AmazonBasics products are dangerous!

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Literally his burns were caused by an action he chose to do.  At worse the fire was caused by a poorly designed cable that was unsafe...to put things bluntly though, if the burns he received was because he literally carried the chair outside that is on him.  (As was mentioned in the article it had appeared he had tried also putting it out with bowls of water, a good example of why you should know where your fire extinguisher is).

 

Yes there was an injury, but saying "Tell that to the burn unit this person apparently wound up in.  Something went wrong." is such a baseless argument.  (Because again, he literally could have avoided it by not picking up a burning chair).  Yes something went wrong, but the article is written in the way that the Amazon Basic cable is the culprit and that Amazon Basic products are dangerous...there is a bias against Amazon in the article.  That isn't to say there isn't a design fault, but again unless you know the % of failures and cause of failure laying blame on Amazon isn't correct either.  There are plenty of OEM high quality cables that catch fire as well, and even in real world I've seem people who are just asking for fires from chargers (again frayed ends, run over ends).

 

So to sum things up.  Yes someone got injured, but your statement regarding the burn adds very little weight as an argument when it's the decision by the guy to carry a flaming chair outside.

 

“An action he chose to do” I.e. keeping the rest of his house from burning down and possibly killing his family. 
Why is it that so many “personal responsibility” arguments boil down to “why won’t you sell your grandma fer a dolla? I would. I’d definitely sell your grandma fer a dolla if I get to keep the dolla”

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

This isn't a issue at all in most of the developed world because healthcare is free at point of use. Since this happened in the US, however, the question remains.

 

An entirely different kettle of fish, however, is whether the product needs to be pulled from sale and whether the manufacturer and/or retailer of the cable and/or the chair have broken any regulations and need to be fined for it. The former I think the default should be yes, the product should be pulled from sale until an investigation has proven beyond reasonable doubt that it didn't cause the issue. The latter is really not time-sensitive so there should be plenty of time to have a proper investigation.

I’d say “crippled for life” is an issue everywhere.  There’s this concept called “made whole” which frequently can’t be accomplished. 

[BroliviaWilde]

that sucks, really gives AB a bad look.   Not all of their AB branded products are bad.  I've only bought a couple of AB products: phone charger cables, non-rechargeable batteries and monitor arms.   cables?  just as good as whatever happens to be on shelf at local grocery store or walmart, all of them tend be a little flimsy to have spotty connection after some light use while the original calbes that came with our phones still work great.  batteries?  works fine,  keeps our remotes running.  monitor arms?  very satisfied

[sub68]

amazon basics stuff I don't usually get

the only cable I got from them was a dvi to hdmi which I have since 2016

but I usually get cables and other things from ugreen (which I trust I have 2 hard drive readers from them)

but surge protectors are usually from ge,rca and other big brands

 

 

[pythonmegapixel]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

“An action he chose to do” I.e. keeping the rest of his house from burning down and possibly killing his family. 
Why is it that so many “personal responsibility” arguments boil down to “why won’t you sell your grandma fer a dolla? I would. I’d definitely sell your grandma fer a dolla if I get to keep the dolla”

Devolving every argument to "Personal responsibility" is incredibly stupid anyway. For example in a traffic collision the question usually seems to be "who's fault was it?" and not "what can we change about the section of road to improve safety and stop the same thing from occurring again?"

Surely you can see how the latter question is more important.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

15 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

My AmazonBasics HDMI cable Hz my frame rate, and that's why I can't go flawless in Destiny 2 on a console.

I live in Canada and those damn beavers are gnawing on my cables. 

[justpoet]

I've had a couple AB cables that have worked well (data only), and some that were pretty bad.  I've had batteries from them that sucked hard.  I've had some other random stuff that was cheap chinese crap…but was priced cheaper than the same cheap chinese crap I was looking at from other brands.

 

 

I definitely wouldn't EVER trust power solutions or structural stuff from them, but as long as you go in knowing you're not trying to buy quality, you'll do ok.

[wanderingfool2]

19 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

An entirely different kettle of fish, however, is whether the product needs to be pulled from sale and whether the manufacturer and/or retailer of the cable and/or the chair have broken any regulations and need to be fined for it. The former I think the default should be yes, the product should be pulled from sale until an investigation has proven beyond reasonable doubt that it didn't cause the issue. The latter is really not time-sensitive so there should be plenty of time to have a proper investigation.

