A friend of mine who used to own a quilt shop said that over the years she had her shop, RJR had reduced the quality of their fabrics to a point where she stopped buying them.
At a hand quilting class I took several years ago, the instructor complained that Hoffman had reduced the thread count of their fabrics.
At the quilt shop where I worked, we were never in love with VIP.
The distressing thing is that you will find all of these brands (and there are probably others) in quilt shops. Yardage prices being what they are, you would expect your local quilt shop owner to be screening fabrics for their quality and then only stocking those higher quality greige goods because that is one of the things that sets them apart from a Wal-Mart or Jo-Ann's. Like everything else, it's up to the consumer to stay on top of it, daunting though it may be.