AliExpress Adventures

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have purchased sports jerseys on knock off sites before. I am so passionate about it. The experience is always really great. With the race to the bottom that the company "Fanatics" is currently engaged in, there is no point in a guy like me trying to get something authentic. Fanatics makes poor quality clothing and they are having the professional baseball players wear them this year and they hate it!

My third greatest passion is that of human rights.

Luckily, just edging that for second place is buying cheap-o electronics, most likely soldered together by children, children that probably smoke. So let's try Ali Express!

Trying to recover the account I had years ago was a waste. I made a new one. I suspect they strip special characters out of passwords when they save them. Luckily I am experienced in web applications and I know all the incompetencies.

I bought tonight:

2 (2) SNES-style USB gamepads. You have to get them as a pair. They were a $6.57.

2x Lenovo 512GB SD Memory Cards. I don't think there is a chance these aren't fake. I just want some backups around for stuff as, as noted in other threads, the only thing that gives me pleasure any more is sticking mass storage into old computers. These came to a total of $8.09.

1 USB flash drive. 128GB. Sometimes you need a flash drive where the little connector sticks out with no BS. Again, if I only get 32 megabytes out of it reliably that is probably fine. My Playstation 2 can use a drive like this, but the one I have now has a weird connector. This drive was $1.60.

This is all an experiment. I can throw $18 away, or whatever it was, thankfully. We'll see if any of this stuff shows up! If it does then we can send technology to Tdarcos on the cheep. CHEEP!

[Flack]

I haven't ordered anything from Ali in a while but I've made three orders from Temu over the past couple of months. I don't trust putting the Temu app on my phone so I only order from an incognito browser window. Before ordering things from Temu I compare prices against Amazon and most of the time they're using the exact pictures and descriptions. A lot of the third party sellers on Amazon are just ordering from Temu and reselling things. I don't mind waiting a week or two to save 90% by ordering directly from the red dragon herself.

My new thing is ordering lifetime supplies of stuff. On Temu I just ordered 100 car valve stem caps for $1.68. I'll never use all 100 of these before I die. I'll never have to worry about buying stem caps again. One less thing to worry about for the rest of my life.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I haven't ordered anything from Ali in a while but I've made three orders from Temu over the past couple of months. I don't trust putting the Temu app on my phone so I only order from an incognito browser window.

I had not heard of Temu! I'll check it out tomorrow!

AliExpress was doing the same thing. I could have bought dozens of cheaper sd cards for $0.99 a piece if I so desired, but I wanted to see how this went first.

Ok, maybe I will check out Temu now. AliExpress did not have a USB joystick, only USB gamepads, and it's now been 5 hours so I have the gimme gimmes again.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I already had an account on Temu!
They have harmonicas for kids!
They have a Pac-Man plushie for kids!
They have snow suits for kids! Damn, thanks Flack, this seems like a slightly more reputable AliExpress.

[Flack]

I had not heard of Temu! I'll check it out tomorrow!

Don't tell them that! They ran their ad 10 times during the Super Bowl.

They have a Pac-Man plushie for kids!

Funny you should mention that.



This was $9.99 on Temu. The literal exact same thing is for sale on Amazon for $24.99. I have one friend in particular who keeps saying, "yeah, but everything on Temu is cheap Chinese junk" and I'm like... do you think there are kids in Boston making Pac-Man plush dolls? It's ALL cheap Chinese junk! That's where all (okay, some) of the stuff on Amazon is coming from in the first place! He's also concerned that these Chinese companies are stealing his data. He literally told me that from his gmail account so, the irony is thick there.

On my last order 50 of those little plastic "plugs" used to hold car interiors together. A 25-pack on Amazon was like $10 and a 50-pack on Temu was $1. When they arrived they accidentally sent me a 25-pack instead of a 50-pack and when I complained, they sent me another 50-pack for free.

Amazon is essentially Walmart at this point. It's the place you go for good products where you know you'll get a receipt so you can return it in 30 days if you need to. Temu is like that guy at the flea market that always seems to have official merch for super cheap and if it breaks there are no refunds, but you took the gamble and most of the time it paid off.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Everything arrived and works so far. INCREDIBLE. Why are we spending 10x more on sdcards? WHY?

[Casual Observer]

I haven't ordered anything from Ali in a while but I've made three orders from Temu over the past couple of months. I don't trust putting the Temu app on my phone so I only order from an incognito browser window. Before ordering things from Temu I compare prices against Amazon and most of the time they're using the exact pictures and descriptions. A lot of the third party sellers on Amazon are just ordering from Temu and reselling things. I don't mind waiting a week or two to save 90% by ordering directly from the red dragon herself.

My new thing is ordering lifetime supplies of stuff. On Temu I just ordered 100 car valve stem caps for $1.68. I'll never use all 100 of these before I die. I'll never have to worry about buying stem caps again. One less thing to worry about for the rest of my life.

Thanks Flack, I wasn't sure if I could trust them even with my card number. I've had my eye on some stupid toy drones for awhile.