A Google Engineer Forced Amazon To Ban Bad USB C Cables With His Reviews

ShortBytes: A Google engineer named Benson Leung spent months reviewing bad USB Type-C cables on Amazon. He spent so much time reviewing them that he eventually forced Amazon to stop selling those bad cables.

The Google engineer, Benson Leung, noticed problems with the USB Type-C cables on Amazon. To review and test the USB-C cables, he bought cables and tested them over hundreds of devices. The main purpose of this long experiment was just to determine whether the cables met the USB Type-C standard.

In his month long of the experiment, he finally reached a conclusion that many cables did not comply with the USB Type-C cable standard which caused issues in charging certain devices as well as transferring data.

Also Read: Intel Wants To Kill 3.5mm Audio Jack With USB Type-C Digital Audio

So he decided to put his honest reviews and comments on Amazon. Here is an excerpt of one of the comments:

Today I am reviewing SAWAKE’s “USB 3.1 Type C Male Data Charging Cable Woven Mesh Cable Strong Braided”. I bought this cable to use various USB Type-A chargers with the Chromebook Pixel and to do data syncing with Pixel C, and I found that this cable does not work to charge the Chromebook Pixel, or sync data to Pixel C. Upon closer inspection, this cable does NOT comply with the USB Type-C specification version 1.1. The documentation can be found at usb.org under developers/usbtypec. Specifically, these cables do not charge the Chromebook Pixel 2015 because the cable leaves the CC lines floating, where the specification requires a Rp pullup to Vbus to identify the cable as a legacy cable. Both pixel devices use the CC pullup to detect when a host has been attached. Since this cable has no CC pullup, neither device correctly charges or hooks up the data lines.

Upon his comments, he noticed that Amazon changed its rules to prohibit the sale of USB-C cables that don’t comply with standards for the cables.

Also Read: Google: Android Phones Will Soon Be Having USB Type-C Port