Say what you may of Temu, and I do think more vetting of certain goods is a good idea, but they fill a very real need. In the part of Europe where I live, the choice is only between intermediaries for the same products coming from China. The local intermediaries sell a very limited picking at staggering margins. And when it comes to certain things, like electronic components, the choice is between importing (old) American stock with a German company as the intermediary, and that's $$$$ and many weeks of shipping, or using Temu or Aliexpress.
There's something unpleasantly snobbish with the way business is done here, a spirit of "if you have to ask the price, our business is not for you". For example, in Instagram, "Local offerings" pop up all the time in the feed. The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed. The ones that show actual prices tend to be shell companies with no employees, no doubt a thin wrapper around an importer from Asia.
yes, i'm very in favor of the shift towards direct-to-consumer among chinese retailers, but that might be because i'm not actually all that sympathetic to small business
I recently bought some custom-built pool lighting directly from the manufacturer in Ningbo, and I have to say, the sales, delivery, and customer support I received was top notch. Their representatives were fluent in English and competent, the product quality was excellent (yes, I carefully inspected it upon receipt because it's going into water), and the entire process from measurement to delivery was fast and smooth. And, of course, the price was right.
There is totally a market for a global website which instead of shipping goods direct from China by plane instead has local warehouses 1 per city and can deliver to your house within a few hours by motorbike.
Aka like Amazon but with much smaller margins.
The savings would come from the fact sea freight is so much cheaper than air freight.
I'm not all that sympathetic to small businesses that exist functionally as drop shippers for the same products with the same absence of support. Much in the same way I roll my eyes and go to 7/11 over the cute "local" markets that are supplied by the same suppliers nationwide, and you end up in a shiplap-walled coffee shop with $8 bags of chips that could exist anywhere.
Small businesses that do the work of curating a niche item, doing QA work that's absent on the shipments from china, and then offering much stronger aftermarket support/replacement/repair? That is often worth a (substantial) premium over wondering if the item showing up in a month is going to work as intended.
There is some validity to a marketplace selling items from a larger range of retailers, however the quality is so poor for many items that it simply is no good for society in any way.
> the quality is so poor for many items that it simply is no good for society in any way.
There are some that are genuinely dangerous and bad for society, but there are tons of goods that are "the same thing but half the price because it lasts a quarter the time" that have genuine utility.
Harbor Freight has basically made a drop-shipping business out of it. I often have tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times.
Copy that over a bunch of verticals and it starts to make sense. Clothing for a costume I'll wear maybe twice, niche cooking gadgets for very specific things, tools to do a one-time repair on a car, a flash drive to turn over photos to family members, yada yada.
> some that are genuinely dangerous ... tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times
Forehead hit hood, but I caught myself so it was a "gentle" reminder instead of a concussion. I should have splurged that time I broke a socket tightening an axle bolt. 150 ft-lbs + 180 degrees is a fair bit of torque.
I think the dirty secret is that a lot of it is not "1/2 the price that lasts 1/4 the time" but "1/4 the price that lasts 9/10 the time" or "1/2 the price for the exact same product without half of the budget going to marketing".
It's not all of it. Some things are seriously worse quality. But really a ton of the "better quality" is just better marketing.
There is a part of conservatism and resistance to change. Online commerce has been seen as "suspicious" by some from the beginning to the point that in, for instance, France free delivery of books is banned... of course this just means that amazon.fr charges 1 cent, instead but it is symptomatic of a state of mind.
Yea, worst is the retail people who clearly hated Temu/Aliexpress etc because they stand no chance at competing with them when they sell the same things but at 10 times the cost (I don’t blame them. Sucks for them) but instead of just saying the truth that they hate the competition they just make up these fake reasons ”oh it’s low quality stuff that will break” when it’s clearly the same stuff from the same factories etc.
The rules where retail companies can extract value for no added value from consumers? And no the rules has not changed. It has always been allied to compete with importers trying to screw over consumers. Which law are you claiming was changed?
Yup. I've even had an (Amazon rather than Temu) power-strip-and-USB combo noticeably sparking and tripping the apartment circuit breakers when plugged in just 6 months after purchase.
Could we interest you in some amazons choice fuses? never more be concerned about replacing a fuse! as these ones, simply wont need replacing! (they survive 5-10x their rated current)
It's a little amusing that he's seemingly linked to the dangerous fuses using his Amazon affiliate links. Hey, may well make a buck if someone's going to buy them anyway, right?
I think the affiliate links work such that any product bought when the lead into the site is the affiliate code will generate affiliate rewards. So even if you don't buy the crap that's linked, maybe you'll buy something else and that counts.
Amazon is does zero quality control on listings, it's just AliExpress which larger margins. At least the reviews at Aliexpress often include exhaustive detail & photos by the terminally skeptical.
It's all fun and games until your neighbour in a terraced house or apartment building unwittingly starts an uncontrollable battery fire. Electric scooters and those 'hoover boards' from a few years ago are notorious when it comes to that, but plenty of underspecced small electronics will fail spectacularly.
Then, that marketplace has no viable business. Society does not owe them anything. Seriously, if your business model requires you to sell illegal stuff, then your company does not deserve to survive. That’s the basics of regulation.
You're assuming the conclusion. Why is it the marketplace platform who should be the police? Should banks have to audit your life before you can open a bank account? Should you be unable to transact with anyone if you're not rich enough for them to justify that expense?
It's not Walmart you're proposing to unperson here.
The sellers are in practice anonymous, and the consumer facing Temu (or Shein, or Aliexpress, etc) very much markets to consumers, yet shirk any responsibility. They are Walmart but ignore the little accountability Walmart faces.
Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.
A major retailer in my country had to recall thousands of units of kids kinetic sand because it contained asbestos. Are you saying we'd be better off had they not been made to recall these? Or that we'd be worse off had there been more regulation preventing kids from inhaling asbestos in the first place?
There are markings that certify that some things are safe according to some standards. You are not in a situation to know what actually is safe or to be able to test it (really, you are not; if you think you are, go talk to your nearest electrical engineer, chemist, or molecular biologist who will provide you several examples of the limitations of your knowledge and abilities). Therefore, trusting those certifications is important, and companies that falsify them must be punished so they stop doing so. It’s not complicated and that’s the whole point of the procedure (and the fine).
How can you be sure? How can you get the information to know whether or not your children's toys, your medicines, your electic equipment, wall paint, food, and everything else you consume or use is safe?
You can't. So... abstain from everything? Make everything yourself - how will you have time with a job? Will you know the food you grow is safe and that your ground isn't polluted with things you can't test for at home? How about the equipment used to make that food - is the metal in that plow made of lead? Is the engine on the tractor safe?
Your due diligence is only possible because other people - usually with specialized education and/or experience - have made laws and standards to keep you safe. You don't have to personally check everything.
You are believing a lie, then, and seem to have missed the point.
You simply cannot have the knowledge to know if everything is safe - no matter what your specialty, there are things you'll have to just trust others for safety. Sure, you might buy a lead test kit that someone else has made, but the only way to know that the test kit works is to monitor your family for lead poisoning unless you have specialized knowledge. And if you have that specialized knowledge, it'll come at the cost of other specialized knowledge. You can't personally know if that bridge you drive on is safe AND know about the metal in your plow AND know if the light bulb you bough is a hazard AND know that your antibiotic matches the label on the box instead of it being that one you are allergic to AND know all the other stuff is safe.
Everything requires trust in products or services unless you have information.
If you ban Temu chargers, people will go to stores to buy the cheapest ones which are identical to the ones on Temu, just for 10x the price.
Edit: Reply to Scroll_Swe as I am rate-limited to posting new comments. The chargers in budget stores are identical to Temu chargers are are frequently recalled.
At least in the UK, the main high-street retailers will only stock goods from reputable brands with a (relatively) decent track record and safety standards. I don't believe there is any intersection between products sold on Temu and e.g. Argos, John Lewis.
This talking point is everywhere in this thread. But bear in mind that you have no clue whether two chargers (for example) are the same without disassembling them and checking. Noname Chinese manufacturers are very good at producing things that are superficially similar to other things. It does not mean that two widgets that look similar actually are.
The main difference with most physical stores is that those will accept responsibility for the stuff they sell, because otherwise regulations would put them out of business.
Not in The Netherlands. Plenty of stores that stock chargers identical to the ones on AliExpress and Temu. Action, Big Bazar, SoLow.
Edit: Reply to lozenge as I am still rate-limited by HN. Some of them get recalled, the vast majority of them are still being sold and could burn your house down.
No, dollar store is a rank above the rankest shit from Temu.
There’s name brand (Apple, Anker, etc → made in China but made well), then there’s off-brand (cheaper than above but still made decently), then store-brand (Harbor Freight and friends, too; cheaper but still functional, not quite as nice), then dollar-store brand (barely functional but usually still “safe”), then Temu-shit (often not fit for purpose and fake certifications, actually dangerous).
I think the line should be much earlier than that. But even with this very thin line, like the parent said, the deficient products are everywhere. Just look at the recalls in any major store here (Carrefour, Action, Leclerc). And that's for the main brands/distributors, go into any bazaar or market and you'll find the exact same products you find on Aliexpress/Temu, but with 10x price markup, like the parent said.
Don't get me wrong. I think companies should be held to higher standards: i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system.
There are generally two ways governments hold companies accountable for dangerous products.
The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses.
The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their technology or raise costs to exclude new entrants. The rules are often inefficient or poorly conceived with bad cost/benefit ratios. And companies making products that are dangerous but nevertheless comply with the rules will point to their checkbox compliance to dodge liability.
The problem with the first one is that it doesn't work well against companies outside the jurisdiction, because then you can't sue them, and the importer will be a small entity that just files for bankruptcy if you try to sue them. But the second one has the exact same problem. They sell products that don't comply with the rules; if you try to fine them they're outside the jurisdiction and the only thing in the jurisdiction is a fungible importer that will dissolve if you try to go after them.
In that environment the thing that actually works is the third thing. Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones. But this is the thing the second one inhibits, because then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted. And then customers are stuck choosing between the overpriced incumbents and the far cheaper foreign suppliers that may or may not be safe, with many people risking the latter because they have so much lower margins.
You sure typed a lot to say 'a few kids are going to get the skin melted off their face by an exploding battery, that's just the cost of doing business!'
Notice that you fail to present any argument and are only retreating into indignation at the existence of the problem. You present no viable solution or counterargument to the criticism of the status quo.
EU CE requirements are generally (outside some universally more regulated domains like medical devices) pretty lightweight to deal with, and pretty sensible. I've gone through them, and honestly the biggest pain is finding the applicable standard. Otherwise you basically just need to follow the standard and write up how you think your design follows it, and stick it into a drawer, most likely never to be seen again. You usually have to cause a very notable problem or be very obviously breaking the rules to get the regulator's attention.
We've already tried the third one in the US before the FDA. A ton of people kept dying.
Milk was filled with borax and formaldehyde, coffee was cut with sawdust/charred bone/lead, spices were often 100% counterfeit.
The market (heavily) incentivized fraud.
In New York, in one year (1857), 8000 infants died to "swill milk" [0].
The second option (FDA and regulation) wasn't lobbied for, and the Food Bill of 1902 actually failed through heavy (counter)lobbying initially [1], until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 [2] passed.
Invoking 1857 is not a valid argument really, cause consumer priorities were different. Cheaper with some level of risk (which today's American, or German would consider excessive) was preferred option hence the market response as it was - at least it's a reasonable guess.
In less rich countries it is how things work right now.
Industries dump toxic waste into waterways if they can get away with it in the US today (literally today [0]). I agree that I might not be specifically worried about borax milk if FDA was reversed, but I would absolutely expect risky shortcuts in food offerings.
The incentives in the market has never changed. That's what regulation is for, shifting market incentives/forces to favor consumers/society.
> Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones.
.. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.
> then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted.
This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything? And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?
> i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system
They are not really. If one of the big brand shop is found importing stuff with fake certificate, they’ll experience the same thing. One of the advantage of the stores you mention is that they have a procedure for recalls, and their responsibility is on the line if they sell faulty goods. Good luck getting anything from Temu or AliExpress in the same situation (at least Amazon is very good with this).
Common sense? What sort of common sense allows you to remotely assess the safety and build of a product? Even if you get a charger in your hand, can you tell?
Can your family? How about your neibhbors? Does anyone you know have this ability?
There is no common sense to be had here. There are people with more specialized information that I have that look into this. There are laws to address this - and I'm pretty sure these laws were written with the blood of folks killed by faulty products.
It's so cheaper that you can buy 2, disassemble one and inspect the electronic (spot thermometer and a cheap ESR tester). it's a charger not a nuclear power plant !
I downvote comments like this, since they make the comment useless. No-one can vouch for or argue against the comment when it's some "part" of a continent of over 40 countries.
My reaction to this sentiment is that they fill the same need in Europe as Uber did in the USA. They found a way to operate in a market while avoiding its regulations and are therefor able to offer much lower prices as their competitors who still follow the regulations.
Europe has historically had pretty strict consumer protection laws, and ever since the end of the Cold War these consumer protection laws have been slowly chipped away. When I was a kid for example companies were not allowed to target children in their marketing material. When American media became predominant in the continent, instead of enforcing our own consumer protection laws against American advertisers, regulators just ignored it and allowed it to proliferate, effectively making ads targeting children legal in the continent. Regulators have been showing the exact same inaction towards Chinese retailers breaking our own laws as they did towards American advertisers three decades ago. I foresee that consumer safety laws getting the same fate as the ban on ads targeting children.
I know your mileage may vary in different areas of Europe but in Italy and Spain you'll find a plethora of random general stores that resell Aliexpress sorts of goods at a very low markup over direct ordering. The stock variety is obviously more limited but those stores are amazing and fit a really key need.
Most of the ones I'm thinking of are just corner stores - it's not a brand or chain to my knowledge. An example might be Bazar Gran Puerto, El Puerto de Sta Maria, CA, ES.
The ones in Spain often market themselves with their Chinese-ness: "Hyper China", "Panda Bazaar", "Maxi Barato (super cheap)", etc. would be some representative names & signage you see outside.
They range in size from small shops to things with huge floor space.
One thing I've found is that they seem to sell very low quality stuff: e.g. on aliexpress you can buy a flashlight which is built out of metal, has usb-c charging, for $10, whereas in the physical shop, you get the plastic one that takes AA batteries for $2. So they're not a replacement for AliExpress, Temu & co.
More niche hardware has been impossible for me to find in the EU marketplaces I got to with searches, with only availability from US ebay, and then Chinese marketplaces. Or if it does exist here it's the same used part but it costs 500€ instead of 40
That is not a good reason to fudge certifications and sell dangerous goods. I sympathise with your use case, but the solution is not "let’s just import whatever, as long as it’s cheap".
