Amazon.com Now Bans USB Type-C Cables That Aren't Up To Spec (google.com)

Google engineer, Benson Leung has been on a mission to get rid of USB Type-C cables that aren't compliant with Type-C 1.1 spec. He reminds us that these cables could potentially lead to damage. Over the past few months, he has reviewed over a dozen of USB Type-C cables on Amazon.com and concluded that the vast majority of them aren't compliant with the aforementioned standard. Now he reports: Amazon.com has just made a change to their "Prohibited listings" for Electronics. They've added the following line: Any USB-C (or USB Type-C) cable or adapter product that is not compliant with standard specifications issued by "USB Implementers Forum Inc." What does this mean? It means that cable manufacturers who sell poorly made or intentionally deceptive USB Type-C cables and adapters are banned from Amazon, officially. Really great news, but we all have to continue to be vigilant and call out any bad products we find on Amazon and other stores (both online and brick and mortar) as we find them.

Comments

Great News?

[Luthair]

Great news would be Amazon white-listing compliant cables, I have a hard time imaging El Cheapo Cables Inc. being overly concerned about a bullet point in the amazon ToS.

Re:Great News?

[tnk1]

On the other hand, El Cheapo Cables Inc. might be concerned about losing their ability to sell to Amazon if they keep breaking the ToS. It's not like Amazon gives a crap about one cheap-ass cable maker.

Re:Great News?

[Luthair]

El Cheapo Cables Inc. would just call themselves Sir Cheap Cables Inc. and signup again.

Re:Great News?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Great news would be Amazon white-listing compliant cables,

This would be the ideal solution, but I'm unsure how they'd go about it without testing cables themselves or relying on customer feedback.

Amazon could certainly afford to test USB cables, but that would also open up a can of worms in that they might then be expected to test other items they sell. I'm pretty sure they don't want to dip their toe in that pool, even for something as simple as a USB cable. It would be great for their customers and the "goodwill" factor, but it'll cost them time and money and they probably don't want to start down that path. Plus, maybe they'd get a fully-compliant cable from ABC Cable Company one day and then after passing certification, the company reverts to a non-compliant cable to save a few pennies.

As for relying on customer feedback, that would take a while to accumulate enough ratings and reviews before it was reliable, and it wouldn't help the people who bought the crap cables before the reviews came in, essentially turning them into guinea pigs or blind product testers.

I don't see a good solution to this kind of problem (and it's not just USB cables that this applies to, unfortunately). The "meet the specs or be banned" is a good first step, but any really shady supplier will just keep popping up under different names and selling their stuff.

Re:Great News?

[Coren22]

Unless you just buy from reputable companies like Anker...

Re:Great News?

[shubus]

So many have been stung by those El Cheapo Cables (me included!) that Amazon's move is most welcome. Now who is testing these cables and telling Amazon whether they meet spec and go on the white lit or don't meet spec and get de-listed?

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot bans postings that aren't up to spec. Like this one.

Oh Look! Amazon Basics Cables!

[Aero77]

I guess we just need to buy the Amazon brand cables to be sure.

Re:Oh Look! Amazon Basics Cables!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sneer aside, this is actually a good step in the right direction.

Re:Oh Look! Amazon Basics Cables!

[DeBaas]

so that's why they call their tablet fire...

Re:Oh Look! Amazon Basics Cables!

[nedlohs]

If you are buying cables in order to review if they are to spec or not, then it would seem to me you would much rather be able to write the review "It set my computer on fire" than "It failed test 18".

Shitty standard

[Anonymous Coward]

The better solution would be to get rid of the idiotic standard that requires the cables to have intelligence built in. Put it in the devices where it belongs.

Re:Shitty standard

[Austerity Empowers]

Put it in the devices where it belongs.

