Cabel Sasser on Mastodon:
the temu app will be studied for generations.
i opened the app, and recorded this unedited, nearly two minute, launch sequence. it somehow just gets funnier and more absurd
I agree with this sentiment, right down to the fact that Temu doesn’t deserve capital letters.
I placed an order from Temu back in August 2023. At the time Temu was the #1 app in the App Store. I surmised it was some sort of crap store, but wanted to see for myself. It is in fact not merely a crap store but a spectacular crap store — like if a souvenir shop on a Jersey shore boardwalk were the size of a football stadium. Thousands of items, many of them rip-offs, at absurdly low prices. I bought (screenshot):
- Two Apple Watch straps. One of them knocking off Apple’s Braided Solo Loop for $1.88; another knocking off the Apple Watch Ultra Alpine Loop for $2.34.
- A pair of knock-off AirPods: $8.98.
- Another pair of wireless earbuds branded “Lenovo” but definitely not made by Lenovo: $10.25.
- A knock-off Apple Watch Ultra (“Smart Watch Answer/Make Call 2.19" HD Full Touch Screen Watch With BT Call, Fitness Tracker With Heart Monitor”), which included both orange and black (misspelled “balck”) rip-offs of Apple’s Ocean Band, for $16.49.
- A “Magnetic Suction Anti-Lost Lanyard” for, I think, AirPods: $1.79.
- An iPhone case: $3.46.
Grand total for all seven items: $48.81. I ordered it all on 20 August 2023, and it arrived at my P.O. box on 2 September. The contents of the box looked less like it had been “packed” than “picked out of the trash and hurriedly stuffed into a box”.
The iPhone case was so flimsy it didn’t properly snap onto the phone. The Apple Watch straps were ... OK? They were about as good as you could hope given that they cost around $2 each. The knock-off Apple Watch Ultra actually did sort of work, insofar as it had a color screen that turned on and showed watch-like screens (that looked nothing at all like WatchOS). The watch case was made of plastic, and watch straps did not snap into place in the slide-in channel where they connect — they just permanently slid around. I couldn’t get either of the bluetooth earbuds to work but I didn’t spend more than a few minutes trying with each, because I realized I had no intention of putting them into my ears. The lanyard I don’t remember.
Temu today no longer tops the U.S. App Store’s Top Free Apps list, but it remains in the top 25. (It was at #19 this morning, and #22 this afternoon.) Temu’s slogan remains unchanged: “Shop like a billionaire.” Who am I to argue with that? We know one of them is on a lot of drugs — maybe all of them are, and Temu is what it’s like.
After I placed that initial order, I started getting emails from Temu. Seven of the emails pertained to my order: an order confirmation, a shipping notice, a shipping update, another shipping update, a “we noticed your order didn’t arrive on time so here’s a $5 coupon” update, a delivery confirmation, and then a prompt to leave “an honest review detailing our product quality and your overall experience”. The emails kept coming. I decided to leave them turned on until I wrote about my Temu experience on Daring Fireball. As I type this sentence, I’ve received a grand total of 916 emails. That’s just under one per day for the 1,076 days since I placed my one and only order from them. Here’s a text file with the dates and Subject lines for all 916 emails. In the early months after placing my order, they sent me multiple emails per day, every single day. I particularly enjoy how, in the Subject lines, they occasionally abbreviate my name as “John Gru...” (for privacy?), despite the fact that (a) the emails are all sent to me, and (b) in many of the other messages, they spell out my full name in the Subject.
Don’t do what I did and actually try Temu. Just watch Sasser’s video. It tells you everything you need to know.
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