What Is Temu?

Temu has landed some huge ad placements recently – including the 2024 Super Bowl – yet many viewers are still confused about what exactly the company is. Temu is an e-commerce site similar to Amazon, though it boasts a few key differences from its competitors. Here’s what you need to know about the shopping app that promises to let you “shop like a billionaire.”

Temu is an online marketplace that launched in the U.S. in September of 2022. It was created by the Chinese company PDD Holdings, which also owns the marketplace Pinduoduo, which is popular within China itself. Temu had a meteoric rise in popularity due, in part, to an aggressive advertising strategy. It aired a Super Bowl commercial in 2023 while also opening up its availability in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Over the course of 2023, the site also became available in several European countries and several Latin American countries.

For many viewers, a Super Bowl ad may seem like a strange way to hear about a company for the very first time. Trending Google searches wonder if Temu is a “scam” or if it is safe to use. The answers to those questions are pretty straightforward, in spite of what users may see online. Temu is definitely a legitimate business so the chances of fraud are as low as they are with any online marketplace. However, in terms of customer satisfaction, Temu has many more negative reviews than comparable sites. The Better Business Bureau has given the site a C-minus grade, pointing to numerous complaints about items damaged in transit or missing altogether.

Customers have also complained about customer service, saying that it was difficult or impossible to get a refund even with a legitimate grievance. Some even said they never received their order at all. Temu itself advertises the “Temu Purchase Protection Program,” which guarantees “refunds for items that do not arrive, arrive damaged, or are not as described.”

It is difficult to weigh extremely negative reviews like this one against positive reviews – or simply positive experiences with no online feedback. Temu is currently the number three most popular app on the Apple app store and the number two app on Google, so there are plenty of people using it. However, these customers may be looking at the app out of curiosity after seeing a Super Bowl ad or a paid endorsement by a content creator they follow on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube. Temu has partnered with many online creators in exchange for money, discounts or free products.

As for what you’ll find on Temu, the site sells all manner of products, and many of them come at incredibly low prices. That’s because the company ships products directly from their manufacturers in China, saving money on warehousing, retail, and even shipping itself. However, many customers have claimed that non-brand name products they have gotten from Temu are lower quality than other goods. They speculate that the company is allowing manufacturers to skip quality control processes.

While there are clearly risks involved with shopping on Temu, it’s hard to quantify those risks compared with the dangers of shopping on Amazon – or anywhere else. There are chances of items being lost or damaged in transit, of third-party sellers falsely advertising their products, of miscommunications with customer service, and so on. However, those risks are present to some extent on websites with longer reputations as well. Customers simply need to weigh those risks against the chance of savings on their particular purchase.