5.14 /// A Journey Through My Latest Shopping Spree

Is it worth waiting weeks for a bargain, or is speedy delivery the real hero of online shopping? Join me on Infinite Prattle as I navigate the fascinating world of Temu, the Chinese retail titan offering incredible savings at the cost of a little patience. From lavalier mics to motorbike cleaning brushes and even a craft stand, I recount my own buys and weigh them against competitors like Amazon and AliExpress. We explore not just the allure of the price drop, but also the quality and practicality of these purchases. 

With the thrill of a Guardians of the Galaxy rug offsetting the disappointment of a flimsy Leatherman case, my shopping adventures are nothing short of a rollercoaster. Discover the joys of organising with a new pin collection flag and a YouTube-inspired soldering mat purchase, alongside the surprises and letdowns of buying cheap. Whether it's finding the perfect Apple Watch strap or debating the merits of shipping delays, I share the highs and lows of online shopping, offering insights and lessons to help make your next spree a little more rewarding.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:01 Reviewing Cheap Products From Teemu
• 10:25 Product Reviews and Purchases
• 16:00 Shopping Experience on Teemu

Transcript

Stephen Kay: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle. Hopefully, the sound's going to be better this week. I've actually adjusted my settings and concentrated on kind of being organised today. Anyway, what are we talking about? We're going to be talking about cheap products off the internet, namely Teemu, so stay with us.

Stephen Kay: 0:19

Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle. Unscrupted, unedited prattle on everything Hosted by me. Stephen, listen, like, share, subscribe and enjoy the show. Hello, how you doing? I hope you're very well. I'm very well. Thanks very much for asking.

Stephen Kay: 0:45

Thank you for joining me on Infinite Prattle, where the sound this week, as I've said, should be ultimately better. Last week it sounded like I was in a cupboard. I am going to go back and tweak that recording and see if I can make it sound better. It was me being super, super lazy. So I apologise because this is a podcast and I should remember audio is vitally important because it's the only thing you can hear fundamentally. Yeah, I just was in disarray last week. I still haven't got my mic set up on the stand again because I went to do it just and I can't find my adapter to connect my microphone back to it. So God knows where that's gone. So I may have to order some spares. Anyway, how the devil are you all? I hope it's been a superb week for you and I hope that you know you're very well. Basically, I hope you're all very well. If you're the first time here, welcome.

Stephen Kay: 1:37

This is Infinite Prattle, formerly Stephen Speak, and I just prattle on about any old shite. So there is a little bit of adult content in this, so a bit of swearing. I don't really touch on things too adult, to be honest. It's generally my own interests or ponderances or some current events, but in general I'm just chatting about anything. So welcome. Feel free to pop a comment in the comment section and give us a thumbs up if you like the content. Thank you so much.

Stephen Kay: 2:12

Anyway, today I said I was going to talk about Temu I don't know actually how you pronounce it. I think it's Temu, as in T-I-Mu, it's spelled t-e-m-u, um, and they are a massive, huge chinese corporation which have been around for a couple years and they've they seem to have shot up, uh, like a lot of these companies at the moment, like um, I don't know, like xian and jume and aliexpress and stuff like that in the last few years that seem to have gained massive popularity for cheap products that you might have to wait a few weeks for, but unlike Amazon, where it could come the next day. But you get massive discounts and savings on the things that you've ordered because of basically the massive savings coming ordered, because of the basically the massive savings coming direct from the suppliers, basically, or so it seems. Or massive warehouses like Amazon, and I hadn't got into the whole AliExpress thing. I've never ordered anything off them or what was the other one? I can't remember what the other one was. There's been a few like that, hasn't there? The other one that I can't remember what the other one was there's been a few like that, hasn't there.

Stephen Kay: 3:30

But Teemu I don't know why kind of captured my interest a little bit more and I actually have ordered from Teemu. So today I'm just going to be chatting about my orders and what I think about them and was it worth ordering from them and kind of a summary of that really. And you know, is that good content? I don't know. I don't know If you've never ordered from them. It might help you make a decision. So I still have stuff in my basket. I'm just opening the Teemu app now on my phone. I still have stuff in my basket from browsing et cetera, from browsing etc.

Stephen Kay: 4:08

And yeah, when you first go on, it's very much like any shopping app. You'll see, kind of like Amazon. You search for things and there's multiple sellers selling what appear to be the exact same items, and I think that I think that the appeal of it is that you seem to be saving a lot of money. Now, whether you are I don't know, it appears that you are. I suppose I can only go more afforded already. So well, so I'll kind of like kind of say that when I get into it and then I'll talk about what I've ordered, whether I think that you know this is a thing, um, and whether I think that it's something that potentially you could shop at regularly, and yeah, anyway, so I'm just going to get up the things that I've ordered, if I can find the place. So my orders, okay.

