The key thing is: Europe has product standards (and not just on safety), sometimes very strict ones. We have democratically agreed upon these, often enough only as a response to the industry being unable or unwilling (cough Apple and USB-C) to do the right thing on its own. In addition, we have warranty requirements (a minimum of two years), minimum wage and workplace safety regulations.
Now Temu, Shein, lots of the shops on Alibaba, Amazon and eBay... they all push stuff into Europe that violates these standards and can be sold cheaper as a result.
That is bad on three sides: First, for the dangerous stuff (such as the toys with choking hazards, lead paint or the "chinesium" Big Clive routinely pulls out of shady eBay sales), that's directly endangering our people and/or our environment. And second, all the stuff made and imported that violates requirements is undercutting our domestic production and economy who does have to follow the regulations or otherwise it gets fined. And finally: a lot of the stuff particularly on Temu and Shein is outright garbage, falling apart after a few uses - and then it ends in our landfills and waste disposals. A horrible waste from an environment perspective, especially given that a lot of the junk comes in via air freight of all things!
> they all push stuff into Europe that violates these standards and can be sold cheaper as a result.
I understand that and I agree that it should be regulated. But on the other hand, I can order 50 zippers on Temu for 2$, and if I go to a local store they sell one for 10$. I bought both, and they are exactly the same.
So one zipper on Temu costs 4 cents, versus 10$ in a local store. That's 250x more expensive. Doesn't seem reasonable.
Maybe the one in the local store wouldn’t need to be $10 if more people bought them there? Also, they need to charge for the risk of putting the crap on the shelf without testing it first.
Are you saying that the local merchant tests it and that's why they sell it at 250x the price?
I said 10$, but it depends on the length. So 60cm is maybe 10$, 70cm is 12$, 80cm is 13.50. So you would say that testing the 70cm variant of the zipper is worth 2$ more than testing the paint on the 60cm variant?
My point is that at this price, if I don't get the zipper on Temu, I don't get it at all. I won't pay 10$ for a zipper of this quality.
I've noticed a similar 'this profit margin seems almost vulgar' on the same store shelf.
As you showed with slightly longer zippers.. I notice with car fob remote batteries. An 8 pack is $12 at the store. The same brand, a single will be $5. A 2pack is $7. And the 8pack $12.
Do you really need to make $4 on selling me a single? I know shelf space is valuable, but the same store sells things for $1 too on another shelf so apparently <$1 profit shelf space is possible.
Given how small the batteries are, they probably have similar costs for shipping and handling. So there's a cost to get _anything_ to the local store, plus the cost of the actual goods.
They are not. With the one you buy at your local store, you get the two years warranty, and should the thing contain, say, lead paint you can hold the seller accountable.
Good luck doing the same against Temu.
In addition, you pay a markup at the physical store for stockkeeping. Yeah sure, I can order the small capacitor for some fried PLC adapter on Amazon. No doubt. But I'll need to wait about two days for shipping, whereas the local electronics store has it right now when I need it.
> They are not. With the one you buy at your local store, you get the two years warranty
And with the Temu one I get 250 units for the same price. I don't know how often you break a zipper, but 250x in two years sounds like a lot :-).
> should the thing contain, say, lead paint you can hold the seller accountable.
I understand what you are saying, but honestly I doubt they check every 10cm of every zipper for traces of lead (or other). If there is ever an issue, maybe (?) they will recall them somehow, but I probably won't ever know (say I paid cash, they don't have a way to contact me at all, and with a credit card I'm not sure if they can / will find my contact ever).
> But I'll need to wait about two days for shipping, whereas the local electronics store has it right now when I need it.
Sure! But the fact is that I'm absolutely fine waiting 2 days if it costs me 250x less. Actually with Temu it's more a few weeks, I would think? Still worth it for zippers.
If the zipper was sold for 1$ in the local store, that would be different. But 10$? At this point I just don't want the zipper at all. So in a way it's not really "Temu vs local store". If I don't get it on Temu, I don't get it at all.