> The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed.
I cannot speak for the specific part of Europe that you are in, but in the professional Photography community, it is common practice to not list prices and instead have a "contact us" option. The reason isn't a, "Look at us, we're so exclusive and fancy!" Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off or think they are a master negotiator and can essentially get the work done for free. All of the professionals I've spoken to are happy to work with customers to find a package at an affordable price for them, or at least recommend other professionals in whatever price range they have in mind. The issue is that its exceptionally hard to convey that in a sincere, real way because if someone only sees a price of say $10 000 or whatever, they are naturally going to assume that you cannot possibly get anything for $100-$1 000.
In truth though, many are glad to try and accommodate and get people something that they will be happy with. Perhaps it ends up being 1 or 2 photos instead of an album of photos or whatever, or perhaps the photoshoot is a little bit more "low budget" than a standard one, but there is still lots of opportunity to get the client something they will be happy with. People tend to get wrapped up in the bottom line though, and just assume that they can't afford to capture a happy memory because of the cost - that's something that photographers really want to avoid because (aside from scaring off paying customers! :) ) it means less photos existing, or making it feel impossibly hard to ever show an interest in photography, which is very sad for people who live and breath it.
> Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off
Yet somehow other businesses manage to convey tiered pricing without scaring customers.
Imagine trying to book a hotel room but were told to contact them because they have a range of rooms from single bed to honeymoon suite. "We couldn't possibly list all the packages, it would confuse you!"
Or try to buy a car, but the dealer refused to list a base price because "we have so many options it's meaningless".
Withholding guideline or indicative pricing is a deliberate obfuscation designed to increase friction and reduce choice.
Really hits hard when you have to go to Home Depot to buy 6 spade connectors for $7.99 to use in a project with 3.3V 300mA max, when you can buy about 500 of them from Aliexpress for the same price.
Until you learn the hard way that they are not up to the standard advertised, if they happen to be rated in the first place.
It is common knowledge that Chinese manufacturers maintains at least three configs of the same product, the best one sent off for rating, the middle for knowledgeable buyers, the worst being the 500-for-$7.99 shit for the mass market, who buys nothing but the cheapest.
> Evidence from a mystery shopping exercise included in the Commission's investigation shows that a very high percentage of the selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of tested baby toys posed safety risks of medium to high severity, as they contain chemicals exceeding legal safety limits or pose suffocation hazards due to detachable parts.
> Under the DSA, designated Very Large Online Platforms are required to diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures.
Probably yeah, Amazon already had long exposure to the regulations from EU and European countries, they surely have some won lessons from these years, compared to Temu which is relatively new and might still be learning how things work, apparently. Temu is what, 3-4 years old or something?
I mean the same goes for most US companies, every time they first arrive in Europe they stumble around breaking laws and what not until they get fined to act properly, happened a bunch of times before, most famous examples being Uber and AirBnb, but Amazon been in trouble for the same thing in the past too.
Isn’t Temu basically Aliexpress with some "new shiny" frontend?
Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.
Not really, Aliexpress is from Alibaba, who has been in the exporting business for many years.
While Temu is from Pinduoduo, a competitor to Alibaba known for malicious business practices including exploiting an Android 0-day vulnerability [0].
Edit: I should add that Pinduoduo also ended up being fined over $200 million after a couple fist fight with auditing officials in China [1].
Stay safe, EU folks.
So, like Aliexpress is considered more ethical at this point? Asking as I heard Aliexpress’ ware could sometime be produced forced labors from prison in the underlying retailers. Not that prisoners situation seems particularly fine across all EU and USA either.
Like the other commenter said, all you can say is less evil.
Basically everything from China is made by factory workers working 12 hour shifts with 1 day off every 14 days, or programmers working 12 hour a day with 1 day off every 7 days. So forced labors from prison is not that bad comparing to daily life there, just another one of these first world problems.
We don’t have the fakes problem but Amazon in the UK has a growing amount of stuff that is just resale of stuff from temu. I suspect if you tested the top 10 chargers on Amazon that weren’t anker, you’d find the same problems.
One of the many reasons (up to and including US foreign policy) I don't buy from Amazon any more.
I'd sooner give Argos the money, they aren't that much more expensive (if at all) for the common set of things they sell and I can walk and pick it up same day.
They broke the first rule of e-commerce - "Don't make the customer think".
I agree. They’ve also devalued prime - I used to know that prime meant next day, now it just means “free delivery” but it could be 2+ weeks depending on where it’s coming from.
argos are great. I ordered something from them for next day delivery and I had it 20 minutes later. The nearest Argos to me is about 15 minutes away so they must have been sitting waiting for orders.
I don’t know about fakes, but browsing Amazon DE feels like browsing AliExpress when looking for any technology products. Especially cables, adapters and such.
Interesting that this is under the DSA, since if they're the "importer" by mailing parcels to the EU it would also be covered by long standing rules on CE marking.
It's good to know that someone's actually checking this stuff. Self-reported compliance like CE always makes me wonder if I'm a mug for trying to comply honestly with the rules when it would be easy not to.
I'd be curious to see a breakdown between the "toxic chemicals" and "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk. The other day I was watching the TV above the Walmart customer service desk that displays product recalls, and multiple recalled products were a motorized bassinet, but the wireless remote control has a battery compartment that could be opened and then the battery swallowed. To a layman or (I assume) Chinese inventor, that seems overly burdensome as I am certain that same household would have other wireless remotes.
It's well within the realm of possibility that a parent, holding the remote, approaches the bassinet and sets the remote down in a location where it's reachable by the child. Perhaps even in the bassinet! And especially so if the wireless remote is the only way to operate the bassinet: are you going to walk across the room to turn it on?
Not to mention, new parents are often some of the most sleep deprived. The burden should be on the manufacturer to make these safe. And it's not even that hard: just use one of the clasps on the battery compartment that requires a coin or key to open rather than just your fingernails.
> "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk.
Are you US-american? (Walmart is a good hint that you are.) There's some widespread misconceptions/prejudice there, e.g. the Kinder egg thing. The EU has no problem with selling those.
Yes, I know this is an EU article, but I suppose we have similar Temu garbage here in the USA to deal with. I wish for more reasonable restrictions but more severe enforcement, as these "bad" product examples I mentioned seem to make people lose interest as they seem silly.
People forget many of US's regulations were written in blood because the US already had it's industrialization period. They left behind signposts that people could use to sue.
The US seems burdensome because some US Entrepreneur already tried not caring and something happened. A good comparison is China cars which don't pass US standards for import. It's also a reason US Makes can't iterate as quickly as they aren't allowed to do the same things that China Makes can to iterate fast.
Whether or not it needs to stay that way is really the only question. I think most reasonably intelligent people read things like suffocation warnings and go, "well obviously don't do that." But the regs are written for the people who aren't that bright who will do it anyway.
Temu and Aliexpress do seem to have this covered to an extent. I have noticed significant geoblocking from both companies, mostly in searches and advertisements. I know for instance that Aliexpress has a ton of non compliant (for Australia) toy guns, they send me target ads and everything. But if I click through, they no longer exist, and search results net me nothing.
Temus comments about this being for their 2024 store are probably accurate. I honestly wish they were more dodgy tbh.
I've been done by illegal electronics on Amazon too many times. They don't seem to care at all. You can still buy chargers on them that are in an advisory red list on gov UK....
The EU's approach to imports from PRoC is the regulatory equivalent of trying to 'test your way to quality' (which Deming showed to be nearly impossible). Attempts to use regulatory fines and prosecutions to ensure compliance from PRoC products is a whack-a-mole exercise which will fail.
That's still not proof of victimhood. Only that's imprudent to consume drugs.
Also, due to politization of the topic, part of the data is distorted to help sell the war on drugs, which had a much more destructive effect overall, aside from failing in its main goal.
Weed isn't harmless. For example, it can probably lead to long-term brain damage. It is also toxic for the lungs, although less so than tobacco, which is usually consumed in greater quantities.
Passing the CE certification is annoying, but hardly a significant cost compared to design of the product. Notably, the law forces companies to put their ass on the line if things to wrong, by registering their name to the product they produce.
We also have laws making the store selling the thing that burnt down your house liable for what they sold, which make them think twice about selling a random off-brand fire-starter with unknown manufacturer. This worked great until Temu, Amazon, and Alibaba entered the market claiming to be "marketplaces" connecting "importers to suppliers" while clearly behaving like a store.
The core issue is that, if the producer cannot be sued, the seller cannot be sued, then there is no reason to follow any safety what-so-ever. So fine the distributor until they put some quality control or standards on the producers they give market to, may solve the issue.
The US has this issue as well, though more focus on individuals suing for each case rather than broad-spectrum compliance regulation. The outcome is the same; with nobody to sue, there is no reason to make things safe for human use.
CE itself is the least of the issues, and is indeed relatively low-cost for mass-market consumer goods, (this is not true for niche products,) when it is taken into account in the original product design.
From my perspective (as a non-resident EU citizen), it seems the EU is addicted to cheap products from PRoC which do not comply with a variety of EU regulations, because actually enforcing compliance would drive up consumer prices, which is politically unacceptable. This also seems like the reason of the lackadaisical enforcement of regulations.
Essentially, allowing in PRoC products, then complaining is an easy way to keep prices low while continuing to introduce regulations which are expensive to comply with.
Put another way: why does the EU manufacture a declining share of its consumer products, at a time when automation makes mass-production less labor dependent than ever for many industries.
Interesting - I've been testing a few free tier tools lately. How does SerpSpur's backlink freshness compare to something like Ubersuggest or the free version of Ahrefs?
> while French President Emmanuel Macron even suggested following US-style measures akin to the "Section 301" tariffs.
> A major source of this latest wave of the so-called "China shock" narrative is the claim that the EU's trade deficit with China reached 360 billion euros in 2025.
These are the same people whose collective knickers are getting in a twist over Trump, mind you.
The theory is that this won't be the only fine if Temu doesn't fix this. So yes, a slap on the fingers, but the fines should grow bigger if Temu doesn't address this.
€200M accounts for roughly 1.6% of their €12.3B net profit in 2025.
The average EU salary is €39,808. It's equivalent to a €636 fine. Though this is based on income, not net profit so it's actually more impactful to the average person than to Temu.
These sort of calculations are always missing a simple fact that no company on earth, not even Apple or Google shrugs off a 200M fine, no matter how little it is of their entire operating budget. It's the kind of money that gets people fired, even if it made no difference to the bottom line.
2. Who cares if somebody gets fired for PR purposes? Especially with a severance that will make sure that their great-grandchildren will never have to work and your great-grandchildren will be paying them rent?
Everybody doing tens of billions of $ of business shrugs off a $200M fine. They might even get a bonus and a plaque for coming up with a scam that lasted so long before it blew up.
Most people would find being fined a week's wages significant. It's not what they'd expect to get for, say, murder, but worse than any parking fine and enough that they'd give serious consideration to not doing whatever they did again.
Depends how much you made doing the activity you got fined for. Temu says the fine is disproportionate (of course) but I'd be surprised if they made actually less than 200M selling such goods over the years. Ideally it should be several multiples of what was truly made, otherwise it's just a bet you might not get caught or, in the worst case, a loan until you are fined.
Sure but this €200m fine is just the first fine. Its the first hit of the stick. It isn't meant to be crippling - it's just mean to be serious enough that they take action to avoid future fines, which might be a lot bigger.
This news has been circulating on the internet for a long time and it is indeed real, but the question is, if people want to buy something, they will look for alternatives.
There’s zero demand for products that are hiding safety issues that nobody was seeking out (e.g., toys with lead paint, batteries that explode)
Demand for illegal things isn’t in a vacuum. It’s hard to enact prohibition on alcohol or cannabis (extremely easy to produce) versus prohibiting something more complicated to make, difficult to smuggle, or less desirable to buy.
If my government bans Crocs am I going to go through the engineering effort to make them myself? Plus, if I go outside the cops will see my illegal Crocs very quickly. I have plenty of alternatives to Crocs and most of them are better. Most likely, I won’t even think about the ban.
We have a good example with incandescent light bulbs. I don’t know anyone who has attempted to violate the ban on home incandescent light bulbs.
The whole “everything should be legal anyway because there will always be a black market” philosophy is not a universal truth and we need to stop assuming that it makes sense.
> We have a good example with incandescent light bulbs. I don’t know anyone who has attempted to violate the ban on home incandescent light bulbs.
Funny, because I remember that when this ban was first introduced in my country there actually was a black market for incandescent light bulbs. Some stores would keep selling them as “special purpose” or “vibration-resistant”. It only ended when LED bulbs appeared on the market, because they are strictly superior product (not like fluorescent ones EU tried to promote earlier)
And how big was that black market for incandescent light bulbs?
What would have happened to it when supply of incandescent bulbs dried up as manufacturers stopped making them?
Were there any homebrew incandescent lightbulbs?
You’re actually demonstrating my point here: when you ban or regulate something, there are a lot of things that go into whether a significant amount of people try to circumvent that ban. It’s not an automatic free for all thriving black market.
One reason not to circumvent a regulation is when it results in improvement of the status quo or when better alternatives to the banned item already existed.
If people want to be healthy and live, they wouldn't smoke, drink, use meth, gamble, etc. What the people might rationally want, is not what drives the market. The infamous invisible hand is just addiction.
It seems like quite a light punishment for selling such dangerous products that could literally kill people. The dodgy e-bike batteries have already been linked to several fires.
bigclivedotcom takes apart some of the Temu stuff on YouTube and some of the electronics is atrocious.
They sell adapters to turn oil cans into silencers. Each one should be a violation of the National Firearms Act and subject to up to a half million dollar fine https://www.atf.gov/media/25071/download Nota bened; these are not per-se illegal, but you need to sell them through a firearms dealer and pay for an ATF tax stamp and only in states that have not banned them/all NFA items.
This. Same for the Chinese mainland app, some wild stuff like that being sold (firearms are highly regulated, but 1:1 copies seem to be ok, maybe because of the high level of regulation?)
But western brands can be sued or made liable with fines when a house burns down, which force them a minimum level of caution or risk-assessment when designing and selling their product. A random Chinese drop-shipper that vanish into smoke cannot, so all we can do is force the distributor take that responsibility in their place.
So Temu should be sued if a house burns down from a generic-brand e-bike that they imported and took money for.
How much money do you think is in the import companies that import the same crap and sell it to retailers? In Sweden you can have the company have 2500 usd in assets and sign all the papers. 2.5k won’t even cover the cost of the lawyer filing in court.
