If I’m going to buy a cheap Chinese product, why not get it for a fraction of Amazon’s cost? That’s the thought motivating my shopping at Temu, a Chinese-backed competitor to Amazon.

For example, this dog jacket costs $25.99 on Amazon but $9.89 on Temu. It can be challenging to find the corresponding items across the websites, but it is possible – reverse image searching can be helpful.

Why would I want to see Amazon’s reviews for a product I found on Temu? I’m even more suspicious of Temu’s reviews than Amazon’s. Consider the dog jacket, which I found on Temu with 126 reviews and 4.8 stars. On Amazon, the jacket has 9 reviews with 4.9 stars. On Amazon, more reviews typically increase my confidence in their average, as does varied prose, pictures, reviewers’ history, and verified purchases. (Though none of this guarantees a review is genuine.) This diversity of signaling is not present on Temu, which often has 10-to-100 times more reviews than Amazon, almost all of which are five-star one-liners.

In fact, the five-star glut on Temu made me wonder if it was even possible to leave a negative review. (On Amazon, I’ve had merchants challenge and remove my reviews under bogus rationalizations.) I recently left two negative reviews of products on Temu and was curious to see if they showed up; they just did.

I gave two stars to this bathroom mat. I can see 329 textual reviews out of 58,356 item reviews. Aside from a few 4 stars, all the reviewers gave the product five stars. That’s hard to believe. Similarly, for these ear muffs, I can see 190 of the textual reviews (out of the 349 item reviews), the vast majority of which are 5 stars. There are some critical reviews, but they are only viewable at the bottom of a near-infinite scroll. I can’t figure out how the reviews are ordered, but it is not by date and positive reviews are obviously favored.

My conclusion, therefore, is that Temu will accept a critical review. But the reviews are worthless. By commission or omission, the platform is overrun with useless 5-star reviews.

2024-03-13 update

A month later, my low-star reviews are still on Temu and are, in fact, at the top of the listings. So I don’t think Temu is preventing people from leaving authentic reviews, nor is it hiding them, but there is still a glut of inexplicable positive reviews.

2024-03-27 update

My low-star ratings are no longer visible on the page of the products. They can still be found if you browse by date, but in the default view they’ve been displaced by older-but-higher ratings. That is disappointing and suspicious.