Stephen Kay: 5:15

So I've made several orders now on here and the very first one I ordered was I wanted some Lavier mics Just to test out. I'd seen some on Amazon and I'd seen an advert, probably on TikTok or Instagram or something saying about these little Lavier mics that literally just plug into the bottom of your phone and you charge them up and it literally is instant connect, you can't really change any of the settings, anything like that and I think there was something ridiculous like £8 or £6 or something, and you know what. They looked alright and I thought are they going to be crap for that money? I don't know, I don't know. And I ordered at the same time some I've nearly knocked my microphone over, apologies, it's because it's not on my stand, you see, I need to sort it out.

Stephen Kay: 6:03

And I ordered at the same time some um like like hard cleaning brushes that you can put on a drill so that we help clean my motorbike. And I ordered like a little kind of hobby craft stand thing that can hold screwdrivers and little rolls of tape and such things like that, um, a little drawing stuff. So I thought that looked pretty cool for my, for my workshop I say workshop is a garage with a with a desk and I just thought it looked like it would potentially be something that you know would be usable. And it was only a tenner. And again, I'd been looking at them on Amazon and they were a lot of dearer, like double the price, and the same with the brushes. The brushes were like a fiver, I think, on Amazon they were like £12. So everything that I was looking at was well under less than half the price and I must admit it took about three weeks to arrive. But I was impressed with it all, like the little microphones, like for what they are, and I'm still keeping them.

Stephen Kay: 6:58

I have upgraded my Lavier mics now because I kind of wanted to see if it would be something I would use. So if I was on Instagram could I plug them in and use them. And, to be fair, they're probably actually easier to use than the more expensive Lavier mics. But functionality-wise and the sound quality is like a million miles apart. But yeah, it was worth the purchase for what they are and I've got them for the future if I ever need some cheap Lavier mics or I'm going somewhere, just want to take something cheap with me and don't care ruining them.

Stephen Kay: 7:26

The little hobby stand was probably the worst out of the three items. I mean you can't really go wrong with brushes I've not used. The little hobby stand was probably the worst out of the three items. I mean you can't really go wrong with brushes. I've not used them yet so maybe they'll fall apart when I use them, but brushes on a piece of metal can't really go wrong with a doubt, and they look identical to the ones off Amazon, so they're probably made in the same factory.

Stephen Kay: 7:45

The little hobby stand was a bit cheaper than I would like. The plastic felt a bit cheaper, a bit more brittle than I was expecting. The silver finish because it's meant to look like metal but it isn't. It's just like spray-painted plastic or I'm guessing it might be actually put into the coat on the plastic. I'm not sure how they've done it. It was just a bit cheaper and it was applied kind of shoddily. But again, it's something that I'm just going to reuse. It's going to get battered, it's probably going to get covered in paint and dust and crap. So I wasn't overly bothered.

Stephen Kay: 8:17

So I pretty much made another order straight away because I was kind of impressed. So that order was delivered like in April and literally a couple of days later I literally put another order in. So the first order was for 23 quid and I would say, you know, I would pretty much say like eight out of 10 really for the products and what I was expecting, maybe eight and a half. And then the second order I put in was for some more. I put in quite a lot of stuff. I hope Sarah doesn't listen to this because she doesn't really know half the things I ordered. Well, it sounds like a lot but it really isn't.

Stephen Kay: 8:52

So I ordered a sign, a WD-40 metal sign. I like these metal signs you can get for your garage and wall and stuff. So I ordered one of the metal signs. It's like a. It's not an official WD-40 one, it's like a jokey kind of one as well, and then like a jokey kind of one as well. Um, and then they had these little, these little um, almost a copy of like yeti kind of um, what's the other company, I can't remember, but they make these super, super expensive cases and it's almost a copy of that really, really cheap copy, don't get me wrong. Uh, kind of try to be like flight cases kind of thing, and they're doing these small storage ones.

