New Temu, Not Same As The Old Temu

At the time Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff fuckery went into effect, I had two orders (actually one order in two separate shipments, one by air and one by sea) en route. Fortunately, delivery times weren't affected. At that point, I stopped even looking on Temu for things I wanted/needed -- less because I anticipated price increases than because I anticipated shipping delays as the tarrifs were implemented at customs facilities, etc.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a particular type of shoe (ankle-height or a little taller, leather or pleather), and decided to have a look at Temu. One immediate change was obvious:

There's always been at least a little bait and switch stuff on Temu. There's a picture of an item. There's a price. When you click through, it turns out that the price is for some kind of accessory (e.g. the front page picture was of a watch for $5.99; turns out a separate watch band is $5.99), while the pictured item is more expensive.

That seems to be on steroids now.

I came across numerous listings for the kind of shoes I was after, with prices like $7.47, $8.63, etc.

Every time I clicked through, the price for the shoes was $22.63 or $27.97, etc., no matter what size or color selected. There was nothing on any of the pages for the front-page price.

I'm not sure how that helps Temu. I'm using up their bandwidth and CPU cycles looking at stuff I'm not going to buy, and I strongly suspect that most other customers will react as I did.

Since then, I've been back to Temu twice, both times to compare prices to Amazon, and I ended up ordering both times because the prices, even with shipping, were better and the items (a motorcycle "cruise control" clamp and a wireless ergonomic mouse) are things I don't need ASAP.

Shipping? Yes.

When you order direct from Temu, there's no shipping charge if you order more than $X worth of stuff. $X seems to vary from order to order, between $10 and $20 for reasons that aren't clear.

But they also sell "Local Warehouse" items. You only get "free" shipping if you order at least $30 worth of stuff from the same seller. And I didn't find anything at either "local warehouse" that seemed worth adding to either order ... so I paid $2.99 shipping.

The first selling point for "Local Warehouse" items is faster delivery. The second, since "Liberation Day," is that the stuff was already in the US, so no price increases from the tariffs.

The second selling point seems to be true, although it's hard to tell because Temu is front-loading "Local Warehouse" items in their listings and you might have to scroll forever before finding a direct-from-Temu version.

On the first point ... well, very mixed results.

I ordered the motorcycle cruise control clamp on June 6. It still hasn't shipped, and won't be here until, tracking says, at least June 24. Normally it wouldn't take that long to get here from China.

The mouse, on the other hand, was ordered on June 9. It got handed over to USPS on June 10. It's supposed to arrive by June 18, it's projected to arrive by June 16, and from past experience I won't be surprised if it shows up on June 14. It's coming from California, so I don't think that's a terrible wait.

But now I know that "Local Warehouse" orders aren't reliably fast. I'd only ordered that way once before, and the item arrived in two days, making it seem at least competitive with Amazon. Now I know better.