Shopping on Temu

[Wolfie65 1268xp 0]

I discovered Chinese online mega store Temu about 2 years ago and have been buying quite a lot of stuff from them, miniatures, terrain pieces, art supplies, costume accessories, decorations and even some pet articles.

Especially their 3D printed minis deserve special mention because they seem to be made of much sterner stuff than the 3D prints you normally find on Fleabay, Etsy and similar sites, which are often EXTREMELY fragile, so if the seller doesn’t bubblewrap the crap out of them, you are likely to find at least some of them broken when they arrive, especially since the postal service has definitely NOT improved over the past decade or so.

In contrast, Temu’s 3Ds are made of a more plastic-like material and are about as sturdy as any GW, Victrix or Oathmark plastics. They are also fantastically well packaged in almost all cases, in individual boxes with tons of cushioning material.

As a caveat, there is one thing that is absolutely crucial for shopping on Temu: You MUST read the descriptions of items very carefully and really study the pictures and measurements they give you to avoid disappointment.

For example, they will sometimes describe something as a ‘figurine’, which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be a flat print on a pane of acrylic. like a suncatcher.

Or, you might look at a terrain piece, thinking that this would make an excellent addition to your wargaming table – and it would, except it’s so small that the tallest figures you will be able to use with it are 10mm……

[nightrunner 11697xp 0]

I use Temu a lot for basing materials.  You can find anything from fine gravel to casting resin.  I do not like buying miniatures from Temu, because I do not know if they are authorized printers.

[sundancer 44211xp 1]

I don’t use Temu or Alibaba or any of the other China outlets. For multiple reasons.

1. You too often don’t get what you (thought you) ordered. Like @Wolfie65 said you really need to read the description but even then you might be in for a surprise.
2. Quality if varying greatly and more often then not Temu and the others sell stuff that has been discarded by manufacturers (See Big Clive’s unbagging videos for that)
3. Often times they sell pirated/stolen designs.
4. Import taxes and fees. With last years changes in regards on what you can import freely in Germany you can (potentially) be in for a surprise. If your order arrives at all in the first place.

No, I’d rather buy locally and when that is not possible use a store that is within the EU so that I can have “some” assurance about buyers rights.

[grantinvanman 8109xp 0]

I’m with @sundancer – Temu, Alibaba are to be avoided, for all the reasons he states. Copyright infringement is so blatant that it’s offensive.

[Wolfie65 1268xp 0]

Considering the pricing policies and marketing strategies exhibited by the Great GWulhu over especially the past 30 years or so, I fail to be concerned about concepts like ‘authorized’, ‘pirated’ and such.

[grantinvanman 8109xp 0]

@Wolfie65 – sure thing, champ – encouraging outright theft is a good thing in your mind 🙄

[sundancer 44211xp 1]

@Wolfie65  but they (Temu et all) don’t stop at G’Wullu. They grab everything. And while Games Workshop might just brush it off smaller companies and creators really feel the sting when 10 – 20% of potential sales suddenly go out the window.

No matter if you like the great unclean games company or not: theft and copyright infringement is wrong. Full stop. There can’t be any “but they are evil”. If we start making exceptions in laws then we open floodgates.

You want to buy a recast: fine, do it. But don’t pretend it’s morally OK. At least have the guts to say “I want that model but I don’t want to pay full price”.

[grantinvanman 8109xp 0]

@sundancer TOO RIGHT.

[nightrunner 11697xp 0]

@sundancer I agree with your position on recasting and that you should not buy miniatures from these sites, because you cannot confirm if they are authorized to 3D print models from someone else’s intellectual property (resins are obviously recasts).  Etsy for example is more reliable with authorized printers. Having said that, I do not like to judge in  broad strokes.  Nor will I condemn ‘all’ Temu or AliExpress because of a percentage of bad apples.

I live on a small island with hardly any access to suppliers, unless they are from abroad, so I end up paying a lot in p&p for a lot of basic materials that other companies source from China!  Temu for me is a blessing because I can spend 25 euros(minimum) on basing material, flock, polystyrene sheets etc.. and get free p&p.  If I do not spend more than a 150 euros, I do not get saddled with VAT and processing charges.