Stephen Kay: 9:27

So I've got three in black and three in orange and thought being like for drill, for storing drill bits, because they've got like a gasket around them so they'll be waterproof. And I've bought them for like drill bits and little knits and knacks in the garage kind of thing, for my toolboxes and you can label them up easy enough. I use the Adam Savage way and and use um a whiteout pen, so tip x pen. And then there's these other little ones that look more military style and I thought they would be better for like bigger things like forstner bits and dowel attachments and stuff like that. So I bought them. So I bought three of them, um, and then I bought an alien sign and an alien wooden metal sign which is basically like a poster print on metal, uh, and I bought a Whalen Giutani pin, lapel pin and again a detailing brush set for my motorbike, uh, because again you know they were expensive on Amazon.

Stephen Kay: 10:25

And one of the best things I think I've bought off there was a rug for the floor. Don't get me wrong, it's quite thin, but it's like a neoprene-y kind of material, like cottony material, and it's the Awesome Mix Volume 1 tape from Guardians of the Galaxy as a rug and it's big as well. It's big. I mean I paid I think it was £12, and it's about 5 foot by 3 foot and it's cracking. It's really good. It's in my cave. I'm literally looking at it right now.

Stephen Kay: 10:56

And that was my second order and that came to £47, but I got like 14 items for that and the metal signs were like a couple of quid, and the little container boxes the first ones I mentioned were like £2 each, so I bought six of them and then the slightly bigger military ones were like about five or five or each, but again still cheaper than still cheaper than um than I'd seen on amazon, and again, I don't think anything out of that lot was was bad the alien sign. The print was quite low quality so it was obviously taken directly from like a jpeg of the film poster and just just copied on and. But you know it does the job. It's still a. It's still an alien like metal poster, which is still pretty cool, um. So that was it.

Stephen Kay: 11:43

Then I was away, then I waited a month. I put another order in um and this is probably the most contentious one. This is I bought like a little pill box. It wasn't really as described but it was really cheap still. It was like £1.50, but it was like a little slidy pill box. I thought, you know I take hay fever tablets in the summer and stuff, and I thought, well, I can use them to store them somewhere and I bought.

Stephen Kay: 12:09

I have a Leatherman and there was a little. There's a little case you can get on Amazon and it's like you thread your belt through it and then there's a place for your Leatherman and a torch and a clip for your keys and stuff. And I thought that's really cool because if I'm in the garage or whatever I can zip it through there or if I'm out and about etc. And that came and it was shit. It literally was shit. It had no shape to it at all. It had no actual pouch. I mean, I don't know if it will stretch out or not, but it wasn't real leather. I think it said it was leather, probably said to wear it in a small print, not real leather, but I didn't read that. But yeah, it was just flowers of pancake, there was no real mouldings to it and I tried to put it onto and I thought there's no way I'm fitting my leather man, let alone a torch or anything, inside that. But again, it was super cheap. It was something cheaper, like £1.49. So for that it's not even worth paying the posters to send it back.

Stephen Kay: 12:58

I bought a new watch strap for my Apple Watch, like kind of a military style, one like nylon, braided nylon style, which almost looks like you take part of it apart for the for the cord inside. You see, the ones that are made of cord. It's kind of like that, and I can't fault that. That was like a fiver, I think, or four pound and it's brilliant. Um, the only thing is it's just getting a bit dirty because it's obviously fabric and it's on my wrist all the time. Um, I bought a little flag to display my pin collection, which was fine. It's just a piece of pennant-shaped material on a string.

Stephen Kay: 13:39

Then I bought a storage box for cables and this is actually really good. It's on the side here. I've not actually put the cables into it yet, because I do this I buy things and then I clutter everything up and then I have to have a big purge and then use all the things that I've bought and formulate a plan of how I'm going to use them. But this is basically like a box and within the box there's lots of little containers to put different sorts of cables in and they're big enough to hold, like the slimline charges as well. So I thought that would be a good solution because, um, I'm eventually going to put in some slide out drawers into my kitchen cabinets that are in my cave and on with them I'm going to put some foam and everything's going to have a cutout and insert and in that I thought I can put that storage solution so I can pull my drawer out first order retrieval Adam Savage again and just grab the cables I need, and then I won't have random cables just lying around my desk constantly. I can wrap them up and put them back in their own little small container and I don't have to think about, like you know, putting like a little strap on them or anything to tie them down to throw them in a box. They'll all have their own little box which will keep them contained and it does what it says on the tin kind of thing it's. It is what it is. And the last thing I ordered was a soldering mat with little containers. Again, they were super expensive.