So then you are saying the same should be held to every iPhone cable, and every OEM cable produced?  Why should a company suffer because of an accident that hasn't been shown to be a fault in their product (yea sure, if there was like a 1 in 1000 cases of this happening I could see it, but literally there isn't any justification besides the bias of the article).

 

19 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

“An action he chose to do” I.e. keeping the rest of his house from burning down and possibly killing his family. 
Why is it that so many “personal responsibility” arguments boil down to “why won’t you sell your grandma fer a dolla? I would. I’d definitely sell your grandma fer a dolla if I get to keep the dolla”

There are too many people who use an emotional factor to sway people instead of facts e.g. "well they got injured" or "it causes cancer".  It's the same type of push that allowed California's Prop 65 to go in place, which means warning labels are now slapped on everything.

 

Literally, do not carry a burning object outside of your house is one of the things the schools taught in elementary school.  The injuries in this are literally caused by him not doing what is taught.  (If there is time get bowls of water and to carry a burning chair outside, there is time to close a door and evacuate the house).

23 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Devolving every argument to "Personal responsibility" is incredibly stupid anyway. For example in a traffic collision the question usually seems to be "who's fault was it?" and not "what can we change about the section of road to improve safety and stop the same thing from occurring again?"

Surely you can see how the latter question is more important.

The problem is the "someone was injured" is used in the argument against Amazon Basics without any care to why it started.  The finger pointing towards Amazon Basics in this case I think is unjustified as aside from the onsite firefighters saying it was the cause, there isn't any context into what caused it (like I've said, I know a large amount of people who have those kinds of chairs and roll over them, crimp them and still use them).  There are cases of OEM cables doing the same thing...to single out Amazon Basics because "someone got hurt" when an injury was preventable is just as bad.

[CarlBar]

@Bombastinator Again there's some huge unanswered questions here. Lets say the cable was entirely at fault. What was wrong with it, was it a faulty design, or was it a case of somthing missed at QC. If it was a design fault, as it one the designers should have known not to do or was it a case of a fault not anticipated previously, (Not likely with a simple charging cable i know, but it is somthing you need to ask because in some situations it is an issue). If it was a QC issue, was it a case of bad or faulty QC, or was it a case of one of those unavoidable cases where something slipped through.#

 

If it's properly designed and the QC process is adequate and being followed, it's just one of those thing. Not Amazon's fault or responsibility. The problem is we don't know because the article isn't giving us enough information to make a judgement.

[Jet_ski]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The problem is the "someone was injured" is used in the argument against Amazon Basics without any care to why it started.  The finger pointing towards Amazon Basics in this case I think is unjustified as aside from the onsite firefighters saying it was the cause, there isn't any context into what caused it (like I've said, I know a large amount of people who have those kinds of chairs and roll over them, crimp them and still use them).  There are cases of OEM cables doing the same thing...to single out Amazon Basics because "someone got hurt" when an injury was preventable is just as bad.

Lets compare this to how another company, Target, handled a similar situation: 

 

Target recalls 90,000 USB cables that caused consumer finger burns

Quote

Target received 14 reports of the cables smoking, sparking or igniting, including two reports of consumer finger burns.

 

Shoppers can return the cables to Target for a full refund or contact the retailer at 800-440-0680 between 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. CT daily. You can also visit www.target.com and click on “Recalls” at the bottom of the page, then on “Electronics” or click on the “Product Recalls” tab on Target’s Facebook page for more information.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/05/29/target-recall-90000-usb-charging-cables-can-shock-catch-fire/1277867001/

[Sandro Linux]

Don’t buy anything from Amazon. Find there business practices questionable

[wanderingfool2]

49 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:

Lets compare this to how another company, Target, handled a similar situation: 

Again, I state again...we don't know the details, so to claim it's all bad is just inflammatory.  Have you ever seen someone using a cable that was frayed or really shouldn't be used anymore.  I can make the exact same claim then about Apple that they should have recalled their cables when it caused a fire and saying Apple cables are dangerous because there are people who have it catching fire. 