Also, I have been ordering these materials from Temu and Aliexpress for years and never had any problems with postage.  That is an anecdotal in itself, but I have had several parcels lost since 2020 (since Covid) from Europe, USA and Canada.

I wonder and would be happy to hear your thoughts.

[sundancer 44211xp 0]

Well if you have to order in/import your hobby supplies either way simply because you are one of “four” inhabitants on a small island then you are what I would call “an edge case”. So as long as you actively avoid buying re-cast (or “illegal goods”) and Temu is the cheapest option for you: you do you.  We all need to make due with the funds we have. I totally understand that.

The majority here in this community is not an edge case though. Especially US, EU and UK have more than enough local stores and regional shops to avoid Temu et all.

Could I save some money by buying my hobby supplies (not minis!) in China? Probably. Will those order get here in a timely fashion, without surprises and to a quality standard I expect? Weeeeeeell… maybe. But at that moment where I need to file a complaint about a product Temu is a bad choice. But that is just my anecdotal evidence on a very, very small sample set.

[nightrunner 11697xp 0]

@sundancer ‘simply because you are one of “four” inhabitants on a small island‘ – that is a low blow.  🙂 There are half a million people on my island, but the hobby scene is small and not popular enough to have large retail outlets with all the hobby supplies one would necessarily want. I get your point though.

[sundancer 44211xp 0]

No offence meant. Scratch “inhabitants” and set “hobbyists”. 🙂

[nightrunner]

@sundancer I wasn’t offend at all – forget about it!  I actually found it entertaining – see, you do not need bad dad jokes at all!

But back to your point, so you are saying that buying base-materials from Temu is not a bad thing.  So is saving money a bad thing for people in the EU, UK and USA if they buy from Temu? If you are saying you should spend more to support your local store – I would wholeheartedly agree. If you are saying do not buy these things from Temu because a number of shops on the site sell recasts and print without authorization – then I am not so sure I follow.

I will leave it there – because I have to go to work and suffer the company of football obsessed maniacs who can’t shut up about how bad their team is doing.

• This reply was modified 4 hours, 37 minutes ago by nightrunner.

[sundancer 44211xp 0]

If you are saying you should spend more to support your local store – I would wholeheartedly agree.

This and most of the time buying locally (and I use this term loosely to include brick and mortar stores with online shops) isn’t that much more expensive than Temu (if you take the time to look around different shops) plus usually the quality is what’s written on the tin.

[Wolfie65 1268xp 0]

With the exception of 1 nationwide chain and 1 RC car shop, all other local hobby shops have disappeared over the past 15-20 years, thanks primarily to the interwebs, so shopping locally isn’t an option.

Ditto for game stores, there are currently 2 in my city, they have very little stock, what stock they do have is the most recent only and massively overpriced, in addition to that, they have all the charm of an airport Starbucks.

The only miniatures I have seen on Temu that are obvious ripoffs of someone’s IP are GW – mostly 40K – a a few Raging Hormones Jailbirds, other than that, there are a TON of minis that are very generic and could have come from absolutely anywhere. There are, after all, a LOT of wizard figures with cloaks, staffs and pointy hats to be had from a bewildering variety of sources. Good luck trying to find out who originally designed that particular sculpt or print.

There’s a Drizzt Do’Urden & Gwenhyvar (Forgotten Realms) mini diorama that I have never seen anywhere outside of Temu. There’s a one-piece print Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer Lord on Lammasu, smaller and very different from the original metal model – which probably goes for hundreds of $’s on Fleabay, assuming you can find it at all.

There are some Sisters of Battle character figures, which do not seem to be copies of GW models, but different sculpts at 1/3 or less the phantasmagorically insane cost of the ‘official’ GW ones.

That’s not ‘theft’, that’s what a free market looks like.

I was lucky enough to get into the hobby before GW even existed, before companies twisted themselves into pretzel shapes trying to prevent you from using anything other than THEIR figures for your games, before codices became an ever more expensive arms race, each newly issued one trumping the ones published before it, before new editions of games forced players to spend more and yet more money on something they already owned and other such underhanded tactics invented in the bazaars of the Middle East.

So if someone finds a way to rip off a company that’s been ripping off its’ customers for decades, I say let them.

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