Stephen Kay: 14:54

I watch a youtube channel and I don't know he's got a weird name for it, I'll get it over. He basically people send him stuff and he buys stuff off eBay and then he fixes it, basically takes it apart and sees if he can fix it. His handle is stestesfix. Great channel. I think I've mentioned it before. And I thought to myself you know I've got a soldier in iron and stuff, but there was a couple of things I was looking at, maybe trying to mend myself. I've got like a light that's kind of corroded. I need to like take it apart and maybe redo some of the soldiers on it, and I thought, well, I've got no matt soldier in matter anything to do it on, so I thought I'll buy one off amazon. And they were super expensive they really were and so I went on timu and they were something stupid like a quarter of the price, and when it arrived, it was bloody brilliant. To be fair it's, I can't see the amazon one being any better, if I'm honest with you. Um, so, yeah, so they were the orders I put in, and the last thing I put in was I wanted a little container.

Stephen Kay: 16:00

I love things being in containers. What my biggest thing is if you've got something, I like it to be protected. Now for my mixcast 4 and my akai, uh, little keyboard, I bought some um, um, oh god, what are they called? Hang on, let me grab the lid to actually read what they're called deck savers. There you go, deck savers, and they're polycarbonate, uh, clear, you can hear me put it back down again. Um, protection for you, for your, for your stuff, really, and they're great.

Stephen Kay: 16:31

But I do like carry cases as well and I thought I'll have a punt and see the little carry cases for like drills and stuff like that. I thought I'll just buy one, see how good they are, because again, I've been looking at specific ones for, like, I've got flight cases and I thought I could buy one and maybe put some foam in it and carry my specific things safer, because I've got the big flight cases and if I had small cases, the small cases go in the big case and I carry the big case and everything looks bloody lovely. And again, that's the whole thing with these plow slide shelves I'm going to build. Is that in the foam inserts that the cases are just going to be slide into the foam insert? Uh, so probably the bottom one will have all my big cases, middle one smaller electrical items and top one like the stuff I use more often.

Stephen Kay: 17:14

First order retrieval again, adam savage, he's a genius, uh. So I ordered one. It was about 30 centimeters by 20. I thought I could use it for some microphones initially or something like that for the band. And it came. It was £6.50 and bloody brilliant, amazing, they were like £20, £25 on Amazon. So my next order basically contained a shitload of storage stuff and stuff for the garage, because I discovered stuff for the garage as well that they were doing like metal wall mat racks to hold cans, and tape and silicon and all this. So I've bought three of them. So I'll kind of wrap up the last two orders in one, because they were done pretty much one after the other.

Stephen Kay: 18:02

So I bought again a variety of cases. One was for my um dji uh gimbal that I have. A couple three were specifically for microphones. One was from actually for my iKai keyboard because even though it's got the deck saver on, it's hard to like still carry it around. My mixcast has its own, has its own flight case.

Stephen Kay: 18:21

I bought a Philadelphia Eagles metal sign because I discovered I thought, oh, search, philadelphia Eagles. I bought some silicon shoelaces and a couple of things for the garage, oh, and I bought a diehard advent calendar. So I saw these a couple of years ago and my boss actually has one and basically Hansgrohe was at the top of the Nacatoni Plaza and it's just made out of like laser-cut wood, really simple. The top of the Nakatoni Plaza and it's just made out of like laser cut wood, really simple. But again, there's still about 10 on Amazon and this was like three quid. And basically, as it starts off the first day of Christmas and you can count it all the way down the month, the month of December, basically, and at the end Hans Gruber hits the floor, um, but yeah, so I think the and I ordered a Wailing Jitani hat as well, um, which, again, the shape's not great, but yeah, everything has been brilliant.

Stephen Kay: 19:08

I think the worst thing was probably maybe the little hobby thing wasn't maybe as good plastic as I was expecting, but what do you expect for £8? And then the Leatherman thing was probably the worst thing. The only problem as a founder is I ordered a hat washer, you know, for baseball caps. I wear a lot of baseball caps and they're getting dirty and I don't want to just throw them in the washing machine. So I've seen these hat frames. Basically you put your hat into and then you can wash it within the frame.

Stephen Kay: 19:40

It's meant to help keep its shape. The thing with T-Moves they just get bags and I think they just throw everything in a bag and then they throw it in the back of a truck and nothing's truly protected. And the thing itself is actually fine. I think it'll work fine, but it's just been bent out of shape. So I've got to try and maybe put it in hot water and try and get it back to the shape, or you know boiling water and put it back to the shape, or maybe get my heat going out and reshape it, because it's been crushed. Basically it's not broken, it's just been bent out of shape, which is really annoying because it was super, super cheap. Um, maybe it means it won't work. That's the only thing. Maybe it's that cheap that it shouldn't have bent out of shape, and the one on amazon wouldn't have had that happen but maybe would have broken because it'd been more brittle. I don't know.