[Guest]

I worked at a website place doing some data entry once.
The owner told me that Amazon wanted to brand one of our products as amazon basics product. He declined as they wanted to sell it for a ridiculously low price which would nearly destroy his profit margins.

 

Not to mention he hates the overly consumer friendly return policy. He has been forced to take back product that has been heavily used for months because of Amazon's policy.

I suspect that the only people really inclined to sell under the basics name are willing to sacrifice quality extensively.

 

however, I must say Amazon basics jeans are the bomb. Totally love them. And they're really cheap.

[Derkoli]

13 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

In the UK everything plugged into the wall has a ground. Granted some ground pins are made of plastic instead of metal but I’d still argue that’s better than not having one.

The plastic ground plugs have to be there to enable the plug to even be plugged in, The covers that stop kids from shoving shit into the outlet are opened by the ground pin when it is inserted.

[Mr.Meerkat]

8 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Fwiw I only see plastic ground on low quality items.

Not true! There are products that are designed and built extremely well but has a plastic ground. The Ikea 3 port USB charger (Koppla) comes to mind. It is known to be very well designed and built with good components whilst being extremely cheap. So, why do well built/designed products not have an actual ground pin? The answer is simple, the original design was based on a socket without ground pins so when they "converted it" (i.e. slapped a different plug on), a metal ground pin wasn't added. 

 

18 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Most breakers are 10-15-25A@110-220V=1100-5500W)

To be pedantic, UK socket breakers are either 15/16A or 30/32A@240VAC (15/30A are old breakers, 16/32A are new breakers). Only up-to 7680watts per breaker . This is part of the reason why our plugs have a fuse in them. The old ring system in the UK is still very much alive, which has the benefit of never having to worry about tripping a breaker due to loading it too much (edit: assuming you're not doing anything stupid. 7680watts is aaaaaaaaaalot) 

 

On a side note, here's a fun fact: Technically, the 230VAC is only a standard and doesn't actually exist on any grid. The EU grid runs at 220VAC whilst the UK grid is at 240VAC. However, to align with each other due to the EU (which funnily enough the UK is leaving), they increased the tolerances and created a new standard known as 230VAC. 

[Nowak]

Had a USB-C to -C cable from AmazonBasics. Looked up reviews for it.

It's one of the included products. Promptly took it out of rotation and replaced it with a spare USB-C to -C cable.

[Blademaster91]

The only AmazonBasics products i've bought were a HDMI cable and a DVI to HDMI cable, both are good quality. I'd have to guess most of their stuff is decent, but like other retailers a few things are probably low grade crap.

[Mr.Meerkat]

Just now, gabrielcarvfer said:

The plugs have fuses? Why would you put a fuse at the plug and not a lower power breaker?

7.6kW isn't that much if you put a 5.9kW HVAC unit connected to it. =x

Oh...that 30/32A breaker is only for sockets. Any "permanent" fixtures (say electric heaters, electric water heaters, AC ect. will have it's very own breaker). As for plugs having fuses, we don't have lower power breakers. A 15/16/30/32A breaker directly feeds multiple sockets so those fuses can help something from exploding (usual fuse sizes are 3, 5 and 13A)

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

16 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

The plugs have fuses? Why would you put a fuse at the plug and not a lower power breaker?

Something to do with there being a copper shortage after WW2 and it being cheaper just make the house one giant circuit and have a fuse for each plug. 

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by BlueChinchillaEatingDorito
Spelling. Of course the UK doesn't have a shortage in (Mini) Coopers. But a shortage in copper was a thing.

[AlwaysWong]

AmazonBasics full synthetic engine oil is good though

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DWGtXpYUc

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, AlwaysWong said:

AmazonBasics full synthetic engine oil is good though

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DWGtXpYUc

You have to remember, it's highly unlikely most Amazon Basics products are designed by Amazon themselves. In terms of manufacturing, most if not all have nothing to do with Amazon. It's just like how your supermarket has their own house brand products to compete against name brands. Do you think Costco's Kirkland signature would have the capacity to design and produce their own Jeans, Car batteries, Hot Dog Buns, Yogurt, and even raw beef? They sign contracts with established players in the industries they want to stick their hands in and slap their names on the product.

[LAwLz]

15 minutes ago, AlwaysWong said:

AmazonBasics full synthetic engine oil is good though

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DWGtXpYUc

Their USB cables are also really good, despite what this thread might have you believe.

