The Chinese online shop Temu is becoming increasingly popular in Switzerland and Germany. The company behind it has already had success in China. But some products turn out to be dangerous.
Has the cheapest offers in times of general inflation: the app from the Chinese trading platform Temu.
Florence Lo / Reuters
Headphones for 4 francs 04. A smartwatch for 15 euros 99. Sneakers for 7 francs 88. Temu, the Chinese online platform, has been luring people with unbeatable cheap offers for a few months now. Now, in the run-up to Christmas, aggressive marketing is being added: If you search for a product on Google or click through an app, you will increasingly come across advertising for Temu goods.
Anyone who suspected that such goods could be questionable now has confirmation. Several product tests have shown that goods that are illegal in the EU are being marketed via the platform. The program “Servicezeit” on the German news channel WDR had several products delivered and subjected them to security checks by the German Federal Network Agency.
The result was shocking: In addition to a car door opener that transmits on a military frequency that is banned in Germany, and a smoothie device in which the knife can be switched on unprotected, the test institute found a steamer that does not have a protective conductor in the plug. This can cause an electric shock. Such devices must acquire certification for the EU. The one on the steamer was fake.
EU limit exceeded 40 times
Bayerischer Rundfunk also ordered several products from Temu for the “PULS Reportage” program and sent them to the Technical Inspection Association (TÜV), the testing organization that tests products for harmful substances and safety standards in Germany. The TÜV found the pollutant DBP in the buttons of a polo shirt at a dose that is forty times the European limit value. The plasticizer endangers fertility, lowers testosterone levels and sperm count in men and can even harm the child in the womb.
A smartwatch also lacked a protective device: If the battery discharges heavily, it could catch fire when it is recharged. Although the manufacturer is liable for the damage caused by his product, it is doubtful that a Chinese cheap goods factory – if it is even known as a manufacturer – will actually respond to a demand from a European customer.
Against this background, Swiss consumer protection wrote on request: “For security reasons, we recommend that you avoid purchasing electrical appliances on platforms such as Temu, AliExpress and Wish.”
Lots of very poor quality products
Aside from dangerous electronic goods, testers were also provided with sports shoes that squeaked, headphones that played music poorly, and several products that were smaller than they appeared in the photos in the online store.
When asked, Temu writes: “We take the safety and quality of our products very seriously.” It is noted that “although there have been reports and articles about unsafe products, these incidents do not represent our entire catalog.” The online retailer also vows to continually improve its “strict security controls and compliance measures”.
Direct imports: legal situation in Germany and Switzerland
In the EU Offering goods that do not meet EU safety requirements is prohibited. This is what the Market Surveillance Regulation says, which has been in force since July 2021. Products that do not have market approval can be intercepted at customs. In case of doubt, it may be that a Temu order does not even reach the customer.
In the Switzerland According to Swiss consumer protection, there is no law that prohibits the advertising of goods that do not meet safety requirements. Private online orders are not checked for compliance with Swiss security requirements.
“Buy even more together”
Temu is backed by the largest online retailer from China, PDD Holdings. This stands for Pinduoduo, which means “buy more together”. PDD has a higher goodwill than the e-commerce giant Alibaba – although the company has only been around since 2015.
Shopping app Pinduoduo’s strategy is the same as Temu’s in Europe: the lowest prices on the market, aggressive marketing, an app that offers incredible discounts, and free products for customers who encourage their friends to shop.
Many goods on the platform are “no-name”, i.e. not assigned to any brands, and come from small, unknown factories that sell directly on the platform without intermediaries. Pinduoduo has succeeded in encouraging hundreds of millions of poor rural consumers and the price-conscious older population in China to shop online.
Initially, Pinduoduo even subsidized orders to acquire customers. The company now wants to quickly gain market share abroad compared to its competitor Amazon, even if the business initially makes losses.
Employees suffer from cost pressure
The extent to which cost pressure is affecting Pinduoduo’s employees became known in January 2021 after two of the company’s employees died: In December 2020, 22-year-old Zhang Fei collapsed on her way home at 1:30 a.m. She had been working on a discount project for the company. Two weeks later, an engineer from the company threw himself from a high-rise building.
Shortly afterwards, a former Pinduoduo employee spoke out. He posted a photo of a colleague who had to be picked up by the ambulance after collapsing at work and criticized the company for having an extremely tough work culture whereby 380 hours of work a month were expected – over 200 hours more than European employees usually work.
The Temu app is always active in the background
It also became known in April 2023 that the Pinduodu0 app was spying on its users. This is what cybersecurity specialists found out on behalf of CNN. When this became known, Google blocked the Pinduoduo app in the Android app store and asked users to uninstall it.
Pinduoduo requires four times more permissions during installation than its European counterpart Temu. However, there are anomalies with Temu: a technology specialist from Bayerischer Rundfunk was able to show that the app is active even when it is closed. What the app does is unclear. When asked, Temu wrote that they had “no indication that the app was running in the background”.