I would even go further and say that the term really has to be almost "equal" - equal access, equal rules, equal legislation or the market isn't really free.
Ties as in pay tax to ccp. In China Temu is called pinduoduo (拼多多）and you can buy some wild stuff there, the regulation on mainland seems also pretty lax i mean.
Sorry, ties, as CCP party committees inside private firms. And in case of Temu, it also has a data-sharing agreement with People's Daily [1], a CCP controlled media group.
Just image having a mandatory political party inside every American corporation which the board has no control over.
Every major PRoC company is required to have CCP ties; in addition to 'paying for facilitation' by local officials, a certain percentage of their employees must be CCP members.
… which found that a high percentage of chargers purchased through Temu failed basic electrical safety tests. It also found that a high proportion of baby toys posed safety risks, containing chemicals above legal limits or featuring small detachable parts that presented suffocation hazards…
Boring. I can probably find the exact same on Amazon. From the headline, I was hoping the list of illegal products was going to be something like enriched plutonium, RPGs, Lawn Darts, etc
Maybe for marketplace articles shipped from outside the EU. It's not legal, so Amazon will surely have a close look (for directly sold items), as well as any company shipping from within the EU.
Taobao and Temu are great. The quality is not always amazing, but the prices are low and many sellers even offer customisation.
In Australia, the product selection is often limited, and a lot of local stores are just reselling Chinese-made products with huge markups anyway. At that point, you may as well order directly from China and save money.
> If you are a non-resident business and you sell goods into Australia with a customs value of A$1,000 or less, GST applies and you will have to collect this from your customer and send the GST to us.
The past making quality clothing was difficult, cutting it right, sourcing the right patterns designs materials, stitching it took care etc. In our world making quality clothing should be easy with all the technology but what we see in bad quality that you wash a few times and it is trash. It is uglier designs than in the past etc. It makes no sense. It is like a conspiracy where people don't want to sell quality clothes at a fair price. Like all companies got together and decided we will sell crap clothes at cheap prices and good clothes at extortion prices. There is zero correlation with actual costs.
I once bought one of those cheap portable consoles from them (or Aliexpress) and after two month I was given a full refund as the welding of the motherboard contained too much lead.
This news really doesn't surprise me that much.
> Are you suggesting opening every package to check for a CE?
In the old days, when an importer purchased Chinese goods in bulk and resold them, import checks were commonplace.... AND the importer was legally responsible for paying import duties and selling goods to the public that were legal and met safety standards.
Now that any individual can order direct from China (with cheap subsidised postage!), the floodgates of untaxed and dangerous shite are open.
One solution is to address the subsidised postage that makes this state of affairs possible.
That’s unworkable: asking a recipient unfamiliar with producers to know whether producer is reputable or not in advance and if the producer is unscrupulous you expect every affected buyer to follow up or be in violation of importation laws?
I think thats asking much from people some of whom easily get scammed by phone banks in Eastern Europe, India etc. many people will not put in that effort.
So consumers should just pay for a random import company to ”pinky promise” that it is safe? It is well known that most of the crap that is CE hasn’t actually gone through a million euro testing program. It’s just a stamp. And if something happens then well that LLC goes bankrupt (but odds are low)
I see, the issue is those parcels are mailed directly, not from a logistics operation already inside EU borders.
In my country the government is pushing those companies to have local warehouses. So if items are bulk imported by the marketplace, in theory it should be easier to inspect.
There is such a thing. The Chinese Export one was specifically created to intentionally be confusable with the real CE marking (Conformité Européenne). And it works exactly as intended. People see “CE” and think it’s the real CE one but it’s the intentionally confusable one.
This gets parroted all the time, but I have never seen any proof that this is actually true. It's always this one image comparing the two, but never any real example. It's just unreliable sources copying from each other.
There is a conspiracy theory for everyone it seems, even for the educated. No there is no "legitimate" Chinese-mandated CE that can ever be allowed in EU. It would completely destroy the trade relationship and cause Chinese underwriter labs to be completely banned from ever testing for CE marks.
HOWEVER, there are a lot of fake CE marks printed by dodgy companies who make the same shitty products that gets imported via Temu. They are already in the business of selling contraband and dangerous factory seconds, no need for conspiracies to give a legitimate twist to their contraband business.
It really isn't. There is no official "Chinese Export" mark. And it's legal to use the real CE mark just to indicate that you (the manufacturer) believe the product complies with European regulations. Some manufacturers might not know or care what it means and just put it on anyway. And some manufacturers might put a version with the incorrect dimensions on their product. It still doesn't mean "Chinese Export".
For electronics without wireless functionality, it is allowed to self-certify. Anyone could also print whatever label they want on their products illegally (i.e. without doing the required paperwork to self-certify).
The policemen controlling imports don't have the competency to check for faults, so we get this situation where specialists regularly sample the products, and heavy fines are issued to the importer.
And for electronics with wireless, they still just ignore everything. No FCC ID, don't even have any silkscreening on the pcb or markings on the ICs. Nothing gets enforced.
I think the parent is questioning how the fine relates to removing the goods from circulation?
Or is the intention of the law to allow for an unlimited number of supposedly illegal goods to circulate freely within the EU, just fined appropriately?
With a few exceptions, those labels do not mean that the product has actually been tested or actually complies with the standard. They are a self-certification: CE means “I promise this complies with European norms”, but the entity deciding to print that on a product may not be honest. Small fly-by-night operations on the other side of the planet have little incentive to be honest.
Generally speaking, international direct-to-consumer e-commerce is a problem for trying to enforce these kinds of rules. The whole model of checks at the border works well for massive bulk shipments, which not only are few enough in number that customs have a chance of doing a proper job on them, but there's also a commercial importer taking a large financial risk on the shipment and therefore 1) having an incentive to ensure they import something safe to begin with, 2) they can be practically fined/sued by authorities if they screw up. But when you have myriad tiny operations selling direct to consumers, the consumer is the importer, and there's no local representative for the manufacturer that you can actually sue. It's effectively a quite lawless area. Being able to do direct imports is an important freedom, and this kind of laxity is inevitable, but it's understandable the EU wants to do something about the flood of poor-quality goods that are terrible for fair competition, the environment, and health and safety.
Yup, CE is self-declatory. To prove it, you need to actually check the documentation from the manufacturer's web page. Usually there are numbers for individual tests on the product.
Checking packages, with humanoids and other forms of robotics, it's possible that law enforcement will become efficient. Right now almost any package containing illegal substance will cross the US/EU without issue, that's due to human flaws, robots will be so much better at detecting stealth and so-on (also because Scent and Xray and so-on will be built-in them).
It's not enough, I routinely order things with obvious fake labels or sometimes things I know ahead are clearly not CE compliant, and most packages can't be open due to the large amount, until we have robot warehouses, I don't think is solvable.
Laws are as good as they are enforced. With millions of widgets entering every day, most being very low cost, there's very little point in going one by one checking if they comply.
It’s not simply difficult, it’s an existential threat to their current business model.
Unless I’m missing something obvious, enforcing regulatory compliance from the army of hustlers that is their vendor market would be expensive or impossible.
Feels like the EU is always going to find something to fine you over. Think of it as a tax. The purpose is compensating for the lack of notable domestic tech giants.
That's the thing with these fines. 19/20 times they make a lot of sense. But even so, there will be people saying "but why not this other org" to which the answer is "Yes! Hand out more fines", not "it's unfair, so just let everyone break the law".
So they let sellers from china, and reseller platforms, get away with violating safety laws for 3 years (just Temu), have 50 BILLION euro in revenue (about 3-4 billion in profit for the platform itself) from those products and then charge them 200 Million for the crime?
Can European companies demand equal treatment? Wait, no, I know the answer to that.
Yes, because it is the start of enforcement. That's how it works, not just a one-and-done slap on the wrist.
If they don't fix it, it'll eventually continue to the "20% of worldwide revenue" kind of fine everyone on HN was so afraid of when the GDPR was introduced. But that's not what it starts with.
This is a key observation and I also remember those dumb discussions. The top end of the fine scale is more or less theoretical if you demonstrate any willingness to improve. Looks like Temu has engaged in really bad practices, and they still only get what's (to them) a gentle reminder that there are rules.
Also a big problem is that the GPDR is a law in the style of all EU laws:
1) they are NOT laws. Despite what's published everywhere you get zero legal rights from the GPDR. A legal right is some right you have, and if someone violates that right you can ask a court to intervene. With the GPDR, there is no such right. No court will help you under the GPDR.
The executives of member state governments (and ~40 "international organizations", most famously Interpol) have the right to enforce GPDR. You can only complain to these new, totally separate from any other enforcement mechanism (ie. they're not police) organizations. And they, of course, generally don't listen.
If you go check the complaints lists are full of people complaining that their medical files were leaked by hospitals (because private doctors are in revolt to the GPDR) to various other government organizations, with very large consequences. For instance medical files being used to decide on insurance status, immigration status, unemployment/long term illness status, and family law status. There is no reaction to this, even when it does violate the GPDR. And my next paragraph is why it generally doesn't.
Second, the executives of member state governments have the right NOT to enforce GPDR. Specifically, the executive has the right to grant exceptions to the GPDR to any organization they want (including transitively: allowing a government contractor not only violate the GPDR themselves but to allow anyone else they use to violate the GPDR. For example, this is the reason Google, Amazon and Microsoft have essentially all medical files of everyone in the EU, and Palantir has some 20%)
These exceptions are made transitively AND after-the-fact. Neither of which is legal, but the only one who can complain is the government itself.
2) It means there is no point for individuals to file GPDR complaints. Normally there is "1831", which is a legal principle which refers to a particular law. Essentially that if you damage someone else by violating the law, you are responsible for that damage (ie. you can be made to pay for them). This applies to essentially every EU law. But not GPDR (and also not to other famous EU laws like DMA)
To illustrate the common problem: you go to the hospital, because you took drugs. Maybe you're scared it'll have serious consequences, whatever. Now you go to your insurance ... and they will no longer cover your treatment for heart arythmia. "It's your own fault, because you did drugs". Now what happened is that the hospital updated your medical file, and sent it to the government. Medical insurance is national, so they have access to medical files. Of course, it is a VERY serious GPDR violation that the information leaked, and with any other law this would mean that a judge will convict the hospital to pay for what you lost, say in this case, they would be forced to pay, WITHOUT the insurance covering it, your heart treatment.
Not with the GPDR. Even if you get the government to go after it, and you get them convicted, you get nothing. Nor is the insurance forced to change their decision.
This is how most new EU law works. The crucial difference is that for essentially all these laws, the EU commission holds all the cards. They then use their position of power to negotiate and come to an understanding with all these organizations. That's how they work, how they've always worked.
And it's one more reason I'm very opposed to the EU. Europeans will THOROUGLY regret giving the commission this power, that's a certainty in my mind.
Specifically what the commission does is to give companies exceptions to these rules. For example, Teresa Ribera, as well as Ursula Von Der Leyen, personally (and without any parliament approval) have the right to extend Apple's exemption to the DMA (and thus Apple's 30% cut to all transactions involving an iPhone in the EU). Both were born rich (Ursula Von Der Leyen is a member of a noble family that has been very wealthy for at least 400 years. Notably, her family's wealth survived WW2 in Germany ...) How is such enormous power in the hands of individuals used? Well, look up how and why a communist served for 8 years as the chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
So you're saying if I start a company in the EU that violates safety standards, copyright, trademarks, ... I will be allowed to profit of that for 3 years (let's pretend it's just 3 years that Chinese producers have been doing that) before facing any consequences and at that point STILL only be required to clean up my act (ie. not face any consequences for violations already done)?
I find this incredibly, incredibly hard to believe.
Does it have enough to submit 1 chinese package to a safety inspector every 10 year? You know, because:
1) we all know it would only take a single one
2) they didn't do this for 20 years
In all seriousness. Does ANYONE believe that the EU commission/parliament did not know about this (despite millions of complaints) and only now discovered the problem? Is that seriously your point?
Or is it somewhat more believable that they did this with the express purpose of destroying local industry and the change is happening now because we have "Mercosur" causing the same issue, but moving from China to South America.
If you start the company in China and ship to EU. If you start it in a EU country I think local laws will stop you much faster than the EU commission. Still there are plenty of grifters that start fraudulent companies in the EU and roll assets into a new one as they bankrupt, and they can operate for decades before they eventually get stopped.
Nobody was ever stopping individual member states from prosecuting Temu - they just don't do it because I don't know why, it's too much work? So finally after decades (because this is a decades-long issue with Aliexpress etc) they set up a EU-wide framework and once it starts acting, it's again EU's fault it took so long? They can only do what the member states delegate to them.
But it will eventually get better because in addition to DSA there are other steps; the importers have to declare a responsible person in the EU, the packages will get more expensive etc.
> Nobody was ever stopping individual member states from prosecuting Temu
As a general principle, the EU commission handles all international trade and member states are not allowed to impose tariffs or rules on what has been imported into other member states.
I say general principle because in many cases pre-existing legislation was allowed to continue, however anything new and any changes went through the EU commission (meaning the executive branch has full control, not parliament as generally was the case, even against the wishes of both the EU parliament and member state parliaments)
So no, the EU commission was stopping member states from doing this. So yes, it is very much the EU's fault it took so long.
Oh and, look up the history of the EU commission. If you think the EU commission will help anyone against big business, well, look up their history until you find "European Coal and Steel Community" and look up some of the scandals they were accused of. And yes, they're better than they were in 1951, but that's coming from a pretty damn bad start.
> So no, the EU commission was stopping member states from doing this.
No it wasn't. I wrote 'prosecuting', that is a term from criminal law, and that still is in the agenda of the member states. If Temu is breaking law, which it probably is when they were fined for selling "illegal products", then the states should have acted, but they didn't.
> If you think the EU commission will help anyone against big business
I've learnt from a coworker that actually, all the stuff we order from AliExpress is crap they don't sell in their own country. A bit like the Swiss selling their shitty cheese abroad whilst they keep the good stuff for themselves.
Why are they not fining Amazon? Plenty of times bought something that obviously was dangerous when inspected more closely and if you posted a bad review, you got threats (e.g. seller would say I know your address, take down the review or else). Report to Amazon would achieve nothing.
But I guess if Temu was running government infrastructure they would be off the hook too.
The EU began enforcing a small parcel tax directly against Temu last May [0] and France has been strongly lobbying against Shein and Temu [1]. The EU has also made Chinese overproduction a critical topic of discussion for EU-China relations [2][3], and barring Temu and Shein is backed by both unions and industrial groups within Europe [4].