So back in the day when I did motherboard design, the biggest headache we had during our automated testing was USB keys and USB hard disks that had bad FW such that they would randomly disconnect, or otherwise hang up host-side code. MS Windows is least tolerant of this, and would often blue-screen. It seems every generation during our testing we'd get either blue-screens or BIOS lockups with some of these devices, have to go on a 2-3 week crusade of signal integrity analysis and measurements to prove that electrically nothing was wrong. Then inevitably we'd hook up a protocol analyzer and see things that just plain didn't make sense: the disconnects happened for NO reason. They happened with some vendors and not others, or certain devices from one vendor but not others.

Lots of money spent, lots of time wasted, but it turns out that that cheap overseas shit we all love so much doesn't always work so great. The bottom line is if you are going to have a standard you have to have some way of keeping people from sticking your logo on it if they cannot meet the requirements. It's great this Google engineer took up the mantle of shaming bad products, but the problem is more widespread than mere cables.

Re:Shitty standard

[SumDog]

I kinda have to agree with you on this. Why is USB-C setup so that a bad cable can fry your laptop?

Re:Shitty standard

[evilviper]

You know, if you swap the two wires on a polarized plug ("double insulated"), you can easily electrocute someone. There's only so much you can do when the wrong thing gets hooked up in the wrong place... You'd need all the circuitry of a switching power supply in every single USB socket.

Re:Shitty standard

[Megol]

I wonder what you are comparing to? The USB is a good standard and all common devices need no specific driver. Keyboards, mice, joysticks, printers, Ethernet adapters etc. just simply work with a common USB stack. So why do you call it shitty?

The complication we are talking about here is that the _cable_ between a host and a device surprisingly need to be specified to tolerate the currents it conducts (yes it's a strange thing). Enumeration is between the host and the device, not between the cable, the host and the device.

This isn't a problem with the USB standard, it is a problem of manufacturers making crap and not caring of potential hazards.

Re:Shitty standard

[marcansoft]

Because this has nothing to do with link speed. SATA doesn't deliver power over the data cable, and nobody wants to put a SATA (or USB) transceiver in USB power bricks. The resistor is used to signal current supply capability between "dumb" devices. USB devices already do intelligent negotiation of current capability and speed when the other end is a host and not a wall charger.

Re:Shitty standard

[bws111]

If your laptop gets fried, that is the fault of your laptop for not having any over-current protection on the USB power lines. The bad cable just tells the other device that your laptop can provide more power than it actually can.

Re:Shitty standard

[sexconker]

It's the port design on shitty (Intel, mainly) mobos. They're not individually fused (or fused at all).
The cable in question simply had the wrong pinout, and threw voltage onto lines that shouldn't have had that voltage.

You can't physically stop someone from applying potential to your exposed pins, but you can reasonably guard against it. Intel mobos typically don't (or didn't). All the brands people use for building their own (ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASRock, EVGA, MSI, Biostar, etc.) advertised USB (and other) short/spike/etc. protection as a feature years ago when it was becoming a frequent problem.

Re:Shitty standard

[Immerman]

USB-C is designed to be able to deliver 100W DC (20A) - brains or not, swapped wires in such a cable is quite likely to be able to fry something. Lots of electronics aren't going to be able to survive up to 20A of current in a reversed polarity, or delivered on a pin that was supposed to be an outgoing signal or voltage.

In this case it sounds much simpler - and is a problem that could affect standard USB 2 and 3 cables as well: The wrong identifying resistor was included in a C-to-A adapter, making the device think it was plugged into a high-current power source, when the reality was that the USB C port was only able to deliver 2 amps. The resulting current draw then fried the USB port's power source, destroying the port and possibly the connected device.

A related problem is commonly responsible for slow charging with old-fashioned USB ports: The spec defines a 0.1A maximum current draw unless the device has negotiated for more. But having to talk to electronics makes for expensive wall-warts, so an auxiliary standard was created whereby the port could identify itself as a "dumb charger capable of delivering X amps" by including a ingle resistor, whose resistance was used to specify X within a few tiers, including tiers far in excess of what a "real" USB port can deliver (As I recall USB 2 ports are specced up to ~2A, assuming the connected device successfully negotiates for more than it's default 0.1A. Dumb chargers can be specced up to 5A with the right resistor) Some cables can interfere with that, generally resulting in well-behaved electronics "failing gracefully" and charging at a much slower pace

Not being versed in the intricacies of type--C lore, it sounds like what probably happened is that adapter cable *should* have identified itself as something like a normal low-current type-A port to connected devices, but instead delivered a garbage resistance that got interpreted as "take all the power you want", and the type-C port just couldn't handle the resulting load.

