Once upon a time you could choose to buy good products from good brands on Amazon, or import cheap crap from China via Aliexpress or whatnot.<p>But now that nearly every category on Amazon is dominated by cheap crap from dodgy brands in China, I'm feeling less reason to buy things from them (unless I need it <i>tomorrow</i>). I suppose that's what's fuelling the popularity of new marketplaces like Temu?
This is so sad. I live off of Amazon brands, because they're so cheap, convenient, and relatively good quality. I've NEVER had a quality issue from them. Call me a corporate stooge if you want, but their mattresses, clothing, drugs, etc. have been a lifesaver.
I found the quality of Amazon-brand products to be inconsistent. I hoped Amazon would be able to use its scale to produce some items at lower costs and higher quality than competitors, but it just didn't work out. Often I find Amazon Basics goods at much higher prices than other retailers on their sites.<p>And Amazon's own-brand instant coffee is truly, truly awful, FYI. (Although their filter coffee is good)
Not much of a concession to regulators. They could just expand the breadth of offerings from their remaining brands if they wanted to, until they were selling the exact same products.<p>I am not an FTC regulator, but to me it seems like the shadiest thing Amazon does with its brands is to give them increased prominence in search results. They cannot tell me they don't juice the results to bubble their brands up to the top.
Is there an actual list of what is being cut? It seems like it's mostly clothing and furniture (sans the Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials brands).
The only amazon basics I bought is two monitor arms. I bought them because they are made by Ergotron and have a logo applied to them. They were on sale for 65€ each while the original (Ergotron LX) costs 160€<p>I only bought them because they are Ergotrons.