All of this is linking to the EU's strategy of playing hardball against Chinese support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine [5][6], as well as pushing back against the Chinese perception that the EU is a has-been [7] as well as conducting an active info-war against a European state [8].
europe can copy a lot of what made china a superpower (not the weak labor rights obviously). subsidize everything and build up state owned factories. that will end unemployment and make eu products cheaper. no need to be all protectionist
> Temu has until 28 August 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission, as required by Article 75 of the DSA. The plan must set out measures to remedy the breach of its risk-assessment obligations. The European Board for Digital Services will have one month from receipt of the plan to issue its opinion. The Commission will then have a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable period for implementation.
> Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments.
So they're just threatening a fine at this stage? It's not clear to me
No, it's a fine, but the fine doesn't absolve you from fixing it too so it stops. You have this delay to submit a plan for how and on what timeline you will fix it. If you don't do it, or take too long, we will keep fining you, increasingly.
An exemple what how in the old microsoft case they ended up puttin a daily fine for non compliance until microsoft balked back and fixed it (after they tried to act tough and pretended to ignore them).
Doesn’t Temu direct ship to the customer? What if they ship in plain unmarked packaging and keep changing the address of the sender? Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu? That sounds like a logistical nightmare. This sounds like old school thinking where you can stop whole containers full of stuff from a single supplier.
At some point it's a diplomatic incident and will affect EU-Chinese relationships. Even the Chinese government doesn't want to fuck it up for all Chinese companies just because one of them feels like the rules don't apply to them. It's not like the only goods flowing from China to the EU are cheap trash.
Just in a poxy country like the UK it's millions of parcels a day delivered across multiple ports mostly inside containers.... It's simply not feasible to check it all, it would cost a ton of money to have enough checkers and not slow down deliveries.
That's a failure of the state to control its borders.
> it would cost a ton of money
That's why the EU is imposing a €3 fixed customs duty per item (and later another €2 handling fee) effective July 1 (should have been much sooner in my opinion) for small packages (under €150), in addition to the VAT.
They'll put them on naughty list that will be enforced by financial institutions, i.e. it will be an infraction for credit card operators to process such a payment. Financial operators have well oiled compliance facilities and the payment won't clear. If Temu won't get the money, they won't ship the parcel. And if they won't ship, then there will be a bit less carcinogens in EU. Good stuff.
Since this is under the "Next Steps" section, it's pretty clear to me that the €200M fine is a fixed one-time fine that was issued now, but further, repeated fines ("periodic") will be issued if the hazard is not removed.
It's actually both: they handed one-time fine for past behaviour (about 200 M€, not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years or so; cf. Apple tax breaks in Ireland); and threatening more fines if they don't play along in the future. One of the kinds of punishment that Commision can slap (subject to court oversight, ofc) is „daily fines”, which is a fine that accumulates with constant daily rate up to the date the company complies, or some pre-set maximum, which usually calculates to several months, and need to be reissued afterwards (which is an opportunity to double the daily amount, and again, can be appealed to a court).
In my world people are innocent until proven guilty before a court of law, twice. Yes, even business people. Executive branch shouldn't be able to just bankrupt a company and tell the owners to go through the courts to maybe recover the money in 10 years, if they're innocent after all.
There were several such cases in my country before we joined EU, most high profile one was against Optimus SA (predecessor to CD Projekt), where they just took people's money, without cause as they courts later found. Never again.
So the middle ground is, Temu can choose to play hardball all the way to ECJ, but if they are wrong (they are and they know it), the cost will be substantial (200 M€ + interest + daily fines + interest). So I think they'll enter talks, pay 200 M€ and pinky promise to delist offending items.
Just to be clear, you're so desperate to disagree with me or be contrary that you're saying that people need to be convicted by a court twice for the same crime for real justice to be properly served?
They cetainly get to argue before two sets of judges. Otherwise it's not justice.
I wanted to make clear that press release is not a valid substitute for a court order. And it's OK to publish one before the final instance issues it's verdict.
The best way to fight Temu would be to maintain a society where young people are not so desperate that the only comfort they can afford is to order the cheapest crap online.
The TEMU shoppers I know are all older and plenty rich and just basically don’t realize/comprehend that there is a cost to shopping low quality toxic garbage beyond what the see on their receipt. I don’t think cost of living crisis is fueling TEMU, its the desire for unbounded consumption + gamification of shopping.
It's a cultural thing yeah. Americans genuinely do on the whole think that their approach is better. The good news I guess is that if you're an American and you think "Well I don't" you can (at least for now†) just leave.
† If you lived in the German Democratic Republic (aka "East Germany") in 1950 you could literally just walk to West Germany, by 1961 all other borders are closed and fenced and in Berlin the Wall is up and people who try to escape are being executed routinely. This didn't happen instantly over night, but it took about a decade to go from routine to "Vast majority of people who attempt it are killed".
I mean, in America we have similar regulations. Toys aren't allowed to burn down houses or poison babies. You have to get dietary supplements if you want to poison babies.
Enforcement on individually shipped imports is hard regardless of where you are. Traditionally enforcement is through spot checks of bulk imports, and leaning hard on the importer who has a clear nexus.
Say what you may of Temu, and I do think more vetting of certain goods is a good idea, but they fill a very real need. In the part of Europe where I live, the choice is only between intermediaries for the same products coming from China. The local intermediaries sell a very limited picking at staggering margins. And when it comes to certain things, like electronic components, the choice is between importing (old) American stock with a German company as the intermediary, and that's $$$$ and many weeks of shipping, or using Temu or Aliexpress.
There's something unpleasantly snobbish with the way business is done here, a spirit of "if you have to ask the price, our business is not for you". For example, in Instagram, "Local offerings" pop up all the time in the feed. The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed. The ones that show actual prices tend to be shell companies with no employees, no doubt a thin wrapper around an importer from Asia.
yes, i'm very in favor of the shift towards direct-to-consumer among chinese retailers, but that might be because i'm not actually all that sympathetic to small business
I recently bought some custom-built pool lighting directly from the manufacturer in Ningbo, and I have to say, the sales, delivery, and customer support I received was top notch. Their representatives were fluent in English and competent, the product quality was excellent (yes, I carefully inspected it upon receipt because it's going into water), and the entire process from measurement to delivery was fast and smooth. And, of course, the price was right.
In a way it makes the Temu problem more frustrating
Because it’s not a Temu problem,
it’s a problem of allowing the collapse of your own civilization?
Isn't pool lighting low voltage (12v?) so not much of a risk even if faulty?
That's right, so I wasn't that worried about physical safety. Mostly worried about damage to the product that water ingress could cause.
There is totally a market for a global website which instead of shipping goods direct from China by plane instead has local warehouses 1 per city and can deliver to your house within a few hours by motorbike.
Aka like Amazon but with much smaller margins.
The savings would come from the fact sea freight is so much cheaper than air freight.
And the losses from having warehouses storing zillions of products that do not get sold for a long time.
There’s a reason the likes of Aldi and Lidl have limited product choice.
Aldi and Lidl deal with perishable goods. Temu (by and large) doesn't.
But they are, especially those with batteries
Fine, Action then.
Aldi and Lidl sell way more than just perishable goods. You can buy electronics from there
That’s called “Walmart”
Not in Europe.
Europe has plenty of dollar store equivalent.
Several AliExpress sellers advertize warehouses in EU, so guess they basically do what you say already.
I'm not all that sympathetic to small businesses that exist functionally as drop shippers for the same products with the same absence of support. Much in the same way I roll my eyes and go to 7/11 over the cute "local" markets that are supplied by the same suppliers nationwide, and you end up in a shiplap-walled coffee shop with $8 bags of chips that could exist anywhere.
Small businesses that do the work of curating a niche item, doing QA work that's absent on the shipments from china, and then offering much stronger aftermarket support/replacement/repair? That is often worth a (substantial) premium over wondering if the item showing up in a month is going to work as intended.
There is some validity to a marketplace selling items from a larger range of retailers, however the quality is so poor for many items that it simply is no good for society in any way.
> the quality is so poor for many items that it simply is no good for society in any way.
There are some that are genuinely dangerous and bad for society, but there are tons of goods that are "the same thing but half the price because it lasts a quarter the time" that have genuine utility.
Harbor Freight has basically made a drop-shipping business out of it. I often have tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times.
Copy that over a bunch of verticals and it starts to make sense. Clothing for a costume I'll wear maybe twice, niche cooking gadgets for very specific things, tools to do a one-time repair on a car, a flash drive to turn over photos to family members, yada yada.
> some that are genuinely dangerous ... tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times
Forehead hit hood, but I caught myself so it was a "gentle" reminder instead of a concussion. I should have splurged that time I broke a socket tightening an axle bolt. 150 ft-lbs + 180 degrees is a fair bit of torque.
There are definitely things I wouldn't roll the dice on from Harbor Freight.
Anything that unpredictably dumps large amounts of kinetic energy on failure is one of those.
I had a buddy that bought the tool for getting car suspension springs on from Harbor Freight, and I definitely wouldn't roll those dice.
I think the dirty secret is that a lot of it is not "1/2 the price that lasts 1/4 the time" but "1/4 the price that lasts 9/10 the time" or "1/2 the price for the exact same product without half of the budget going to marketing".
It's not all of it. Some things are seriously worse quality. But really a ton of the "better quality" is just better marketing.
> Clothing for a costume I'll wear maybe twice
There was a time where society didn't buy clothes to only wear once or twice but would instead rent them for those occasions.
This assumes that we can't pass items on in life which we can or even repurpose, such as the USB key.
There is a part of conservatism and resistance to change. Online commerce has been seen as "suspicious" by some from the beginning to the point that in, for instance, France free delivery of books is banned... of course this just means that amazon.fr charges 1 cent, instead but it is symptomatic of a state of mind.
Interesting! They tried using lockers so it could still be free:
https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/amazon-is-wrong-to-use-...
Yea, worst is the retail people who clearly hated Temu/Aliexpress etc because they stand no chance at competing with them when they sell the same things but at 10 times the cost (I don’t blame them. Sucks for them) but instead of just saying the truth that they hate the competition they just make up these fake reasons ”oh it’s low quality stuff that will break” when it’s clearly the same stuff from the same factories etc.
If you played a boardgame, wouldn't you be upset if someone won the game easily, because they decided to just break all the rules?
what kind of board game has rules buy for one coin, do nothing, sell for 10 coins?
Monopoly
So Temu/Aliexpress fixes the rules not breaks them. OP shouldn't be upset.
The rules where retail companies can extract value for no added value from consumers? And no the rules has not changed. It has always been allied to compete with importers trying to screw over consumers. Which law are you claiming was changed?
What part of Europe is that? Is it is in the EU?
But I still think chargers and children's toys are exactly where the line should be drawn
My line is a little bit further back. Any electronics that will be plugged to a wall... Lots of appliances are not safe.
Yup. I've even had an (Amazon rather than Temu) power-strip-and-USB combo noticeably sparking and tripping the apartment circuit breakers when plugged in just 6 months after purchase.
Could we interest you in some amazons choice fuses? never more be concerned about replacing a fuse! as these ones, simply wont need replacing! (they survive 5-10x their rated current)
https://youtu.be/B90_SNNbcoU
It's a little amusing that he's seemingly linked to the dangerous fuses using his Amazon affiliate links. Hey, may well make a buck if someone's going to buy them anyway, right?
I think the affiliate links work such that any product bought when the lead into the site is the affiliate code will generate affiliate rewards. So even if you don't buy the crap that's linked, maybe you'll buy something else and that counts.
That’s how they work, and often affiliate links are programmatically added by plugins.
I’ve seen some reviewers intentionally break links to bad products.
Amazon is does zero quality control on listings, it's just AliExpress which larger margins. At least the reviews at Aliexpress often include exhaustive detail & photos by the terminally skeptical.
No, let them suck on the poison Happy Meal toy instead.
The line should be drawn by parents.
The paternalism really has gone too far,
and people are (incorrectly and dangerously) expecting to be protected now.
It's all fun and games until your neighbour in a terraced house or apartment building unwittingly starts an uncontrollable battery fire. Electric scooters and those 'hoover boards' from a few years ago are notorious when it comes to that, but plenty of underspecced small electronics will fail spectacularly.
That’s harder to disagree with,
but, you’re only going to achieve moving the cheapo builders stateside where they’re easier to enforce on.
That race to the bottom isn’t going anywhere - if someone can save a grand half-heartedly wrapping their own packs, they’re going to.
With that thinking, people would still be buying unlabelled arsenic wallpaper.
Consumer standards are a net benefit to society.
> and people are (incorrectly and dangerously) expecting to be protected now.
The general public hasn’t the faintest idea how to differentiate between a safe product and an unsafe one, and they shouldn’t have to
> The general public hasn’t the faintest idea how to differentiate between a safe product and an unsafe one, and they shouldn’t have to
The problem being that a marketplace platform with millions of small sellers has no reasonable way to do this either.
Then, that marketplace has no viable business. Society does not owe them anything. Seriously, if your business model requires you to sell illegal stuff, then your company does not deserve to survive. That’s the basics of regulation.
You're assuming the conclusion. Why is it the marketplace platform who should be the police? Should banks have to audit your life before you can open a bank account? Should you be unable to transact with anyone if you're not rich enough for them to justify that expense?
It's not Walmart you're proposing to unperson here.
The sellers are in practice anonymous, and the consumer facing Temu (or Shein, or Aliexpress, etc) very much markets to consumers, yet shirk any responsibility. They are Walmart but ignore the little accountability Walmart faces.
Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.
And yet you still have children chewing toxic chunks of gypsum drywall,
because people now assume if you can buy it, it’s safe,
because their responsibility has been relieved of them.
A major retailer in my country had to recall thousands of units of kids kinetic sand because it contained asbestos. Are you saying we'd be better off had they not been made to recall these? Or that we'd be worse off had there been more regulation preventing kids from inhaling asbestos in the first place?
Nope.
Are parents supposed to perform safety and toxicity testing on all products they buy?
“Supposed to”?
I’ll do whatever reading, and due diligence keeps my family safe.
I’ll abstain from things until I’m sure.
Others might choose the same.
There are markings that certify that some things are safe according to some standards. You are not in a situation to know what actually is safe or to be able to test it (really, you are not; if you think you are, go talk to your nearest electrical engineer, chemist, or molecular biologist who will provide you several examples of the limitations of your knowledge and abilities). Therefore, trusting those certifications is important, and companies that falsify them must be punished so they stop doing so. It’s not complicated and that’s the whole point of the procedure (and the fine).
> whatever reading, and due diligence keeps my family safe.
