Amazon is clamping down on sub-par cables and adapters using USB-C connectivity sold on its site with new rules to stop the sale of potentially dangerous products.
The online retail giant has made an addition to its list of prohibited electronics items to include “Any USB-C™ (or USB Type-C™) cable or adapter product that is not compliant with standard specifications issued by “USB Implementers Forum Inc.”
The new guidelines will apply to any merchant selling items through its Amazon Sellers programme, with any firm found out to be disobeying the rules facing a shutdown of their Amazon account and the destroying any of their products stocked in any Amazon fulfilment centres.
The change was noticed by Google developer and exhaustive USB-C tester Benson Leung, who commented that the news was, “Really great…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.”
The USB Implementers Forum Inc is a non-profit corporation founded by the group of companies that developed the Universal Serial Bus specification, and looks to try and forward the future development of the technology.
The group published a full list of compliant USB-C cables last year.
As it stands, USB-C technology, which was finalised back in August 2014, is still largely in its infancy, with devices sporting the connections still few in number.
Most recently, laptop devices including Google’s Pixel C Chromebook and selected Apple MacBook models sport USB-C connectivity, as do smartphones and phablets including the LG G5, Sony Xperia Z5, Google’s Nexus 5X and 6P, as well as HP’s Elite X3 device.
Has TechWeekEurope got a USB quiz for you? Of course we have!
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The work from Benson Leung (Google Engineer) shows that ~ 30% of USB-C cables that fail his standards testing. His work has also encouraged a lot of other individuals to do testing. There are quite a few websites popping up in response to this such as: usbccompliant.co.uk (UK/EU) & usbccompliant.com (US).The sites have already been listing the "compliant" cables on Amazon
I remember everyone being up in arms about Apple's price for the lightning cable. What is MFi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program . Much of which goes to the MFI license that ensures they are correctly made. Apparently, no one got the memo when they started shipping cheap USB-C cables that could jack up your computer or mobile device.
Whilst not MFI, and there is no mention about price, it seems Amazon has taken the extra step to ensure quality is delivered. I am not saying the price will go up but it is probable that they would go up in price for QA testing.
I don't know about you but paying an extra 10%-30% for a cable to ensure it is made correctly is worth it. If the cable is 3ft and costs $9.99 that QA check of 30% means the cable will cost around $12.99. A $12.99 cable will cost $16.99.
Always pay a little more for quality. Especially when we talk about gadgets. Good technology just cannot be cheap ( more about it - http://technologyessays.org/essay-about-technology-sample/). We're not talking about 5 watt or 12 watt cables. These can push 100 watts I believe. Roughly 20 volts. Plenty to start a fire.