It all started careening downhill when they swapped to whatever marketplace crap is in place now. OG amazon was a revelation back in the day.

I cancelled prime a while back and I've been mostly trying to order direct from manufacturers when possible. Costs more but I figure that's the price of not contributing to a known bad actor in some small way.

Thanks for the summary. I'll keep in in mind if I can't find a more direct route.

how far the mighty have fallen to be compared unfavorably to aliexpress. sheesh.

you can turn off ai and block ai content in ddg settings.