We’re not disagreeing.
How can you be sure? How can you get the information to know whether or not your children's toys, your medicines, your electic equipment, wall paint, food, and everything else you consume or use is safe?
You can't. So... abstain from everything? Make everything yourself - how will you have time with a job? Will you know the food you grow is safe and that your ground isn't polluted with things you can't test for at home? How about the equipment used to make that food - is the metal in that plow made of lead? Is the engine on the tractor safe?
Your due diligence is only possible because other people - usually with specialized education and/or experience - have made laws and standards to keep you safe. You don't have to personally check everything.
I don’t need to know if the plow has lead - I just test the Cheerios.
Try again.
You can answer the questions the exact same ways the other path uses,
yes,
and often with more rigor/vigor than just “legal minimum”.
You are believing a lie, then, and seem to have missed the point.
You simply cannot have the knowledge to know if everything is safe - no matter what your specialty, there are things you'll have to just trust others for safety. Sure, you might buy a lead test kit that someone else has made, but the only way to know that the test kit works is to monitor your family for lead poisoning unless you have specialized knowledge. And if you have that specialized knowledge, it'll come at the cost of other specialized knowledge. You can't personally know if that bridge you drive on is safe AND know about the metal in your plow AND know if the light bulb you bough is a hazard AND know that your antibiotic matches the label on the box instead of it being that one you are allergic to AND know all the other stuff is safe.
Everything requires trust in products or services unless you have information.
I seriously doubt you check every batch of foodstuffs entering your house.
If you ban Temu chargers, people will go to stores to buy the cheapest ones which are identical to the ones on Temu, just for 10x the price.
Edit: Reply to Scroll_Swe as I am rate-limited to posting new comments. The chargers in budget stores are identical to Temu chargers are are frequently recalled.
At least in the UK, the main high-street retailers will only stock goods from reputable brands with a (relatively) decent track record and safety standards. I don't believe there is any intersection between products sold on Temu and e.g. Argos, John Lewis.
Identical chargers to temu ones are sold on amazon for 5x the price.
So Amazon should be prosecuted too.
No no, it's third party sellers. There's absolutely nothing that can be done about that!
This talking point is everywhere in this thread. But bear in mind that you have no clue whether two chargers (for example) are the same without disassembling them and checking. Noname Chinese manufacturers are very good at producing things that are superficially similar to other things. It does not mean that two widgets that look similar actually are.
The main difference with most physical stores is that those will accept responsibility for the stuff they sell, because otherwise regulations would put them out of business.
> But bear in mind that you have no clue whether two chargers (for example) are the same without disassembling them and checking.
Frequently, the listing uses the exact same photo.
It's especially clear for clothes listings, as there's usually a model.
There’s apparently one model, and she has clothes photoshopped on her millions of times.
I’ve seen model photos of clothes that clearly doesn’t exist until after you place the order.
Not in The Netherlands. Plenty of stores that stock chargers identical to the ones on AliExpress and Temu. Action, Big Bazar, SoLow.
Edit: Reply to lozenge as I am still rate-limited by HN. Some of them get recalled, the vast majority of them are still being sold and could burn your house down.
At least they get recalled. I don't think any Temu products are getting recalled.
Nope, Anker or store brand is NOT identical to Temu crap.
Dollar store stock is likely identical to Temu.
Ok, well if it blows up the store is the importer and responsible.
In EU, if you buy Temu, you are the importer and you become responsible for CE marking breaches etc. 0 help for you.
*My bad this USED TO be the case but not anymore apparently
No, dollar store is a rank above the rankest shit from Temu.
There’s name brand (Apple, Anker, etc → made in China but made well), then there’s off-brand (cheaper than above but still made decently), then store-brand (Harbor Freight and friends, too; cheaper but still functional, not quite as nice), then dollar-store brand (barely functional but usually still “safe”), then Temu-shit (often not fit for purpose and fake certifications, actually dangerous).
I think the line should be much earlier than that. But even with this very thin line, like the parent said, the deficient products are everywhere. Just look at the recalls in any major store here (Carrefour, Action, Leclerc). And that's for the main brands/distributors, go into any bazaar or market and you'll find the exact same products you find on Aliexpress/Temu, but with 10x price markup, like the parent said.
Don't get me wrong. I think companies should be held to higher standards: i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system.
There are generally two ways governments hold companies accountable for dangerous products.
The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses.
The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their technology or raise costs to exclude new entrants. The rules are often inefficient or poorly conceived with bad cost/benefit ratios. And companies making products that are dangerous but nevertheless comply with the rules will point to their checkbox compliance to dodge liability.
The problem with the first one is that it doesn't work well against companies outside the jurisdiction, because then you can't sue them, and the importer will be a small entity that just files for bankruptcy if you try to sue them. But the second one has the exact same problem. They sell products that don't comply with the rules; if you try to fine them they're outside the jurisdiction and the only thing in the jurisdiction is a fungible importer that will dissolve if you try to go after them.
In that environment the thing that actually works is the third thing. Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones. But this is the thing the second one inhibits, because then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted. And then customers are stuck choosing between the overpriced incumbents and the far cheaper foreign suppliers that may or may not be safe, with many people risking the latter because they have so much lower margins.
You sure typed a lot to say 'a few kids are going to get the skin melted off their face by an exploding battery, that's just the cost of doing business!'
Notice that you fail to present any argument and are only retreating into indignation at the existence of the problem. You present no viable solution or counterargument to the criticism of the status quo.
EU CE requirements are generally (outside some universally more regulated domains like medical devices) pretty lightweight to deal with, and pretty sensible. I've gone through them, and honestly the biggest pain is finding the applicable standard. Otherwise you basically just need to follow the standard and write up how you think your design follows it, and stick it into a drawer, most likely never to be seen again. You usually have to cause a very notable problem or be very obviously breaking the rules to get the regulator's attention.
We've already tried the third one in the US before the FDA. A ton of people kept dying.
Milk was filled with borax and formaldehyde, coffee was cut with sawdust/charred bone/lead, spices were often 100% counterfeit.
The market (heavily) incentivized fraud.
In New York, in one year (1857), 8000 infants died to "swill milk" [0].
The second option (FDA and regulation) wasn't lobbied for, and the Food Bill of 1902 actually failed through heavy (counter)lobbying initially [1], until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 [2] passed.
[0] https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1858/05/13/785...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Washington_Wiley
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act
Invoking 1857 is not a valid argument really, cause consumer priorities were different. Cheaper with some level of risk (which today's American, or German would consider excessive) was preferred option hence the market response as it was - at least it's a reasonable guess.
In less rich countries it is how things work right now.
Industries dump toxic waste into waterways if they can get away with it in the US today (literally today [0]). I agree that I might not be specifically worried about borax milk if FDA was reversed, but I would absolutely expect risky shortcuts in food offerings.
The incentives in the market has never changed. That's what regulation is for, shifting market incentives/forces to favor consumers/society.
[0] https://www.kptv.com/2026/05/28/woman-sentenced-conspiring-d...
> Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones.
.. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.
> then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted.
This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything? And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?
> i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system
They are not really. If one of the big brand shop is found importing stuff with fake certificate, they’ll experience the same thing. One of the advantage of the stores you mention is that they have a procedure for recalls, and their responsibility is on the line if they sell faulty goods. Good luck getting anything from Temu or AliExpress in the same situation (at least Amazon is very good with this).
I've bought both from AliExpress before and they were fine. Just required common sense.
This is why we have UL listings in USA and Canada. So you don’t have to rely on “common sense” which is notoriously unreliable.
Common sense? What sort of common sense allows you to remotely assess the safety and build of a product? Even if you get a charger in your hand, can you tell?
Can your family? How about your neibhbors? Does anyone you know have this ability?
There is no common sense to be had here. There are people with more specialized information that I have that look into this. There are laws to address this - and I'm pretty sure these laws were written with the blood of folks killed by faulty products.
No, you rolled the dice and won. Don't attribute to wisdom that which is explainable by very, very dumb luck
It's so cheaper that you can buy 2, disassemble one and inspect the electronic (spot thermometer and a cheap ESR tester). it's a charger not a nuclear power plant !
> In the part of Europe where I live
I downvote comments like this, since they make the comment useless. No-one can vouch for or argue against the comment when it's some "part" of a continent of over 40 countries.
Exactly. Europe is not a country. Some countries in Europe are more different from each other than others are from the US.
My reaction to this sentiment is that they fill the same need in Europe as Uber did in the USA. They found a way to operate in a market while avoiding its regulations and are therefor able to offer much lower prices as their competitors who still follow the regulations.
Europe has historically had pretty strict consumer protection laws, and ever since the end of the Cold War these consumer protection laws have been slowly chipped away. When I was a kid for example companies were not allowed to target children in their marketing material. When American media became predominant in the continent, instead of enforcing our own consumer protection laws against American advertisers, regulators just ignored it and allowed it to proliferate, effectively making ads targeting children legal in the continent. Regulators have been showing the exact same inaction towards Chinese retailers breaking our own laws as they did towards American advertisers three decades ago. I foresee that consumer safety laws getting the same fate as the ban on ads targeting children.
I know your mileage may vary in different areas of Europe but in Italy and Spain you'll find a plethora of random general stores that resell Aliexpress sorts of goods at a very low markup over direct ordering. The stock variety is obviously more limited but those stores are amazing and fit a really key need.
These stores are a big thing in Portugal as well, but doesn't really seem to be a thing in Germany. Closest I guess would be Action [1].
[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Nederland
What are these stores in Spain/Italy/Portugal?
Most of the ones I'm thinking of are just corner stores - it's not a brand or chain to my knowledge. An example might be Bazar Gran Puerto, El Puerto de Sta Maria, CA, ES.
The ones in Spain often market themselves with their Chinese-ness: "Hyper China", "Panda Bazaar", "Maxi Barato (super cheap)", etc. would be some representative names & signage you see outside.
They range in size from small shops to things with huge floor space.
One thing I've found is that they seem to sell very low quality stuff: e.g. on aliexpress you can buy a flashlight which is built out of metal, has usb-c charging, for $10, whereas in the physical shop, you get the plastic one that takes AA batteries for $2. So they're not a replacement for AliExpress, Temu & co.
How about TEDi?
Like what?
The clothes are all 100% plastic polyester shit with extra chemicals. If you have proof of otherwise, show me.
Yes I make enough to buy good clothes. If I REALLY need cheap clothes H&M basics are always there.
Same with anything else, IT and tech parts I shop in Sweden.
What else?
Like, what is so needed now that you did not need before but you need to buy plastic China crap from Temu now?
More niche hardware has been impossible for me to find in the EU marketplaces I got to with searches, with only availability from US ebay, and then Chinese marketplaces. Or if it does exist here it's the same used part but it costs 500€ instead of 40
ah okay, I was more raging on the people buying fast fashion crap clothes, chargers and household items. All crap, all landfill quality.
At least crap clothes do not risk setting your building on fire, unlike crap chargers. Some things are definitely more dangerous than others.
> but they fill a very real need.
That is not a good reason to fudge certifications and sell dangerous goods. I sympathise with your use case, but the solution is not "let’s just import whatever, as long as it’s cheap".
The GP also said "vetting of certain goods is a good idea".
> The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed.
I cannot speak for the specific part of Europe that you are in, but in the professional Photography community, it is common practice to not list prices and instead have a "contact us" option. The reason isn't a, "Look at us, we're so exclusive and fancy!" Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off or think they are a master negotiator and can essentially get the work done for free. All of the professionals I've spoken to are happy to work with customers to find a package at an affordable price for them, or at least recommend other professionals in whatever price range they have in mind. The issue is that its exceptionally hard to convey that in a sincere, real way because if someone only sees a price of say $10 000 or whatever, they are naturally going to assume that you cannot possibly get anything for $100-$1 000.
In truth though, many are glad to try and accommodate and get people something that they will be happy with. Perhaps it ends up being 1 or 2 photos instead of an album of photos or whatever, or perhaps the photoshoot is a little bit more "low budget" than a standard one, but there is still lots of opportunity to get the client something they will be happy with. People tend to get wrapped up in the bottom line though, and just assume that they can't afford to capture a happy memory because of the cost - that's something that photographers really want to avoid because (aside from scaring off paying customers! :) ) it means less photos existing, or making it feel impossibly hard to ever show an interest in photography, which is very sad for people who live and breath it.
> Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off
Yet somehow other businesses manage to convey tiered pricing without scaring customers.
Imagine trying to book a hotel room but were told to contact them because they have a range of rooms from single bed to honeymoon suite. "We couldn't possibly list all the packages, it would confuse you!"
Or try to buy a car, but the dealer refused to list a base price because "we have so many options it's meaningless".
Withholding guideline or indicative pricing is a deliberate obfuscation designed to increase friction and reduce choice.
Really hits hard when you have to go to Home Depot to buy 6 spade connectors for $7.99 to use in a project with 3.3V 300mA max, when you can buy about 500 of them from Aliexpress for the same price.
And this is how I ended up with bags full of resistors, transistors, leds etc.
I can buy 3 from the local store or a BAG OF ONE HUNDRED from Aliexpress.
Not a hard decision tbh.
It’s not a hard decision - and I was making it wrong for many years.
Now I gladly pay Home Depot or friends to maintain stock for me so my house isn’t filled with bags of shit I’ll never practically use.
Until you learn the hard way that they are not up to the standard advertised, if they happen to be rated in the first place. It is common knowledge that Chinese manufacturers maintains at least three configs of the same product, the best one sent off for rating, the middle for knowledgeable buyers, the worst being the 500-for-$7.99 shit for the mass market, who buys nothing but the cheapest.
> Evidence from a mystery shopping exercise included in the Commission's investigation shows that a very high percentage of the selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of tested baby toys posed safety risks of medium to high severity, as they contain chemicals exceeding legal safety limits or pose suffocation hazards due to detachable parts.
> Under the DSA, designated Very Large Online Platforms are required to diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures.
Is temu much worse than amazon here?
There's a lot of work to be done.
Probably yeah, Amazon already had long exposure to the regulations from EU and European countries, they surely have some won lessons from these years, compared to Temu which is relatively new and might still be learning how things work, apparently. Temu is what, 3-4 years old or something?
"compared to Temu that does not give a damn by design" would be more accurate.
I mean the same goes for most US companies, every time they first arrive in Europe they stumble around breaking laws and what not until they get fined to act properly, happened a bunch of times before, most famous examples being Uber and AirBnb, but Amazon been in trouble for the same thing in the past too.
I'd still say Temu and Wish are in a whole other league compared to other predecessors (AliExpress, Banggood, miniinthebox, etc.).
