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Amazon is cracking down on the sale of USB Type-C cables and adaptors which do not follow the standard specifications.
The online retailer has updated its rules governing the sale of these cables, saying only products that are fully compliant in accordance with USB Implementers Forum Inc will be sold on their website.
The news comes after reports that certain USB-C cables were damaging electronic devices and frying the hardware inside.
Google employee Benson Leung, who was one of the first people to notice the problem and consequently started leaving reviews of different USB-C cables on Amazon, welcomed the move but warned buyers to be aware of “bad products” out there.
“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,” Leung wrote in his blog on Google+ in response to Amazon’s move.
USB-C cables have been widely hailed as the “new generation” of connectors for electronic gadgets – with benefits such as fast charging, reversible ports and high data transfer speeds.
These cables are capable of carrying so much power that they are not only for use with mobile phones and tablets, but can be used on laptops too – making them a handy piece of equipment to own.
But that also means they are quite intricate, and the margin of error is high for third-party vendors who want to produce them cheaply and in bulk.
While testing these third-party cables, Leung discovered one of them caused irreparable damage to his Chromebook Pixel.
“A cable managed to destroy my test equipment, including my $1499 (£1,000) Pixel 2,” he wrote in his blog. “I’ve done an analysis of the failure, and it’s a really bad mistake they made.”
Amazon’s latest change means that non-compliant USB-C cables will be banned from sale on their website, but the e-commerce giant will have to keep a close eye on its seller community and shut down any merchants who continue to offer unsafe and dodgy adaptors and cables.