Re:Shitty standard

[Immerman]

The drivers have nothing to do with the spec - as I recall USB originally defined a data-exchange spec, with no assumptions made as to the meaning of the data. That allows for the data-stream to be used for any outlandish hardware you can dream up, but obviously requires that the PC have software designed to interpret the data-stream appropriately (aka the driver). Contrast that with the combination of ports that preceded it: general purpose serial, parallel, and SCSI ports which all needed dedicated drivers for attached hardware, and dedicated ps2 mouse and keyboard ports which "just worked" but couldn't handle anything else - even carelessly swapping the plugs meant the computer couldn't talk to either device.

USB was a general purpose "one size fits most" one-to-many data interconnect, and many other de-facto standards were then constructed upon it to simplify communications with "standardized" hardware - for example the HID (human interface device) standard backed by Microsoft that theoretically allows any standard USB mouse, keyboard, or joystick to "just work"(and on most OSes they do so). There's also standards for external storage devices, webcams, scanners, etc. But sadly, it seems every device maker has their own "secret sauce" they want to spin into their drivers, or just couldn't be bothered to comply with the specs exactly. But that's all at the OS level, USB's job is pretty much finished once data gets delivered to/from the OS.

As for friction-fit, what would you prefer? As soon as you get "fiddly bits" involved you're just asking for breakage in both the device and cable. Can't tell you how many jammed-up serial/parallel/video "screw secured" cables I've seen over the years before USB came on the scene, and it's gross overkill for most applications. Meanwhile, having used USB devices since Win95b, I can only think of a handful of times when they disconnected accidentally (unlike serial/parallel/video cables whose "friction fit" was not really up to the job on its own)

I'll admit though that I'd like to see something along those lines return as an option for Type-C ports though - seems like that little connector promises to be every bit as fiddly and unreliable as micro-USB connectors - acceptable for charging and occasional use, but lacking for mission-critical reliability.

Re:Shitty standard

[Anonymous Coward]

The max current at any power level is 5A. The 100W spec is 5A at 20V.

Re:Shitty standard

[mattventura]

Things I can list off the top of my head (these may have changed in more recent USB specs):
1. Lack of DMA support. In the age of the IOMMU, it's no longer a security risk.
2. It's a purely polled interface. The host must initiate all communications with the device, rather than the device being able to do it. In many cases, the polling rate has to be quite high such as to not introduce unacceptable latency, but then this increases power usage. There's a reason laptop keyboards tend to use PS/2 rather than USB.
3. Introduces new connectors every time they feel like it.
The problem is that it's a jack of all trades, master of none. From a technical standpoint, PS/2 is better for simple keyboards and mice, SATA/eSATA is better for storage, and USB just plain doesn't work for many things such as eGPUs because of the lack of DMA.

Counterfit Sex Toys

[SumDog]

Now Amazon needs to deal with their entire counterfeit sex toy problem. If you're not aware, never buy sex toys off Amazon. Most of their products are low quality, counterfeits of more respectable brands. Often they're unsafe or made to low standards. Most manufactures will stop selling to any store that uses Amazon.

Re:Counterfit Sex Toys

[lgw]

None of that is specific to Amazon - it's just a shady industry. I'm pretty sure Amazon is now the worlds largest market for sex toys, though, so I'm dubious of your claims about "manufacturers". Heck, I'd make a blind bet that the "counterfeits" are the same items made in the same Chinese factory as the "originals", just sold via someone less scrupulous about defects (that's a very common theme for discount items on Amazon: same Chinese factory, less QA).