If you leave your personal gain aside for one moment, don’t you see how that just means you’ll throw 246 of them away because you don’t need them, minus the three replacements for the bad quality? Don’t you see how that cannot be positive, to have so much waste, instead of proper QA and manufacturers doing the right thing for fear of litigation? These manufacturers pay taxes and employ people. Both of these contribute to our wealth. Making it harder for local businesses to sustain themselves will lower or quality of life. This may not relate to your zippers immediately, but allowing vendors like Temu to exploit our economy by undercutting it has negative effects, which you are supporting with your actions.
> If you leave your personal gain aside for one moment, don’t you see how that just means you’ll throw 246 of them away because you don’t need them
I didn't say I would get 250 of them, I said the price was 250x more expensive in the local store.
> These manufacturers pay taxes and employ people.
Would you buy a coke for 55$ if I told you "look, these manufacturers pay taxes and employ people"? Or do you have a notion of "this is too expensive for what it is"?
> This may not relate to your zippers immediately, but allowing vendors like Temu to exploit our economy by undercutting it has negative effects, which you are supporting with your actions.
Just like you didn't read properly that I was not actually ordering 250 zippers, you didn't read my first message properly. Let me write it again slightly differently:
I do agree that it needs to be regulated. But on the other hand, sometimes it seems so extreme that it's difficult to believe that the local store is not abusing. At this price, I just can't afford the zipper.
Here in Spain from time to time (near Christmas) often they fine some warehouses/companies sending cheap toys to dollar stores with no safety regulation and often with toxic paints. No, they aren't the same. And if some of the stuff from our 'dollar stores' are slightly dangerous, some stuff from Temu or Shein (hello plastic clothes) can be midly dingerous over time.
You can have similar crap on AliExpress but the quality at AE it's far better for electronics at least.
As I mentioned from the beginning on: I do agree that it needs to be regulated, and I do agree that some QA is needed.
However, I find it hard to believe that because of that QA, a 0.04$ zipper now costs 10$. And the fact that the 60cm zipper costs 10$ and the 70cm one costs 12$ tells me that the local stores (or whatever intermediate responsible for the price) are simply abusing.
In other words, it feels like there is a responsibility on the side of the local stores: I want a zipper, I can't afford 10$ for one, so either I don't get a zipper at all, or I get it on Temu. In any case, the local merchant is screwed. Now if I get a zipper on Temu, suddenly I see all the cheap crap I can order from there, and I presume my local merchant abuse on their price in exactly the same way (which may or may not be right). So the local merchant "pushed me" towards Temu with their abusive prices.
> And the fact that the 60cm zipper costs 10$ and the 70cm one costs 12$ tells me that the local stores (or whatever intermediate responsible for the price) are simply abusing.
Again: stock keeping costs money. That is what you primarily pay for. Real estate isn't cheap, especially not in urban areas, so a lot of products just get dropped outright and the products that move very slowly but can't be dropped (what would a sewing store be if it didn't carry a few zippers?) get marked up to pay for the space they consume in storage.
Are you serious? The 70cm zipper takes pretty much exactly the same space as the 60cm one. It's not like they store 2 millions of them: all of them are on the rack. The 70cm just go 10cm lower on the ground. Same space.
You'll have to do better if you want to justify that those 10cm are worth 2$.
Just to be clear: I am for regulations, and I do favour the local merchants (e.g. by almost not using Amazon).
I just chose a specific example (the zipper) where I think the local merchant clearly abuses, to say that it goes both ways. I'm fine paying more if it helps the local merchant, but I am not fine getting screwed by them. I won't buy a bottle of water for 200$, even if it's sold at a local store.
>With the one you buy at your local store, you get the two years warranty, and should the thing contain, say, lead paint you can hold the seller accountable.
I'm not sure how it works in the EU, but here in the USA I'd guess that the vast majority of those zippers are just ordered from Temu and marked up. And good luck holding the "seller accountable" if the zipper doesn't end up meeting your standards.
> Just to be clear those things you buy on Temu must have by law a representative in the EU which would be the entity responsible if you are poisoned by whatever you buy.
Yup, the "EC Representative". Some LLC paper company that's probably going to just fold over when you hit them with a claim.
