Last week, there was a bit of a brouhaha about Temu’s terms and conditions for a cash reward campaign, leading to Temu amending their T&Cs.
The short version is that Temu’s T&Cs included a lot of legal boilerplate that encompassed a whole range of uses for personal information for publicity purposes that Temu does not engage in. So they changed the T&C to accurately reflect that they only ever used the username and profile picture for referral notifications.
Some participants in our recent Cash Reward campaign have expressed concern about the promotion’s terms and conditions (T&Cs). To reassure our customers, we have tweaked the T&Cs to make it clear that we only ever use username and profile pictures in this promotion for referral functionality and winner announcements.
The previous terms and conditions were overly broad and inadvertently included promotional uses that Temu does not engage in. Customer trust and satisfaction is at the heart of Temu, and we do not and will not sell customer data.
– Temu spokesperson
Temu has updated its Cash Reward campaign Terms & Conditions to reflect the actual limited ways in which it uses customer information. Specifically, the only user information that is shared is the user’s chosen name and profile picture. This information is essential for the functionality of the referral program, allowing recipients to
- Identify who sent the request
- For the sender to identify who accepted the request, and
- For Temu to show partially redacted user names and profile pictures of cash reward winners
The nub of the situation is that the previous terms were standard legal language commonly used in the terms and conditions of giveaway promotions. These activities are a common marketing and promotional activity employed by different companies across numerous industries, including brands like Amazon, Shein, McDonald’s and USA Today, whose promotions include nearly identical terms and conditions. It’s only because Temu is a Chinese company that the media spotlight turned so strongly on them. One has to ask why they’re not so concerned when it’s a Western platform gathering the same information?