Re:Counterfit Sex Toys

[dpiven]

Now Amazon needs to deal with their entire counterfeit sex toy problem. If you're not aware, never buy sex toys off Amazon. Most of their products are low quality, counterfeits of more respectable brands.

So stop buying refurbs, fer crissakes.

How to do it

[evilviper]

Amazon has gotten better about such things. You no longer have to go through the foreign support people with the forms and scripts. They now have a direct contact for unsafe product issues:

Note: If your post is about a product you think might be unsafe, please report this information to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) or contact Amazon directly at product-safety@amazon.com.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help...

I would add UL (underwriters laboratories) and several others. UL moves a bit slow and reactive instead of proactive, but they certainly are zealous about protecting their brand. Products with their mark, that test out unsafe, will be quickly dropped from Amazon and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help with all those 2GB USB flash drives from China, which are labeled and firmware hacked to appear to have 64+ gigabytes of usable space.

Yay corporate self regulation

[thegarbz]

What ever happened to consumer protection laws? A product saying it's compliant with the spec but isn't actually? That should get the importer in legal hot water, not just a dot point in a terms of service agreement.

Shit why don't Amazon go all out and say in their Terms of Service that product descriptions must not contain lies?

Re:Yay corporate self regulation

[rahvin112]

Good luck with those laws when one of the parties is in a country (China) that doesn't give two shits about those laws. Welcome to Globalization, where all laws and standards move to the lowest common denominator and all the wealthy laugh all the way to bank.

Re:Yay corporate self regulation

[Coren22]

Good luck with your trademark lawsuit against a Chinese company operating out of China.

Re:USB cables are getting too damn complicated

[Megol]

USB is still a serial protocol with the change between USB 2 and 3 was 1) splitting a common pair used for sending and receiving (simplex) to two pairs to allow for duplex transfer 2) specifying the higher speed pairs to have tighter ratings to enable higher bit rates.

The idea that Ethernet (assuming you mean common Cat 5/6 cables) works better than USB cables is ludicrous! They aren't specified to tolerate the plug/unplug cycles of even a cheap USB cable and the plug itself is fragile.

Re:If only

[gumbi west]

The odd thing is that you still shop there.

Standards?

[cptdondo]

Although I have to wonder about a "spec" or "standard" that allows damage to core hardware if the fricking cable is bad.

Seriously? What about component failures in the cable as it ages?

Didn't the engineers think this through?

This brings me back to the Apple Mac stroke of genius non-standard DB9 serial port when you could short the Mac power supply to ground by plugging in a standard null-modem cable,

Re:Standards?

[lgw]

Some standards are about interoperability. Some are about safety. Some are about the ideal dog for that breed. All sorts of things are standards. In this case, it's both a data standard (so, interoperability) and a power standard (so, safety).

Amazon Review Link

[31415926535897]

This is an important issue to me because I have devices that need good USB-C cables. If anyone else is in the same boat, here's a direct link to Benson Leung's reviews. Focus in on the 5-star ones and look for the value buys (if the product is still available):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/...

Benson fried his Pixel C; USB C cables DIFFER

[Streetlight]

One of these cheap cables wasn't wired correctly and when Benson connected it to a Pixel C to charge some device (Nexus Phone?), the Pixel was destroyed. Apparently during manufacture two wires in one of the connectors were switched.

One difference between older USB cables is that the Type C cables contain a 56 k ohm pull up resistor for current control purpose. Some of the out of spec USB C cables with at least one USB Type C plug - probably a USB Type A plug at the other end - have a lower valued resistor and can cause problems. The problem is that if a lower resistance is used with a power supply that can only provide 1 Amp instead of 3 Amps at 5 Volts, the power supply can be fried as it tries to deliver 3 Amps. This could be the case for powered USB ports on computers. I've read that Apple laptops with a Type A compatible connector cannot deliver 3 Amps (1 Amp?) and might be at risk of damage when using an out of spec USB Type C connector cable with the wrong resistor. Further more, these out of spec cables may not be cheap. For more information, check the linked page and scroll down a bit:
http://www.androidauthority.co...