My first and only experience with Temu ended in disaster. While I expected it to go south and took safety precautions, the experience crashed and burned even more than I planned for.
I Ordered Clothes and They Didn’t Last a Week
The setup is simple: I wanted some basic shirts from Temu. Nothing fancy; just something I could wear underneath my favorite pieces, like cardigans and overshirts. Temu had bulk T-shirts (and a few nice graphic tees), so I thought, “What the heck? Let’s give Temu a try.” I then ordered a bunch of T-shirts for dirt-cheap—so far, so good.
Well, the first red flag was shipping. It was my understanding that Temu could take a couple of weeks. That’s no biggie, but I was starting to worry by the second week. My package bounced around between odd locations, like Alaska, before my shirts finally arrived an entire month later.
The first crisis was averted, but by the end of the first week, a new problem arose. The quality of the T-shirts was extremely poor. It wasn’t just the stitching, but the thinness of the material. The shirts didn’t smell too good, either. I put them through the washer and dryer, only to find that several were torn around the stitching.
There went my chances of being the belle of the ball, but really, I expected this. Looking at the experiences others had with Temu on Reddit—and even those of my family—it was more or less the same. It was enough for me to delete my Temu account entirely.
My Free Gifts Never Came
Gifts are another one of Temu’s selling points, which is what originally pushed me to check the site out. I didn’t want the free stuff, but instead to observe the tactics used. I wasn’t surprised to see Temu use near-identical tactics to those of free mobile games—weaponizing FOMO (fear of missing out) in order to keep me coming back.
I wasn’t even going to attempt to have friends sign up. The kind of data Temu collects is genuinely terrifying, so much so that I used an old smartphone of mine—completely devoid of any personal information—to download the Temu app.
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I tried the mini-games, like Fishland and Farmland. You play the games, earn credits, rinse, and repeat until you’ve earned enough for some free items. The problem was the number of credits I was earning was incredibly low and took significant portions of my day. That tactic wasn’t working either.
What ultimately worked was using a Temu coupon code. I doubled-dipped by adding a handful of tabletop mini figures already on sale for pennies. It zeroed some of the minis, while others were less than $1, and the shirts I ordered were a steal. The shirts I got, but the free minis? Well, it’s been a year and I haven’t seen them yet—and the seller doesn’t even exist on Temu anymore.
Thankfully, I Used Throwaway Accounts
Temu interested me in a purely academic sense. Given its spotty history—and the fact that Temu’s BBB page shows it doesn’t have the company’s seal of approval—I was primed beforehand. I knew I was essentially touching an electric fence on purpose. There are already enough sites that have access to my data, and I wasn’t too thrilled with giving it out to another one that could potentially result in having my identity stolen or my bank account drained.
Everything I used was burnable. I used a throwaway email, an old Android phone, a VPN—even an online debit card with money I had already accepted would probably be wasted. I wasn’t taking any chances. Although I did eventually get my shirts, Temu feels way too scammy for my liking. The fact that I didn’t get my minis (which isn’t a big deal anyway; I have plenty) and the mini-games being so manipulative were all I needed to see.
I’m aware plenty of people have had better experiences with Temu than me, but I’m also not alone—numerous others have had nearly identical experiences. It’s the frequency with which others have been scammed that sets off red flags for me, and why I went to great lengths to keep my personal data safe.
