Budget Chinese retailers such as Temu and Shein successfully made Amazon feel insecure enough for it to come up with its own version, Amazon Haul. The e-commerce giant had been talking about launching a similar discount store with all items priced under $20. It launched in beta today and is available as a separate tab on the Amazon phone app, titled Haul.
It kept its promise and ensured a $20 price cap with most items under $10. The product categories include fashion, home, lifestyle, and electronics. It says the delivery time will be between one and two weeks, much longer than Amazon’s typical delivery timelines of within a week and a day or two if you’re a Prime member. However, the longer delivery times make sense since the Amazon Haul products will be shipped directly from a fulfillment center in Guangdong, China.
Scrolling through the items, you’ll quickly realize they’re fairly poor quality but nothing different from what Temu and Shein offer. Unlike the regular Amazon, Amazon Haul is more for impulsive shopping during late-night doom scrolling. This might be why the feature is mobile-exclusive. It’s similar to the in-app shopping feature TikTok introduced because it knows how impulse shopping works.
Amazon is only good for large heavy items that would be too expensive to ship directly from China. For example, this summer I ordered a patio umbrella from amazon, but ordered the cover from aliexpress.
That or random stuff you need within a few days but isn’t feasible to get commuting in real life either because you live in a car hellscape or Amazon killed the business viability of stocking said item
See, I don’t trust them with most things. I use the temu rule of “I cannot think of a way to fuck this up” or I don’t order it off amazon; I know I’ll get fake trash.