
