Isn’t Temu basically Aliexpress with some "new shiny" frontend?
Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.
Not really, Aliexpress is from Alibaba, who has been in the exporting business for many years. While Temu is from Pinduoduo, a competitor to Alibaba known for malicious business practices including exploiting an Android 0-day vulnerability [0].
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/andro...
Edit: I should add that Pinduoduo also ended up being fined over $200 million after a couple fist fight with auditing officials in China [1]. Stay safe, EU folks.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/fistfight...
So, like Aliexpress is considered more ethical at this point? Asking as I heard Aliexpress’ ware could sometime be produced forced labors from prison in the underlying retailers. Not that prisoners situation seems particularly fine across all EU and USA either.
More ethical makes it more palatable. The reality is that alibaba is a lesser evil
Like the other commenter said, all you can say is less evil. Basically everything from China is made by factory workers working 12 hour shifts with 1 day off every 14 days, or programmers working 12 hour a day with 1 day off every 7 days. So forced labors from prison is not that bad comparing to daily life there, just another one of these first world problems.
AFAIK Temu is like the fleamarket for excess Chinese production.
They get stuff that the factories can't sell for any reason and just shove them out the country as cheaply as possible.
Certainly in the UK, we don't have the same issues with terrible Chinese fakes that I hear about from US Amazon users.
Amazon UK these days is definitely full of Chinese reproductions and drop shipped knock offs.
Whether they're dangerous I don't know, I've not tried them.
We don’t have the fakes problem but Amazon in the UK has a growing amount of stuff that is just resale of stuff from temu. I suspect if you tested the top 10 chargers on Amazon that weren’t anker, you’d find the same problems.
One of the many reasons (up to and including US foreign policy) I don't buy from Amazon any more.
I'd sooner give Argos the money, they aren't that much more expensive (if at all) for the common set of things they sell and I can walk and pick it up same day.
They broke the first rule of e-commerce - "Don't make the customer think".
One of the best usb chargers for the money is the 40W IKEA charger. I trust their quality control.
I wasn't aware that Ikea sold a charger, so I googled it - this is the very first result: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/product-support/...
The fact they're even doing a recall tells you they care.
When people buy from Alibaba and resell it on Amazon, they're not bothering to issue recalls.
The good people at qzzdfghjww company would NEVER sell a defective product.
I agree. They’ve also devalued prime - I used to know that prime meant next day, now it just means “free delivery” but it could be 2+ weeks depending on where it’s coming from.
argos are great. I ordered something from them for next day delivery and I had it 20 minutes later. The nearest Argos to me is about 15 minutes away so they must have been sitting waiting for orders.
I don’t know about fakes, but browsing Amazon DE feels like browsing AliExpress when looking for any technology products. Especially cables, adapters and such.
Yes.
Interesting that this is under the DSA, since if they're the "importer" by mailing parcels to the EU it would also be covered by long standing rules on CE marking.
It's good to know that someone's actually checking this stuff. Self-reported compliance like CE always makes me wonder if I'm a mug for trying to comply honestly with the rules when it would be easy not to.
I'd be curious to see a breakdown between the "toxic chemicals" and "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk. The other day I was watching the TV above the Walmart customer service desk that displays product recalls, and multiple recalled products were a motorized bassinet, but the wireless remote control has a battery compartment that could be opened and then the battery swallowed. To a layman or (I assume) Chinese inventor, that seems overly burdensome as I am certain that same household would have other wireless remotes.
Not a breakdown, but this comment reminded me of a recent play sand test by Stiftung Warentest:
They tested play sand for asbestos, and four of these positive tested play sands were ordered on Temu. The play sand is for kids!
https://www.test.de/Deko-Spiel-und-Bastelsand-Asbest-Alarm-i...
That is unfortunate, thank you for sharing.
Batteries are more than a choking hazard; they can cause severe internal chemical burns, gut perforation and so on initiated by electrolysis.
I think the idea is that the baby would be in the bassinet, the parent would have the remote, not the other way around.
It's well within the realm of possibility that a parent, holding the remote, approaches the bassinet and sets the remote down in a location where it's reachable by the child. Perhaps even in the bassinet! And especially so if the wireless remote is the only way to operate the bassinet: are you going to walk across the room to turn it on?
Not to mention, new parents are often some of the most sleep deprived. The burden should be on the manufacturer to make these safe. And it's not even that hard: just use one of the clasps on the battery compartment that requires a coin or key to open rather than just your fingernails.
> "suffocation hazards" categories, as my intuition says it's mostly the latter and often bunk.
Are you US-american? (Walmart is a good hint that you are.) There's some widespread misconceptions/prejudice there, e.g. the Kinder egg thing. The EU has no problem with selling those.
Yes, I know this is an EU article, but I suppose we have similar Temu garbage here in the USA to deal with. I wish for more reasonable restrictions but more severe enforcement, as these "bad" product examples I mentioned seem to make people lose interest as they seem silly.
People forget many of US's regulations were written in blood because the US already had it's industrialization period. They left behind signposts that people could use to sue.
The US seems burdensome because some US Entrepreneur already tried not caring and something happened. A good comparison is China cars which don't pass US standards for import. It's also a reason US Makes can't iterate as quickly as they aren't allowed to do the same things that China Makes can to iterate fast.
Whether or not it needs to stay that way is really the only question. I think most reasonably intelligent people read things like suffocation warnings and go, "well obviously don't do that." But the regs are written for the people who aren't that bright who will do it anyway.
Temu and Aliexpress do seem to have this covered to an extent. I have noticed significant geoblocking from both companies, mostly in searches and advertisements. I know for instance that Aliexpress has a ton of non compliant (for Australia) toy guns, they send me target ads and everything. But if I click through, they no longer exist, and search results net me nothing.
Temus comments about this being for their 2024 store are probably accurate. I honestly wish they were more dodgy tbh.
Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48307237
Does Amazon or eBay get the same fine? Haha it’s the same people on all of these sites …. Just some dropshipping ?
Amazon is also under investigation under DSA, eBay is not big enough (in the EU) to matter under this law.
I've been done by illegal electronics on Amazon too many times. They don't seem to care at all. You can still buy chargers on them that are in an advisory red list on gov UK....
I'm not against consumer protection but these moves seem political, Europe hate China just like Russia, they want to counter China economically.
Otherwise why fine out of the blue when this had been going for years.
And what about western countries violate those laws, lobbied or deliberately turning a blind eye.
The EU's approach to imports from PRoC is the regulatory equivalent of trying to 'test your way to quality' (which Deming showed to be nearly impossible). Attempts to use regulatory fines and prosecutions to ensure compliance from PRoC products is a whack-a-mole exercise which will fail.
Even if it fails maybe you can get some political scores in the process to get elected again.
By the same logic, attempts to use policing to ensure lawfulness are a whack-a-mole exercise which will fail.
So what else are you going to do? Paperwork up front for every single product?
> By the same logic, attempts to use policing to ensure lawfulness are a whack-a-mole exercise which will fail.
That's basically how drugs won the war on drugs, yes.
But you can't legalize all crime. Drugs are special because they are (sort of) victimless.
Drugs are absolutely not victimless, except perhaps for caffeine.
But they are.
False. There is plenty of empirical data on the destructive effects of many drugs.
That's still not proof of victimhood. Only that's imprudent to consume drugs.
Also, due to politization of the topic, part of the data is distorted to help sell the war on drugs, which had a much more destructive effect overall, aside from failing in its main goal.
The only victim to weed are people getting jailed for it. Same for shrooms
Weed isn't harmless. For example, it can probably lead to long-term brain damage. It is also toxic for the lungs, although less so than tobacco, which is usually consumed in greater quantities.
Passing the CE certification is annoying, but hardly a significant cost compared to design of the product. Notably, the law forces companies to put their ass on the line if things to wrong, by registering their name to the product they produce.
We also have laws making the store selling the thing that burnt down your house liable for what they sold, which make them think twice about selling a random off-brand fire-starter with unknown manufacturer. This worked great until Temu, Amazon, and Alibaba entered the market claiming to be "marketplaces" connecting "importers to suppliers" while clearly behaving like a store.
The core issue is that, if the producer cannot be sued, the seller cannot be sued, then there is no reason to follow any safety what-so-ever. So fine the distributor until they put some quality control or standards on the producers they give market to, may solve the issue.
The US has this issue as well, though more focus on individuals suing for each case rather than broad-spectrum compliance regulation. The outcome is the same; with nobody to sue, there is no reason to make things safe for human use.
CE itself is the least of the issues, and is indeed relatively low-cost for mass-market consumer goods, (this is not true for niche products,) when it is taken into account in the original product design.
From my perspective (as a non-resident EU citizen), it seems the EU is addicted to cheap products from PRoC which do not comply with a variety of EU regulations, because actually enforcing compliance would drive up consumer prices, which is politically unacceptable. This also seems like the reason of the lackadaisical enforcement of regulations.
Essentially, allowing in PRoC products, then complaining is an easy way to keep prices low while continuing to introduce regulations which are expensive to comply with.
Put another way: why does the EU manufacture a declining share of its consumer products, at a time when automation makes mass-production less labor dependent than ever for many industries.
Interesting - I've been testing a few free tier tools lately. How does SerpSpur's backlink freshness compare to something like Ubersuggest or the free version of Ahrefs?
Big corp penny slap on the fingers. I dont this amount will change behaviour or incentive to make larger profit.
It sets precedent, and has already led to a (by Chinese foreign policy standards) fairly vicious response [0][1][2].
This is also part of the EU's larger tariffs against China [3].
[0] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1361926.shtml
[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362200.shtml
[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362161.shtml
[3] - https://www.ft.com/content/e28fe696-ac30-4543-a105-febc82789...
> [0]
Ahah, China going Adam Smith on the EU.
Peacefully, so far. Let's hope they don't go "opium war" on free trade.
That's already happening with synthetic drugs [0] and the Ukraine War [1].
[0] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/01/30/china-traf...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russians-...
> while French President Emmanuel Macron even suggested following US-style measures akin to the "Section 301" tariffs.
> A major source of this latest wave of the so-called "China shock" narrative is the claim that the EU's trade deficit with China reached 360 billion euros in 2025.
These are the same people whose collective knickers are getting in a twist over Trump, mind you.
A real slap on the wrist of the CEO by a wronged customer would leave a more lasting impression.
The theory is that this won't be the only fine if Temu doesn't fix this. So yes, a slap on the fingers, but the fines should grow bigger if Temu doesn't address this.
I don't understand how €200M can ever be considered a "penny slap".
€200M accounts for roughly 1.6% of their €12.3B net profit in 2025.
The average EU salary is €39,808. It's equivalent to a €636 fine. Though this is based on income, not net profit so it's actually more impactful to the average person than to Temu.
These sort of calculations are always missing a simple fact that no company on earth, not even Apple or Google shrugs off a 200M fine, no matter how little it is of their entire operating budget. It's the kind of money that gets people fired, even if it made no difference to the bottom line.
> It's the kind of money that gets people fired
1. It's not, and
2. Who cares if somebody gets fired for PR purposes? Especially with a severance that will make sure that their great-grandchildren will never have to work and your great-grandchildren will be paying them rent?
Everybody doing tens of billions of $ of business shrugs off a $200M fine. They might even get a bonus and a plaque for coming up with a scam that lasted so long before it blew up.
>>Everybody doing tens of billions of $ of business shrugs off a $200M fine
Again, that's not how it works, although I know people have this romanticized view of big companies casually shrugging off 200M fines like nothing.
>>They might even get a bonus and a plaque for coming up with a scam that lasted so long before it blew up.
Again, cool idea for a book, but doesn't happen in reality. No one gets a pat on the back and a bonus for being fined 200M.
Most people would find being fined a week's wages significant. It's not what they'd expect to get for, say, murder, but worse than any parking fine and enough that they'd give serious consideration to not doing whatever they did again.
Depends how much you made doing the activity you got fined for. Temu says the fine is disproportionate (of course) but I'd be surprised if they made actually less than 200M selling such goods over the years. Ideally it should be several multiples of what was truly made, otherwise it's just a bet you might not get caught or, in the worst case, a loan until you are fined.
Sure but this €200m fine is just the first fine. Its the first hit of the stick. It isn't meant to be crippling - it's just mean to be serious enough that they take action to avoid future fines, which might be a lot bigger.
Temu profit in 2025 from EU was $120M, you should count profit from EU, not global.
https://themorningnews.com/news/2025/10/13/temu-doubles-eu-p...
This news has been circulating on the internet for a long time and it is indeed real, but the question is, if people want to buy something, they will look for alternatives.
People will definitely look for alternatives, but that doesn't make regulation pointless
It helps funding the EU and little else.
Regulation slows down the problem, but demand creates the solution so it doesn't really matter.
This is a nuance-free take.
There’s zero demand for products that are hiding safety issues that nobody was seeking out (e.g., toys with lead paint, batteries that explode)
Demand for illegal things isn’t in a vacuum. It’s hard to enact prohibition on alcohol or cannabis (extremely easy to produce) versus prohibiting something more complicated to make, difficult to smuggle, or less desirable to buy.
If my government bans Crocs am I going to go through the engineering effort to make them myself? Plus, if I go outside the cops will see my illegal Crocs very quickly. I have plenty of alternatives to Crocs and most of them are better. Most likely, I won’t even think about the ban.
We have a good example with incandescent light bulbs. I don’t know anyone who has attempted to violate the ban on home incandescent light bulbs.
The whole “everything should be legal anyway because there will always be a black market” philosophy is not a universal truth and we need to stop assuming that it makes sense.
> We have a good example with incandescent light bulbs. I don’t know anyone who has attempted to violate the ban on home incandescent light bulbs.
Funny, because I remember that when this ban was first introduced in my country there actually was a black market for incandescent light bulbs. Some stores would keep selling them as “special purpose” or “vibration-resistant”. It only ended when LED bulbs appeared on the market, because they are strictly superior product (not like fluorescent ones EU tried to promote earlier)
And how big was that black market for incandescent light bulbs?
What would have happened to it when supply of incandescent bulbs dried up as manufacturers stopped making them?
Were there any homebrew incandescent lightbulbs?
You’re actually demonstrating my point here: when you ban or regulate something, there are a lot of things that go into whether a significant amount of people try to circumvent that ban. It’s not an automatic free for all thriving black market.
One reason not to circumvent a regulation is when it results in improvement of the status quo or when better alternatives to the banned item already existed.
Here's your chlorine chicken burger, now with extra chlorine. That'll be $39,95 please.
Plus tax no we can't tell you before you order.
Having the Chinese fund EU is an amazing idea from my European perspective.
