US Amazon is heavily dropshippers nowadays, especially for clothing. Reverse image search usually finds the same item with the same image on AliExpress for half the price.

The advantage used to be Amazon'd ship it to you in a couple days, but I'm getting a lot of 30+ day arrival estimates there too now.

Worry not, the Amazon situation is just as crappy here in Europe, across all product categories (that I use).

They sneakily removed the "Sold by Amazon" filter a while ago too and I'm not sure why. It's the only indicator that gives me any amount of confidence in the product quality these days.

There’s a lot of that crap but I don’t think it is much by sales volume. Nothing with long lead times is anywhere near the top of results generally.

And pretty much always, you can find the same item (same pics too) with prime shipping for a slight amount more because they just sent it to FBA.

The problem for Amazon as well is as their QC and race to the bottom progressed, it becomes harder to justify using them. Unlike the vendors they undercut, they can't play the sympathy/"support local"/"support your favourite producer" card. So I know many people who are splitting their buying habits between niche-specific retailers for the few types of products they really care about actually getting quality out of, and Aliexpress for the rest.

Define "now". In Spain it's been cheaper since AliExpress opened. Now it's more expensive because they have to pay VAT, but it's still cheaper.

And before AliExpress opened we had people importing stuff through eBay which was also cheaper than local retailers and Amazon.

Wait how was that not the case before?

Yeah, and then you get the product in like 2 weeks. Who has that kind of patience? Amazon's main product is "get this stuff to my door by tomorrow" and it works super well.