MyBroadband tested ordering from Temu sellers who offer “local warehouse” products and was impressed with the quick service, with the parcel arriving within two days.
Temu recently launched local warehouse support in South Africa, promising much faster delivery times and zero import taxes on specific products.
While Temu said it doesn’t operate its own distribution centre in South Africa, it allows sellers with a local presence to ship directly to customers from their warehouses.
MyBroadband tested this new feature by placing an order from a local warehouse–supported seller and tracking the entire process.
Local items are marked with a “local” or “local warehouse” tag on the product listing. Searching for “local warehouse” on Temu yielded good results with locally available products.
After some investigation, it became clear that the local warehouse function works more like a local marketplace where sellers can choose to handle their own warehousing and packing.
Amazon.co.za, Bobshop, and Makro are examples of marketplaces that offer similar functionality. Sellers can list their local items, and these are bought through the marketplace’s interface.
With Temu Local Warehouse, standard shipping is R75, unless you order more than R650 worth of goods from the same local seller, after which shipping is free.
We ordered some helping hands with a magnifying glass and light, which stated that the fastest possible delivery was the next day.
The delivery window also showed an informative breakdown based on past deliveries, which indicated that we were more likely to receive our product in two days.
The process of placing the order and making payment was the same as for international orders, and we had the option of using credit from a previous order on the local order as well.
Immediately after ordering, we received a tracking number from Fastway Couriers. Our order arrived in two days, as forecast by the average delivery times from the specific store.
It was well packaged inside an unbranded and significantly oversized cardboard box, unlike the usual international bags Temu uses.
We never received requests to pay taxes or additional import costs, further suggesting that the product came from a local warehouse.
Overall, the experience was not much different from ordering through other local stores such as Takealot or Amazon.co.za, although the list of locally available products is still quite limited.
Temu local warehouse order test
