I’ve tried Temu too—kind of for the same reason. Amazon’s been hit or miss lately, so I get it. If you’re still comparing places, I found this helpful site breaking down Temu vs AliEspress https://help-center.pissedconsumer.com/aliexpress-vs-temu-which-online-shopping-platform-is-best-for-you/ . It helped me figure out which one fit better for what I needed—worth checking out if you’re still deciding.

I prefer eBay over both Temu and Amazon. It has Temu prices with Amazon ship times.

Future proof did on good piece on Temu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFII7t9FtO8

Temu is really only there for overconsumption and has ties to child labor, etc

Searching for bungee cords to secure some things around the car (my folding kayak, for one), the experience was so bad, I searched for "Japanese Bungee Cords" to try to get results from somewhere online which don't just look like junk. And Temu showed up, very easy to register, clearly a very optimized flow still (unlike amazon where the SERP pages are pretty trashy with broken layouts, wasted space, defaulting to "featured" sort (!), etc"

It's similar to Taobao, which in the 2000s and 2010s (and maybe today?) was a great store in china to buy super cheap items, with quality down to basically zero / super low cost, just depending on what you wanted.

Amazon's search result pages look like something which is the output of ZERO vision and a BILLION A/B tests.