Let's do more of that.
If people want to be healthy and live, they wouldn't smoke, drink, use meth, gamble, etc. What the people might rationally want, is not what drives the market. The infamous invisible hand is just addiction.
How many dead babies or battery fires post Temu, seems like good opportunity to conduct a before/after study on cost:ratio of EU regulations.
It seems like quite a light punishment for selling such dangerous products that could literally kill people. The dodgy e-bike batteries have already been linked to several fires.
bigclivedotcom takes apart some of the Temu stuff on YouTube and some of the electronics is atrocious.
They sell adapters to turn oil cans into silencers. Each one should be a violation of the National Firearms Act and subject to up to a half million dollar fine https://www.atf.gov/media/25071/download Nota bened; these are not per-se illegal, but you need to sell them through a firearms dealer and pay for an ATF tax stamp and only in states that have not banned them/all NFA items.
This. Same for the Chinese mainland app, some wild stuff like that being sold (firearms are highly regulated, but 1:1 copies seem to be ok, maybe because of the high level of regulation?)
And hundred-watt lasers sold as "obstacle removers" that can blind people in less than a second from considerable distance.
Check will prowse. Western brands aren’t that much better.
But western brands can be sued or made liable with fines when a house burns down, which force them a minimum level of caution or risk-assessment when designing and selling their product. A random Chinese drop-shipper that vanish into smoke cannot, so all we can do is force the distributor take that responsibility in their place.
So Temu should be sued if a house burns down from a generic-brand e-bike that they imported and took money for.
How much money do you think is in the import companies that import the same crap and sell it to retailers? In Sweden you can have the company have 2500 usd in assets and sign all the papers. 2.5k won’t even cover the cost of the lawyer filing in court.
Why there is a difference between selling and allowing to sell? If the product is sold in your site, you must be responsible of it.
Isn't this being held responsible for it?
they are responsible for it, but it's useful in reporting to differentiate between "fulfilled by" and "bought through"
> If the product is sold in your site, you must be responsible of it.
But this is an internet store.
So we should give up regulating them? All stored are internet stores.
No, I'm just being glib in expressing the frustration that it seems impossible to hold them to the same rules as brick and mortar stores.
Yes, this "section 230" treatment of online platforms is at the core of why social media and the internet in general is full of garbage.
If you sell something on your site, or allow users to post something on your site, you should have some liability for the consequences.
I am very pro free market, but Temu with data harvesting and selling illegal projects should be banned together with tiktok...
If you're "pro free market, but", you're not pro free market. That's fine, but you might want to reevaluate whether you're actually for it.
The US and China have standards as well and bodies to regulate them. Regulation vs Free Market debate isn't a binary issue and is a spectrum.
Free markets can have strong rules. No other than Adam Smith said they are needed.
I would even go further and say that the term really has to be almost "equal" - equal access, equal rules, equal legislation or the market isn't really free.
I’d start with the immense packaging waste and shameless overconsumption tricks that are banned in basically any other industry.
Doesn’t TEMU have CCP ties? Free market is for businesses and individuals and foreign govt entities should not unfairly benefit from a free market.
Ties as in pay tax to ccp. In China Temu is called pinduoduo (拼多多）and you can buy some wild stuff there, the regulation on mainland seems also pretty lax i mean.
Sorry, ties, as CCP party committees inside private firms. And in case of Temu, it also has a data-sharing agreement with People's Daily [1], a CCP controlled media group.
Just image having a mandatory political party inside every American corporation which the board has no control over.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/01/...
Every major PRoC company is required to have CCP ties; in addition to 'paying for facilitation' by local officials, a certain percentage of their employees must be CCP members.
All big companies in China are partially run by the CCP. Just how it works there.
Everybody in china that gets big has CCP ties. No way around it. Their car manufacturers are all propped up by government.
Dont US law makers have stocks in the companies they regulate? Without term limits? And Tesla even gets paid per car sold
America is not China, but how close is it getting?
Doesn't Bezos have Trump ties?
Last I heard the US govt is taking equity in some private industry too.
As if Amazon don’t harvest data or have illegal products on its marketplace.
Amazon is better: it lobbies the EU. Why do you think Temu got fined ?
Boring. I can probably find the exact same on Amazon. From the headline, I was hoping the list of illegal products was going to be something like enriched plutonium, RPGs, Lawn Darts, etc
Maybe for marketplace articles shipped from outside the EU. It's not legal, so Amazon will surely have a close look (for directly sold items), as well as any company shipping from within the EU.
Taobao and Temu are great. The quality is not always amazing, but the prices are low and many sellers even offer customisation.
In Australia, the product selection is often limited, and a lot of local stores are just reselling Chinese-made products with huge markups anyway. At that point, you may as well order directly from China and save money.
It also saves 10% GST.
> It also saves 10% GST.
For now.
Your local companies hate the competition, and will be lobbying hard to remove de minimis exemptions on imports.
Didn't this go through a few years ago?
https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/internat...
> If you are a non-resident business and you sell goods into Australia with a customs value of A$1,000 or less, GST applies and you will have to collect this from your customer and send the GST to us.
Temu charges GST (I presume taobao as well)
Are we still not allowed to call out shills here? Is that still a rule?
The past making quality clothing was difficult, cutting it right, sourcing the right patterns designs materials, stitching it took care etc. In our world making quality clothing should be easy with all the technology but what we see in bad quality that you wash a few times and it is trash. It is uglier designs than in the past etc. It makes no sense. It is like a conspiracy where people don't want to sell quality clothes at a fair price. Like all companies got together and decided we will sell crap clothes at cheap prices and good clothes at extortion prices. There is zero correlation with actual costs.
Just go to Uniqlo.
I once bought one of those cheap portable consoles from them (or Aliexpress) and after two month I was given a full refund as the welding of the motherboard contained too much lead. This news really doesn't surprise me that much.
Leaded solder doesn't really pose a health issue to the consumer.
Neither does; Mercury lamps, Asbestos insulation, Freon refrigerant. It poses issues when disposed off, and is banned for a reason.
we see these headlines all the time, sometimes in a higher oder of magnitude, but are these fines ever actually settled?
The fine seems less interesting than the compliance deadline
Isn't there some kind of law to disallow imports without a CE / RoHS / etc label? Why allow it to enter the EU, and then fine the seller afterwards?
Are you suggesting opening every package to check for a CE? I think fining after the fact is how those laws are enforced.
> Are you suggesting opening every package to check for a CE?
In the old days, when an importer purchased Chinese goods in bulk and resold them, import checks were commonplace.... AND the importer was legally responsible for paying import duties and selling goods to the public that were legal and met safety standards.
Now that any individual can order direct from China (with cheap subsidised postage!), the floodgates of untaxed and dangerous shite are open.
One solution is to address the subsidised postage that makes this state of affairs possible.
Require the recipient affirm the package meets all legal requirements, and personally assume liability for any violation.
That’s unworkable: asking a recipient unfamiliar with producers to know whether producer is reputable or not in advance and if the producer is unscrupulous you expect every affected buyer to follow up or be in violation of importation laws?
If you are not sure, buy from within the EU from an importer who deals with this.
The old system of spot inspections worked because most import volume was from known, repeat importers.
I think thats asking much from people some of whom easily get scammed by phone banks in Eastern Europe, India etc. many people will not put in that effort.
So consumers should just pay for a random import company to ”pinky promise” that it is safe? It is well known that most of the crap that is CE hasn’t actually gone through a million euro testing program. It’s just a stamp. And if something happens then well that LLC goes bankrupt (but odds are low)
License importers? Have them audited, post a bond, etc?
CE is self certification for most part. It’s just the seller saying ”yea, I promise it is safe”.
Should consumers have to post a bond to receive a package from abroad?
So hold the consumer liable for laws meant to protect the consumer?
Holding a consumer liable for the broken crap they order would be just, but political infeasible as long as there is someone else to blame.
Why even have consumer laws then if consumers are punished if their Samsung phone explodes?
It depends if Samsung is imported by a consumer or a company that takes liability
I see, the issue is those parcels are mailed directly, not from a logistics operation already inside EU borders.
In my country the government is pushing those companies to have local warehouses. So if items are bulk imported by the marketplace, in theory it should be easier to inspect.
They add fake labels, this has been happening for a long time
Yeah they have the CE mark, but it means "Chinese Export". You can recognize it by the C and E being closer together.
There is no such thing as "Chinese Export".
https://cemarkingassociation.co.uk/latest-news/ce-marking-an...
There is such a thing. The Chinese Export one was specifically created to intentionally be confusable with the real CE marking (Conformité Européenne). And it works exactly as intended. People see “CE” and think it’s the real CE one but it’s the intentionally confusable one.
https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-c...
https://starfishmedical.com/resource/conformite-europeenne-m...
This gets parroted all the time, but I have never seen any proof that this is actually true. It's always this one image comparing the two, but never any real example. It's just unreliable sources copying from each other.
There is a conspiracy theory for everyone it seems, even for the educated. No there is no "legitimate" Chinese-mandated CE that can ever be allowed in EU. It would completely destroy the trade relationship and cause Chinese underwriter labs to be completely banned from ever testing for CE marks.
HOWEVER, there are a lot of fake CE marks printed by dodgy companies who make the same shitty products that gets imported via Temu. They are already in the business of selling contraband and dangerous factory seconds, no need for conspiracies to give a legitimate twist to their contraband business.
It really isn't. There is no official "Chinese Export" mark. And it's legal to use the real CE mark just to indicate that you (the manufacturer) believe the product complies with European regulations. Some manufacturers might not know or care what it means and just put it on anyway. And some manufacturers might put a version with the incorrect dimensions on their product. It still doesn't mean "Chinese Export".
For electronics without wireless functionality, it is allowed to self-certify. Anyone could also print whatever label they want on their products illegally (i.e. without doing the required paperwork to self-certify).
The policemen controlling imports don't have the competency to check for faults, so we get this situation where specialists regularly sample the products, and heavy fines are issued to the importer.
And for electronics with wireless, they still just ignore everything. No FCC ID, don't even have any silkscreening on the pcb or markings on the ICs. Nothing gets enforced.
The fine is the application of the law. Would be like getting arrested and demanding to know why the authorities aren't getting involved.
I think the parent is questioning how the fine relates to removing the goods from circulation?
Or is the intention of the law to allow for an unlimited number of supposedly illegal goods to circulate freely within the EU, just fined appropriately?
With a few exceptions, those labels do not mean that the product has actually been tested or actually complies with the standard. They are a self-certification: CE means “I promise this complies with European norms”, but the entity deciding to print that on a product may not be honest. Small fly-by-night operations on the other side of the planet have little incentive to be honest.
Generally speaking, international direct-to-consumer e-commerce is a problem for trying to enforce these kinds of rules. The whole model of checks at the border works well for massive bulk shipments, which not only are few enough in number that customs have a chance of doing a proper job on them, but there's also a commercial importer taking a large financial risk on the shipment and therefore 1) having an incentive to ensure they import something safe to begin with, 2) they can be practically fined/sued by authorities if they screw up. But when you have myriad tiny operations selling direct to consumers, the consumer is the importer, and there's no local representative for the manufacturer that you can actually sue. It's effectively a quite lawless area. Being able to do direct imports is an important freedom, and this kind of laxity is inevitable, but it's understandable the EU wants to do something about the flood of poor-quality goods that are terrible for fair competition, the environment, and health and safety.
Who says the products don’t have fake CE labels stuck on? A CE label does not - as far as I can tell - have any security features.
Yup, CE is self-declatory. To prove it, you need to actually check the documentation from the manufacturer's web page. Usually there are numbers for individual tests on the product.
How would it be enforced? It is around 16 000 000 packages per day.
Robots is the only way.
Robots doing what?
Checking packages, with humanoids and other forms of robotics, it's possible that law enforcement will become efficient. Right now almost any package containing illegal substance will cross the US/EU without issue, that's due to human flaws, robots will be so much better at detecting stealth and so-on (also because Scent and Xray and so-on will be built-in them).
It's not enough, I routinely order things with obvious fake labels or sometimes things I know ahead are clearly not CE compliant, and most packages can't be open due to the large amount, until we have robot warehouses, I don't think is solvable.
Laws are as good as they are enforced. With millions of widgets entering every day, most being very low cost, there's very little point in going one by one checking if they comply.
I’m curious if its actually difficult or trivial for Temu to enforce
It’s not simply difficult, it’s an existential threat to their current business model.
Unless I’m missing something obvious, enforcing regulatory compliance from the army of hustlers that is their vendor market would be expensive or impossible.
EU is a fine organization
Feels like the EU is always going to find something to fine you over. Think of it as a tax. The purpose is compensating for the lack of notable domestic tech giants.
And stopping Temu from passing on junk, as in this case.
Amazon passes on the same junk, albeit at 2-5x the price.
That's the thing with these fines. 19/20 times they make a lot of sense. But even so, there will be people saying "but why not this other org" to which the answer is "Yes! Hand out more fines", not "it's unfair, so just let everyone break the law".
So they let sellers from china, and reseller platforms, get away with violating safety laws for 3 years (just Temu), have 50 BILLION euro in revenue (about 3-4 billion in profit for the platform itself) from those products and then charge them 200 Million for the crime?
Can European companies demand equal treatment? Wait, no, I know the answer to that.
Yes, because it is the start of enforcement. That's how it works, not just a one-and-done slap on the wrist.
If they don't fix it, it'll eventually continue to the "20% of worldwide revenue" kind of fine everyone on HN was so afraid of when the GDPR was introduced. But that's not what it starts with.
This is a key observation and I also remember those dumb discussions. The top end of the fine scale is more or less theoretical if you demonstrate any willingness to improve. Looks like Temu has engaged in really bad practices, and they still only get what's (to them) a gentle reminder that there are rules.
It will never continue to 20% of worldwide revenue. No matter how long they refuse to comply with EU laws for.
GDPR has been a farce in terms of enforcement.
Because the GDPR enforcement is left to privacy agencies in the members states. The DSA is enforced at the EU level, so that might actually work.
Also a big problem is that the GPDR is a law in the style of all EU laws:
1) they are NOT laws. Despite what's published everywhere you get zero legal rights from the GPDR. A legal right is some right you have, and if someone violates that right you can ask a court to intervene. With the GPDR, there is no such right. No court will help you under the GPDR.
The executives of member state governments (and ~40 "international organizations", most famously Interpol) have the right to enforce GPDR. You can only complain to these new, totally separate from any other enforcement mechanism (ie. they're not police) organizations. And they, of course, generally don't listen.
