'I ordered same items from Temu, Shein and AliExpress and made staggering discovery'

In the wild world of Chinese online retailers you never truly know what you can expect to arrive at your door.

Shein is one of the most popular sites, promising cheap clothes and gadgets, and has taken over the UK markets. It is now valued at more than $60 billion (£48 billion). But it's far from the only option on the market as Temu (pronounced Tee-moo), which as only launched in 2022, is now worth an eye-watering £120 billion. Meanwhile AliExpress is another popular choice, and is already valued at a massive £127 billion. It's definitely safe to say these new online shopping sites have gripped consumers looking for a bargain.

But do you ever really know what is going to arrive at your door after you've placed your order. With heavily photoshopped images and suspected AI generated photos on their websites, it's not always a case of 'what you see is what you get'. From customers receiving jewellery made form real teeth, home accessories made from food and covered in ants and bizarre clothing items it can often be a gamble.

Now, one curious shopper decided to put all three bargain sites to the test and ordered a range of products from Shein, Temu and AliExpress to see what would turn up - and she was left utterly gobsmacked. Ahead of Black Friday, Clara decided to see if the Chinese retail giants really followed through with their promise of prices so low they seem impossible,

These companies, who are waging a war on our high streets, are selling products at prices no UK shop can ever compete with. With countless pop ups on their websites saying '90% off' and 'nearly all gone!' it's fair to say they are good at getting their customers hook, line and sinker.

Clara bough 15 items from each site, including a toaster, an electric milk frother, a lint roller, an oven timer, a potato peeler, a hand-held fan, highlighters, tweezers, a desk lamp, a dog toy, an aroma diffuser, a tennis racket, socks, trainers and a gym top. She also ordered them all at the same time but called the process "hellish".

"The luxuries of a well-designed website, accurate product descriptions and half-decent customer service simply do not exist in the Wild West of Chinese e-commerce. Shopping on Temu and AliExpress feels like navigating a digital labyrinth. You are bombarded with countless offers and announcements: Half price! Ninety per cent off! Ten thousand items sold already! Nearly gone!" She told Mail Online.

So when it came to finding her items, Clara said there were 'hundreds' of options to choose from, with many looking the same but with different price tags. The total from each site varied from £65 to £68 - leaving her shocked at how cheap it was for £15 items.

However this is because none of these retailers have warehouses in the UK, so their products arrive via air freight, which cuts out the middle man such as distributors and retailers. So while the shipping may be more expensive, costs are cut elsewhere with these companies. There is also a tax loophole for this, as these firms can legally avoid having to foot UK import duties on overseas packages. The tax is put on shipments worth more than £135, but sites like Shein, Temu and AliExpress usually send orders below this threshold.

First to arrive was a toaster from Shein, and Clara noted it worked "fine" and for £19.99 she said it looked "pretty sturdy". Next up the Temu toaster (£23.59) arrived but was "flimsier" than the Shein one. Then the tennis rackets appeared at her door, but she didn't realise they were child-size as they were just advertised as designed for 'youth games'. Clara noted shortly after a series of "identical-looking" packages arrived with no branding on but soon realised they were from AliExpress.

She noted the toaster was "far worse quality" than the others, and said all of the packaging labels were in Chinese which made it confusing. "My final haul was a mixture of hits and misses. I was impressed with the rechargeable portable fans from all three companies (which all cost less than £4). The highlighters were all decent quality, too. Nor could I complain about the dog toys, which were no worse than any you might pick up at a pet shop, and the desk lamps, while ugly, worked perfectly fine," she added.

When it came to the trainers, Clara said Shein's were the best but "wouldn't be supportive enough" to exercise in - and the same for the gym tops, although she felt said Temu's were the best. She also noticed there was a "significant overlap" between the companies. "Many of the products I ordered from Temu and AliExpress – for example, the desk lamp and the lint roller – were exactly the same despite being priced slightly differently. The child-sized tennis rackets I received from Temu and Shein were also identical. The reason for this is that Temu, Shein and AliExpress are essentially marketplaces where different sellers or warehouses list their items for customers – and many list them on all three sites," Clara explained.

Overall, the shopper concluded that while these sites offer impossibly low prices, "everyone is a loser" as the ordering process is "exhausting" while the quality is "erratic" and the ethical concerns are "are simply too terrifying to ignore". Many experts have raised concerns over the ethics of the factories these products are coming from with many speculating they may be coming from warehouses of forced labour. Shein churns out more than 6,000 new styles per day with ridiculously low price tags, starting from just a couple of pounds, which are then shipped worldwide.

They use special technology - Large-scale Automated Test and Re-order (LATR) - to be able to order and deliver products at a high-speed rate compared to its competitors. The algorithm scans the internet to follow consumer habits which allows them to predict new trends in an instant, cutting out the middleman.

It shortens the process from design to production to just one week however whether it gets delivered on time is a gamble, as social media timelines have filled with countless complaints to the retailer with customers trying to track their orders. While they utilise technology, they have garment workers in factories across Guangzhou - who were reportedly found to be working exploitative hours for little pay.

Channel 4 documentary - Untold: Inside the Shein Machine - last year saw an undercover probe discover alleged employees at the factories were working up to 18 hours a day, throughout weekends, and were being paid as little as 3p an item - with just one day off a month. They also found that the alleged workers were receiving a base salary of 4,000 yuan per month - roughly £450 - to make 500 pieces of clothing per day.