I don’t know much about the legal code. But when my computer code doesn’t work I don’t think of fixing it in terms of “add more code or don’t,” but rather “remove the bad code (if necessary) and add some good code (if necessary).”
Is that how you think about fixing software bugs too? "You're saying the existing code is broken so we should fix it by writing more code?"
EDIT: Regulations are simply laws. Laws structure legal (this includes financial) interactions. The idea that you can always fix problems just by removing regulations is no less absurd than the idea that you can always fix problems just by removing code. "Good" isn't defined by having less or more, it's defined by what you have being good or bad at doing what it's meant to do. Parent is wording their question in such a way that it can only be interpreted to mock the idea of fixing a bad law by passing a new law (whether that involves replacing the existing law or not is irrelevant).
No, I don't think so and I honestly don't see how this is relevant.
I am not saying that regulations are bad. It just that governments are accepting insane laws, and often they don't have mechanisms to undo what they've previously done. Or maybe they're not willing to use these mechanisms, it depends on the country.
This is just another example of that — law that sounds good on the paper and that doesn't make any sense in real life. I really doubt that mindlessly amending this regulation will make it better.
The local merchants' profit pays for that. That profit comes from sales. For local merchants this likely means sales to customers like "you". So it's your money paying for those things via local merchants.
If your concern is foreign merchants not paying into the local tax system, it sounds like you're advocating for tariffs (i.e. taxes on imports).
It’s not like you don’t get anything in return from the merchants. Yes, you are part of the local economy. I’m not going to argue with you whether the capitalist society works, because it does, and has improved life to extreme measures. This entire system doesn’t work if money flows to half a globe away.
It’s not just about taxes alone, but the whole infrastructure of local corporations manufacturing and selling goods while creating employment and contributing to the local society. Tariffs alone don’t fix that, and neither do state-funded Chinese importers sweeping the markets.
> unwilling (cough Apple and USB-C) to do the right thing on its own.
There was, and still is, no reason that Apple should have been forced to adopt USB-C with the proliferation of Lightning on the market - a connector with significantly more lifetime and reliability than USB-C. If you want a device with USB-C, go pick an Android device that ships with USB-C. Forcing these regulations has just forced everyone to sell the same amorphous brick of glass and sand under the guise of "consumer choice".
(And remember: It's okay when Google goes anti-competitive, but it's not okay when Apple does it! --Margrethe Vestager)
Apple was not forced to abandon the Lightning connector. If they would think that Lightning is a better product and keeping it would be positive thing for their customers, then they could still use it (beside a Type-C connector).
Except Apple shouldn't be forced to use a Type-C connector in the first place, and pandering to Vestager's terminally dry desert in her pants so she can get off to a USB-C port shouldn't be on Apple's priority list.
By taking a look you'll find that regulations are commonly written by civil servants and various experts (which are typically not chosen by a vote) and then approved by people that you do get to choose by a vote.
We vote on the representatives, who in turn spend an awful lot of time talking to all sorts of interest groups - manufacturers, other parts of the economic chain, consumer and environmental protection organizations, lawyers, industry organizations, god knows what else - and in the end usually come up with decent regulations as a result.
I agree that the results can be sometimes weird, sometimes annoying, and sometimes outright dumb. But I'll rather pay that price than not have USB-C, two year product warranties, no lead in kids' toys or access to clean and safe drinking water.
Now Temu, Shein, lots of the shops on Alibaba, Amazon and eBay... they all push stuff into Europe that violates these standards and can be sold cheaper as a result.
That is bad on three sides: First, for the dangerous stuff (such as the toys with choking hazards, lead paint or the "chinesium" Big Clive routinely pulls out of shady eBay sales), that's directly endangering our people and/or our environment. And second, all the stuff made and imported that violates requirements is undercutting our domestic production and economy who does have to follow the regulations or otherwise it gets fined. And finally: a lot of the stuff particularly on Temu and Shein is outright garbage, falling apart after a few uses - and then it ends in our landfills and waste disposals. A horrible waste from an environment perspective, especially given that a lot of the junk comes in via air freight of all things!