If you go check the complaints lists are full of people complaining that their medical files were leaked by hospitals (because private doctors are in revolt to the GPDR) to various other government organizations, with very large consequences. For instance medical files being used to decide on insurance status, immigration status, unemployment/long term illness status, and family law status. There is no reaction to this, even when it does violate the GPDR. And my next paragraph is why it generally doesn't.
Second, the executives of member state governments have the right NOT to enforce GPDR. Specifically, the executive has the right to grant exceptions to the GPDR to any organization they want (including transitively: allowing a government contractor not only violate the GPDR themselves but to allow anyone else they use to violate the GPDR. For example, this is the reason Google, Amazon and Microsoft have essentially all medical files of everyone in the EU, and Palantir has some 20%)
These exceptions are made transitively AND after-the-fact. Neither of which is legal, but the only one who can complain is the government itself.
2) It means there is no point for individuals to file GPDR complaints. Normally there is "1831", which is a legal principle which refers to a particular law. Essentially that if you damage someone else by violating the law, you are responsible for that damage (ie. you can be made to pay for them). This applies to essentially every EU law. But not GPDR (and also not to other famous EU laws like DMA)
To illustrate the common problem: you go to the hospital, because you took drugs. Maybe you're scared it'll have serious consequences, whatever. Now you go to your insurance ... and they will no longer cover your treatment for heart arythmia. "It's your own fault, because you did drugs". Now what happened is that the hospital updated your medical file, and sent it to the government. Medical insurance is national, so they have access to medical files. Of course, it is a VERY serious GPDR violation that the information leaked, and with any other law this would mean that a judge will convict the hospital to pay for what you lost, say in this case, they would be forced to pay, WITHOUT the insurance covering it, your heart treatment.
Not with the GPDR. Even if you get the government to go after it, and you get them convicted, you get nothing. Nor is the insurance forced to change their decision.
This is how most new EU law works. The crucial difference is that for essentially all these laws, the EU commission holds all the cards. They then use their position of power to negotiate and come to an understanding with all these organizations. That's how they work, how they've always worked.
And it's one more reason I'm very opposed to the EU. Europeans will THOROUGLY regret giving the commission this power, that's a certainty in my mind.
Specifically what the commission does is to give companies exceptions to these rules. For example, Teresa Ribera, as well as Ursula Von Der Leyen, personally (and without any parliament approval) have the right to extend Apple's exemption to the DMA (and thus Apple's 30% cut to all transactions involving an iPhone in the EU). Both were born rich (Ursula Von Der Leyen is a member of a noble family that has been very wealthy for at least 400 years. Notably, her family's wealth survived WW2 in Germany ...) How is such enormous power in the hands of individuals used? Well, look up how and why a communist served for 8 years as the chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
So you're saying if I start a company in the EU that violates safety standards, copyright, trademarks, ... I will be allowed to profit of that for 3 years (let's pretend it's just 3 years that Chinese producers have been doing that) before facing any consequences and at that point STILL only be required to clean up my act (ie. not face any consequences for violations already done)?
I find this incredibly, incredibly hard to believe.
The EU does in fact not have an infinite amount of safety inspectors, however hard this is to believe for you.
Does it have enough to submit 1 chinese package to a safety inspector every 10 year? You know, because:
1) we all know it would only take a single one
2) they didn't do this for 20 years
In all seriousness. Does ANYONE believe that the EU commission/parliament did not know about this (despite millions of complaints) and only now discovered the problem? Is that seriously your point?
Or is it somewhat more believable that they did this with the express purpose of destroying local industry and the change is happening now because we have "Mercosur" causing the same issue, but moving from China to South America.
If you start the company in China and ship to EU. If you start it in a EU country I think local laws will stop you much faster than the EU commission. Still there are plenty of grifters that start fraudulent companies in the EU and roll assets into a new one as they bankrupt, and they can operate for decades before they eventually get stopped.
Exactly. This was an explicit policy by the EU to allow this for a very long time, destroying local industry.
Nobody was ever stopping individual member states from prosecuting Temu - they just don't do it because I don't know why, it's too much work? So finally after decades (because this is a decades-long issue with Aliexpress etc) they set up a EU-wide framework and once it starts acting, it's again EU's fault it took so long? They can only do what the member states delegate to them.
But it will eventually get better because in addition to DSA there are other steps; the importers have to declare a responsible person in the EU, the packages will get more expensive etc.
> Nobody was ever stopping individual member states from prosecuting Temu
As a general principle, the EU commission handles all international trade and member states are not allowed to impose tariffs or rules on what has been imported into other member states.
I say general principle because in many cases pre-existing legislation was allowed to continue, however anything new and any changes went through the EU commission (meaning the executive branch has full control, not parliament as generally was the case, even against the wishes of both the EU parliament and member state parliaments)
So no, the EU commission was stopping member states from doing this. So yes, it is very much the EU's fault it took so long.
Oh and, look up the history of the EU commission. If you think the EU commission will help anyone against big business, well, look up their history until you find "European Coal and Steel Community" and look up some of the scandals they were accused of. And yes, they're better than they were in 1951, but that's coming from a pretty damn bad start.
> So no, the EU commission was stopping member states from doing this.
No it wasn't. I wrote 'prosecuting', that is a term from criminal law, and that still is in the agenda of the member states. If Temu is breaking law, which it probably is when they were fined for selling "illegal products", then the states should have acted, but they didn't.
> If you think the EU commission will help anyone against big business
The difference is the seat of the said business.
Temu also should be fined for predatory marketing. Not sure if laws exist, but dark patterns are everywhere.
I try to a avoid Temu, but they have some good traits, too, like quick and convinient shipping.
> Not sure if laws exist, but dark patterns are everywhere.
I bet you never heard of Microsoft or Google.
Good, keep it up. China is literally poisoning us.
I've learnt from a coworker that actually, all the stuff we order from AliExpress is crap they don't sell in their own country. A bit like the Swiss selling their shitty cheese abroad whilst they keep the good stuff for themselves.
Why are they not fining Amazon? Plenty of times bought something that obviously was dangerous when inspected more closely and if you posted a bad review, you got threats (e.g. seller would say I know your address, take down the review or else). Report to Amazon would achieve nothing.
But I guess if Temu was running government infrastructure they would be off the hook too.
This is something like an individual being fined $200?
Seems fine
This has been going on for a year now.
The EU began enforcing a small parcel tax directly against Temu last May [0] and France has been strongly lobbying against Shein and Temu [1]. The EU has also made Chinese overproduction a critical topic of discussion for EU-China relations [2][3], and barring Temu and Shein is backed by both unions and industrial groups within Europe [4].
All of this is linking to the EU's strategy of playing hardball against Chinese support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine [5][6], as well as pushing back against the Chinese perception that the EU is a has-been [7] as well as conducting an active info-war against a European state [8].
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c373...
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/b1fdbad1-2793-4975-a10b-74bb928d3...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/eu-law...
[3] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20260326IP...
[4] - https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2025/09/15/les-indus...
[5] - https://www.bruegel.org/podcast/how-war-ukraine-reshaping-eu...
[6] - https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2025-01-...
[7] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/page.ht...
[8] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
> Chinese overproduction a critical topic of discussion for EU-China relations
Ah of course, I do want the state regulating what I can and cannot buy when it comes to junk. Only approved goods should be allowed.
European QoL is predicated on protecting European industry. Why should European workers lose their jobs because you want to buy something cheaper?
If you don't build nor buy European, you become a vassal of either the US or China.
europe can copy a lot of what made china a superpower (not the weak labor rights obviously). subsidize everything and build up state owned factories. that will end unemployment and make eu products cheaper. no need to be all protectionist
> Why should European workers lose their jobs because you want to buy something cheaper?
Competition, innovation, etc. Progress, you know.
> Temu has until 28 August 2026 to submit an action plan to the Commission, as required by Article 75 of the DSA. The plan must set out measures to remedy the breach of its risk-assessment obligations. The European Board for Digital Services will have one month from receipt of the plan to issue its opinion. The Commission will then have a further month to adopt its final decision and set a reasonable period for implementation.
> Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments.
So they're just threatening a fine at this stage? It's not clear to me
No, it's a fine, but the fine doesn't absolve you from fixing it too so it stops. You have this delay to submit a plan for how and on what timeline you will fix it. If you don't do it, or take too long, we will keep fining you, increasingly.
An exemple what how in the old microsoft case they ended up puttin a daily fine for non compliance until microsoft balked back and fixed it (after they tried to act tough and pretended to ignore them).
The end goal ultimately is to get it fixed.
How do they enforce a fine on a Chinese company? What if temu says "up yours"?
you won't be able to sell in the EU market anymore
Doesn’t Temu direct ship to the customer? What if they ship in plain unmarked packaging and keep changing the address of the sender? Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu? That sounds like a logistical nightmare. This sounds like old school thinking where you can stop whole containers full of stuff from a single supplier.
The money has to move from the EU to Temu/Pinduoduo coffers at some point.
Smuggling isn't a great business model for legitimate companies.
At some point it's a diplomatic incident and will affect EU-Chinese relationships. Even the Chinese government doesn't want to fuck it up for all Chinese companies just because one of them feels like the rules don't apply to them. It's not like the only goods flowing from China to the EU are cheap trash.
Temu has EU warehouses they appear to ship from: all return addresses I've seen are EU addresses.
What logistic company will ship plain unmarked packages? They simply wouldn't be delivered at all.
> Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu?
They might, why not. It would be unwise to pick a fight like this for any company.
Say they carry on.... How does EU actually stop people ordering from their website and getting items posted to their house?
Ordering ISPs to DNS block temu would probably be easier and effective enough.
Or maybe getting google and apple to make the app not available in the EU.
Maybe going for the money. Forbit EU banks from transferring funds to known Temu accounts.
There are still borders and customs inspections, that's how.
Just in a poxy country like the UK it's millions of parcels a day delivered across multiple ports mostly inside containers.... It's simply not feasible to check it all, it would cost a ton of money to have enough checkers and not slow down deliveries.
That's a failure of the state to control its borders.
> it would cost a ton of money
That's why the EU is imposing a €3 fixed customs duty per item (and later another €2 handling fee) effective July 1 (should have been much sooner in my opinion) for small packages (under €150), in addition to the VAT.
They'll put them on naughty list that will be enforced by financial institutions, i.e. it will be an infraction for credit card operators to process such a payment. Financial operators have well oiled compliance facilities and the payment won't clear. If Temu won't get the money, they won't ship the parcel. And if they won't ship, then there will be a bit less carcinogens in EU. Good stuff.
I visited Temu from Sweden and clicked on the terms of use, this is the first line:
1.1 These Terms are between you and Whaleco Technology Limited, an Irish company.
Since this is under the "Next Steps" section, it's pretty clear to me that the €200M fine is a fixed one-time fine that was issued now, but further, repeated fines ("periodic") will be issued if the hazard is not removed.
It's actually both: they handed one-time fine for past behaviour (about 200 M€, not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years or so; cf. Apple tax breaks in Ireland); and threatening more fines if they don't play along in the future. One of the kinds of punishment that Commision can slap (subject to court oversight, ofc) is „daily fines”, which is a fine that accumulates with constant daily rate up to the date the company complies, or some pre-set maximum, which usually calculates to several months, and need to be reissued afterwards (which is an opportunity to double the daily amount, and again, can be appealed to a court).
> not final, can and most likely will be appealed and paid in like 10 years
But the EU got some headlines and people believed they came down with an iron first so that's really the most important thing here
In my world finest are served when they're actually paid, not threatened
In my world people are innocent until proven guilty before a court of law, twice. Yes, even business people. Executive branch shouldn't be able to just bankrupt a company and tell the owners to go through the courts to maybe recover the money in 10 years, if they're innocent after all.
There were several such cases in my country before we joined EU, most high profile one was against Optimus SA (predecessor to CD Projekt), where they just took people's money, without cause as they courts later found. Never again.
So the middle ground is, Temu can choose to play hardball all the way to ECJ, but if they are wrong (they are and they know it), the cost will be substantial (200 M€ + interest + daily fines + interest). So I think they'll enter talks, pay 200 M€ and pinky promise to delist offending items.
Just to be clear, you're so desperate to disagree with me or be contrary that you're saying that people need to be convicted by a court twice for the same crime for real justice to be properly served?
They cetainly get to argue before two sets of judges. Otherwise it's not justice.
I wanted to make clear that press release is not a valid substitute for a court order. And it's OK to publish one before the final instance issues it's verdict.
I mean that was the whole point of Temu... buy shit dirt cheap because over-regulation harms the consumer.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48307237
So many China shills running interference and whataboutism...
Yes, but who is fining the commision?
The best way to fight Temu would be to maintain a society where young people are not so desperate that the only comfort they can afford is to order the cheapest crap online.
The TEMU shoppers I know are all older and plenty rich and just basically don’t realize/comprehend that there is a cost to shopping low quality toxic garbage beyond what the see on their receipt. I don’t think cost of living crisis is fueling TEMU, its the desire for unbounded consumption + gamification of shopping.
Did they actually sell $200M of illegal products, or is this a number plucked from thin air?
Why would they need to sell €200 of illegal products to be fined that same amount?
The EU is only good at imposing massive fines and they like to regulate technologies they have not created and don't even host them.
TEMO will more than likely just pass the cost of this onto EU consumers.
As an EU consumer, I appreciate laws and regulations that ban selling cheap junk that might burn my house down or poison my baby.
I take it you don't?
In my limited experience not all countries do think like this.
It's a cultural thing yeah. Americans genuinely do on the whole think that their approach is better. The good news I guess is that if you're an American and you think "Well I don't" you can (at least for now†) just leave.
† If you lived in the German Democratic Republic (aka "East Germany") in 1950 you could literally just walk to West Germany, by 1961 all other borders are closed and fenced and in Berlin the Wall is up and people who try to escape are being executed routinely. This didn't happen instantly over night, but it took about a decade to go from routine to "Vast majority of people who attempt it are killed".
I mean, in America we have similar regulations. Toys aren't allowed to burn down houses or poison babies. You have to get dietary supplements if you want to poison babies.
Enforcement on individually shipped imports is hard regardless of where you are. Traditionally enforcement is through spot checks of bulk imports, and leaning hard on the importer who has a clear nexus.
> TEMO will more than likely just pass the cost of this onto EU consumers.
Good. I want to know my AIEONUS phone charger isn't going to burn my house down and I'm more than happy pay a premium for that knowledge.
I've been buying everything i can think of from temu for a year now , in anticipation of it surely being outlawed in the EU. That time has come.
Well, enjoy your plastic toys and clothes that are full of known carcinogens I guess.
It's not being outlawed but made more expensive via a 3 euro fee attached to every item purchased.