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Comment by lips | Hacker News Reader

It would physically pain me to work at a company that sells defective equipment.

I'd like to see amazon just develop in-house testing for certain types of stock. Cables, power supplies...

How much more are you willing to pay for that? If you're willing to pay a premium for tested and certified gear, why not just buy from your phone's manufacturer in the first place?

Because a lot of the Nexus 6P/5X accessories are sold out or have long delays before shipping. Also, I don't need another wall wart charger, just the cable.

Yeah, well it's easier to make things by the million when you don't care about testing, certification or product damage.

Part of the reason the cheap ones have so much availability is that they are cheap and easy to make and have little quality control -- even though they may not work.

Not really. I can buy super cheap micro-USB cables that work perfectly.

This seems to happen all the time when there's a new standard out. The disreputable companies whip together something shoddy and try to get those early sales before more reputable companies can move in. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon do nothing to stop this obvious fraud. Amazon should be stopping these sales.

Also, its disingenuous to pretend these are $2 cables. The only ones still available showing price are $14.99. These are much more than $2.

Arguably though, if a USB cable is $20 through Google, and $2 through an off-brand, I may want two of them, but buy six and consider any that don't work or stop working disposable. And still be saving money over buying from Google.

Consumers need to be aware of the risks they take when they buy bargain brand, but it doesn't negate the benefits of having bargain brand available.

Unless, of course, the $2 cable over-charges your $600 phone and the battery explodes or it burns out the charging circuit, then it's a false economy.

That's a risk. But for the millions of people who successfully use $2 cables every single day, many of whom can't afford $20 cables, they're pretty glad $2 cables exist.

If its claiming USB-C spec, which these are, then there should be no risk.

This isn't just a few bad cables or a bad batch that somehow got loose. This is purposely producing things that don't meet spec.

I might like to pay the premium for "tested and built correctly" but without also paying the premium for "the customer is too lazy to look elsewhere so let's gouge them."

I don't want to pay for that.

I would like Amazon to provide better access to searching for and sorting commodity items. (and to remove from inventory defective ones on a limited basis)

For example, I'm searching for the least expensive bulk CR123A batteries. I'd like to sort by price per battery and buy the lowest with at least 3 stars. A fairly simple request.

But you can't. Amazon lacks (in most cases) per unit pricing information or the ability to sort by it. The batteries are cataloged in at least four different site departments meaning sorting is impossible over all of them. It's frustrating to have to try to deal with such a stupid problem.

That's brilliant. Unit pricing would be a great sort option.

Don't they have an in-house line of cables?

You're probably thinking of AmazonBasics. They make a variety of products including USB cables, USB chargers, backpacks, monitor stands, and a bunch of other general stuff. I have several of their cables, chargers, and one of their backpacks. They are all fairly good.

really? How about working at a company that only sells products detrimental to your health? (read: McDonalds, Yum! Brands, Starbucks, Nestle, Kraft, etc... not to mention the entire tobacco industry, and plenty of other industries)

When there's a Latté ISO spec for Starbucks to comply with, or a Big Mac catches fire, then these will be directly comparable.

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