Stephen Kay: 20:22

But I think out of all the things I've ordered, I've probably spent about 200 pound and I've probably saved 200 pound, maybe 300 pound on things I've bought. So the couple of things that maybe haven't really worked out, have it's really been negligible. Really it's not even worth. I would say, like phone them up, um, but I'll just, I'll just be wary of the, because they don't always take too much care when they're packing things. That is the only thing I've noticed. If it comes in a box, you're pretty much okay, but say that hat shape protector basically wasn't in its own box and yeah, it didn't go too well, let's say that.

Stephen Kay: 20:58

But yeah, I just I was dubious. My mum's even been using Timu she's a bit of an addict, I think. But I say I've made like five orders now and it's all been good and these cases have been amazing. To be honest, these cases have been really, really good. They've really helped me organise my stuff, because you know, you buy these expensive things, especially like microphones and stuff like that, and you need to protect them. You can't just throw them in a bag, you need to kind of look after them. So the next thing I'm going to do I'm going to see if they've gone on Teemu is order a lot of foam to to cut up myself, to add to these inserts, to make my own custom inserts, um, for my items.

Stephen Kay: 21:38

Um, yeah, uh. But yeah, teemu, it's a strange thing, isn't it? It's how it how, how it picks up. You wonder how they can, uh, undercut so many sellers, and I'm guessing it's because things are coming direct from factory they're missing out all the middlemen and just delivering them directly.

Stephen Kay: 21:53

Um, I have seen people reviewing them on on youtube and stuff, and then they are quite, quite correct. Everything seems to be covered in. You get quite a lot of time it's dusty, so I would advise like washing your hands after you handle things, wiping things down. I don't know if it's because they keep them in big warehouses where it may be hot and dust gets in from the outside or whatever. Um, but yeah, I think the biggest thing is that the packaging's never great and everything just seems. You always always seem to be just thrown in one big like sealable bag and it doesn't really matter if things are fragile or not. They just throw them in the back of a lorry then to dispatch to you. Um, but yeah, on the whole, I would say my my experience is it's probably like a nine out of ten. On the whole can't really complain and I just think just be careful on some of the things you get. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Stephen Kay: 22:44

The thing I am actually going to try next is I want some customized stuff for infinite prattle and I noticed they actually do. These sellers do customizable clothing and baseball caps and things like really cheap and there's like um bottle openers. You can order like 50 bottle openers for like 12 pound, customizedised like only with like basic writing on. But I thought I could maybe order some like Infinite Prattle branded things and just see what they look like and even if they're not great, it'll be good enough for promoting the podcast, even if they just say at Infinite Prattle, so people can just go to the Instagram and stuff like that and find the podcast. But yeah, it's just, it's interesting that these sites exist and they can coexist with big brands like Amazon and people seem to be using them a lot more. And I must say I wouldn't hesitate in recommending someone to use Timu. But I'm just saying you know, be careful what you order. You know, obviously sometimes I would.

Stephen Kay: 23:46

I've not really ordered anything electronic or electronical. Is that the right word sound right to me? Electrical, it's probably the right thing to say. Um, I've not really ordered any electronics. I think I mixed two words together um. So I don't know. You know how safe things would be? Um, I may be a bit dubious to order electronics, but things I've ordered so far, like cases and stuff like that brilliant, no problems with them. So yeah, I've been ranting on about Timmy for like 25 minutes nearly, so I'm going to shut up. But yeah, I think in general, pretty good place and I can see why they're worth an absolute fortune now. But we'll see what happens in the future, you know? See if they can keep this momentum going. Will they start increasing their prices, um, or will they keep to keep on managing that low price promise almost of reasonably good quality things for hardly hardly any money, and I think that's. I think that's. That's not a great tagline, but that's how I describe them. Pretty good shit, not much cash. Yeah, and I'll leave it there.

Stephen Kay: 24:54

Thank you very much for listening. Remember, um, go back and listen to some other episodes. If you go back to the start, you'll see that the podcast does change names. I did that because inconsistency is my middle name. Thank you very much for tuning in and you can contact me If you go to the description. You can text me and give feedback or comment on social media or give a review. That's always nice. Yeah, I'll speak to you soon and remember, keep prattling. You've been listening to Infinite Prattle. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, go back and listen to some others. Please continue to listen. Your support is much appreciated. Please like, share, comment and subscribe and I'll speak to you all again soon. Take care.