France announce a levy on SHEIN, TEMU and similar imports. AIBU to want the UK to do the same?

I think you are touching on 2 different things here. 1 is ths rise of online shopping and 2 is the rise in buying from unethical online shops. An import fee was introduced in Ireland in July from anything coming from outside the EU, regardless of their quality or safety. It is making me think twice about what I buy but is not making me stop buying online, nor will it.

I absolutely hate shopping in person - the crowds, the traffic, the cost of parking, going through rails of clothes, the time it takes that I could be doing something I actually like... and then after all of that I might not even find anything... not for me!

Should there be a fee to make people double or triple think about buying from the likes of Shein? Yes. But its having a knock on effect as the poster with an etsy business mentioned. Should a levy be introduced to deter people from shopping online? No!

Like I said earlier, even if they are produced in the same factory they can be very different quality and the workers can be treated very differently. They use AI to copy designs and churn out thousands of ultra-cheap items daily, using unregulated workshops that ignore safety and fair wages. This extreme volume creates a wave of disposable, low-quality waste that traditional brands simply cannot match.This is not the case for all brands who make items in China factories, just the blueprint for Temu and Shein type brands.

Greedy landlords and their ridiculous lease prices, stupid councils and their ridiculous parking policies were major factors in the decline of the high street as we knew it.
And they’re still not learning. It’s too late now to fight back against on line shopping and a levy on Temu etc will make bugger all difference.

Yes to the effect on the high street, but also the effect on the planet. Theser awful companies are churning out millions, billions of items every week, all made as cheaply as possible and not designed to last. Producing them is polluting, getting them here is polluting, recycling them is impossible as they are all artificial materials which will not degrade and is too poor quality to do anything with. Disposable, cheap shite.

ANd that's before you get into the slavery issue. Well done M. Macron.

The high street shops need to stop the race to the bottom on quality.

Nailed it. Mind you, Next and M&S are often ok for basics.

But Primark have to adhere to UK laws and standards, especially in regards to chemicals used during production etc. I work in clothing and China has a high standard of manufacture for clothes, the bulk of their stuff is much more likely to come from Bangladesh, Pakistan etc where it’s cheaper and they don’t pay duty. They also operate a model where they buy huge amounts which brings the price down.

i wouldn’t choose to wear primark clothes either but they are not the same as Shein and Temu.

This is definitely the wasteful era. And people go on about plastic pollution.. it's like the more you think of it, the more you do it.

Most of the stuff on the high streets at the moment is from the same factories and producers as Shein and Temu. The quality is exactly the same. This is why so many people just shop at Shein and Temu, they feel fleeced buying something from the high street at £28 when on Temu/ Shein the pretty much identical item is £8, made of the same fabrics.

The high street itself needs to source decent suppliers.

As for empty shops/ vape shops/ nail bars/ charity shops. This is very much a rent, rates and enforcement issue. A lot of the empty units are owned by private landlords, they often want very high rents for these buildings. Many independents cannot afford the rents plus rates of the more expensive rental units. The high street stores are unwilling to pay high prices and are instead investing in their delivery/ online/ click and collect offers. Charities get a reduction on rates so it's cheaper for them. Nail bars/ vape shops in many cases are money laundering fronts so the price of rent doesn't matter - it's another way to launder the money. They tend to rent for the year, close down and then rent a different shop with a different name. Dealing with money laundering fronts is an enforcement issue. It requires a police force that is equipped and trained to deal with money laundering and human trafficking/ modern slavery.

Then there is the anti social behaviour many high streets now attract, loitering, rough sleeping, chugging (I consider this antisocial), drug and drink use.

This actually isn’t true that it’s no different ethically. Buying from Temu or Shein is ethically very different from buying from traditional brands because their ultra-fast business model maximise environmental and labour exploitation at a scale mainstream retail cannot match. While many brands manufacture in China, Temu and Shein ship individual packages directly to consumers to exploit the shipping loopholes, allowing them to bypass bulk customs inspections and evade forced-Labour import bans. AI-driven, on-demand production relies on thousands of tiny, unregulated workshops that escape independent labor audits, resulting in rampant design theft, sub-living wages, and an unprecedented volume of cheap, disposable goods destined for landfills. It really annoys me when people say they are all the same as all made in China. Just isn’t true.

I’ve been on holiday twice in the UK this year - once to Lincolnshire, so not exactly rolling in it, and once to the South Downs. Most of the towns had good, solid high streets that were busy. Mix of shops from local bakery chains to Primark/M&S, with a couple of streets of indie shops. Not all high streets are dying!

I bloody love amazon. It’s a massive facilitator for my life, gives me access to smaller retailers I wouldn’t otherwise find (it’s great for Asian groceries), and is a great example of an innovative business that is a behemoth for good reason. I have no desire to spend my life trawling round shops for a packet of coat hangers when Amazon gives me a far greater choice and has them with me the next day.

It would help against the eshops pretending they are local, won't it?
If their stuff would be more expensive with the extra levy, and the levy would be visible, peple would notice something is off.

Don't fool yourselves too much.

Yeah we do. People can smoke and vape. They can eat what they want. They can jeopardise their own child’s life by forward facing them at the age of 2.

I’m very much with you, OP. Anything to reduce the amount of plastic tat in this world.

That being said, charity shops have become extortionate. I swear, I’ve seen SHEIN clothes being listed at higher prices in charity shops, than what they were likely paid for on SHEIN in the first place.

In the end of day you can find a lot of goods sold on Temu Shein sold to + 200% in the high streets shops. The same crap.

Not really.

The real shop is legally responsible to sell only things that are safe - so it can look the same, but one went through safety certification and the other can be toxic

Not everyone can pop into town and easily browse around shops for a few hours. People with mobility problems/disabilities have come to rely on online shopping as its the option that works for them. I think its important to support the high street, but we need to remember that accessibility matters too. Online shopping isn't always about being lazy or taking the cheapest option, but it may be for some, the only option.

I don’t want to go into the high street. Ours is disgusting, full of gangs of teenagers and people on drugs. We don’t all live in chocolate box villages full of lovely old ladies.

Have to agree when the norm is now both adults working full time then you go to high street they expect you to pay for parking in a pothole unmaintained carpark then you get to shop and they haven’t got what you want anyway. I choose to order online whilst at work on lunch break etc better use of time and inevitably cheaper

If you think so.

I only partially agree. These companies are filling a gap, not creating the issue.

The issue with high streets, IMO, is that in the 90s/early 00s, lots of new shopping centres popped up, on the edge of the city centre in lots of small towns. Usually containing a big Debenhams, and a handful of smaller shops. These shopping centres killed off the main shopping street. Then Debenhams went bust, and the shopping centre died off too.

I don't disagree with a tax on online sales made abroad, e.g. Shein. There are already import fees for lots of things, and i actually thought they were going to start applying them to Shein parcels?

But not for online sales which are posted within the UK. A lot of the time, people are buying online because it is the only option. Or the cheapest - why would I wait for the weekend, drive 40 miles to the nearest Next, pay £10 to park, to find that they don't have what I want in store in my size? When I could pay £5 delivery and get it tomorrow.