 

A few years ago, a Google employee by the name of Benson Leung started testing USB-C cables and found that A LOT of them did not actually meet the specs and could even be dangerous to use. OnePlus for example were caught selling out of spec cables that could potentially damage equipment if used.

Here is his review of the AmazonBasic USB 2.0 C-to-C cables:

Quote

<5 stars> AmazonBasics USB 2.0 C-to-C line (3ft, 6ft, 9ft, 0.5ft) are excellent USB-IF certified cables

 

Benson here again with a USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable review. Today I am reviewing AmazonBasics USB 2.0 C-to-C cables, in all four lengths of 0.5ft, 3ft, 6ft, and 9ft.

These cables are not a legacy USB cables like the majority of my previously reviewed products. Instead, these are pure C-to-C cables meant to be used with newer accessories such as Type-C chargers, or to connect Type-C phones to Type-C laptops.

These are USB 2.0 Type-C cables, meaning that they only support USB 2.0 data, and are not appropriate for consumers looking for a cable to connect their laptop to a Type-C monitor or docking station for video out, or to connect to SuperSpeed USB 3.1 devices such as external HDD or SSDs. However, these should still be a good charging cables, though, at up to 60W.

*Advanced Cable Tester Results*
I am using Total Phase's Advanced Cable Tester, which does easy cable testing in three critical areas:
* continuity - checks that every pin on the cable is connected where it's supposed to, not connected to where it's not
* DC Resistance - checks to see if this cable is within spec for IR Drop (Section 4.4.1 of the Type-C spec) for charging performance
* Signal integrity - checks the USB 2.0 data lines can perform at 480mbps.

Quick summary of results from the tester:
Continuity- All four cables passed continuity, meaning all have the right number of wires, and they all go where they are supposed to.

DC Resistance-
9ft cable: Vbus 108.78 mΩ, Gnd 50.10 mΩ
6ft cable: Vbus 117.12 mΩ, Gnd 59.15 mΩ
3ft cable: Vbus 91.71 mΩ, Gnd 45.59 mΩ
0.5ft cable : Vbus 27.23 mΩ, Gnd 35.86 mΩ
Maximum allowed values for Vbus and Gnd are 167mΩ and 83.3mΩ respectively, so all four cables comfortably meet the DC resistance requirement. These cables will not cause excessively slow charging.

Signal Integrity- All four cables passed High speed signal integrity, meaning they will perform well at USB 2.0 speeds.

*USB-IF Certification*
Amazon advertises these cables are USB-IF Certified compliant for USB 2.0. Let's cross reference from USB's official cable PDF.
B01LONPUM4 - 6 inch cable. TID 210,000,202
B01GGKYZQM - 3ft cable. TID 210,000,201
B01GGKZ1VA - 6ft cable. TID 210,000,200
B01GGKZ3MM - 9ft cable. TID 210,000,199

These part numbers are pulled directly from USB's spreadsheet, and they match the Amazon's ASINs for these 4 cables. Therefore, I conclude that these cables are certified compliant by USB-IF, as Amazon advertises.

*Functional Testing*
For functional testing, I have tested charging my Chromebook Pixel 2015 with Apple's 87W USB-C power adapter:  Apple MNF82LL/A 87W USB-C Power Adapter

Since the AmazonBasics cables only support 3A, I expect that the Apple 87W adapter will only offer 60W to my Chromebook Pixel. In my testing, all four cables successfully charge the laptop at 60W with no problems using USB Power Delivery. I will post my more detailed data in the comments to keep this review more concise.

I also performed a quick test of USB 2.0 data capabilities by connecting my Nexus 5X phone (a USB 2.0 phone) to the Chromebook Pixel using all four cables. In each case, the phone could be put into MTP mode and large file transfer was successful.

For other more subjective judgements of this cable : AmazonBasics USB-C cables are in line with the rest of AmazonBasics cables; they're good quality, thin and flexible, at all lengths. The longer cables get more and more stiff and thick as they use larger gauge wire in order to meet performance requirements, so expect the 6ft and 9ft cables to be a fair bit thicker than the 3ft. The connectors on both ends are deep-draw extruded Type-C plugs, which put them on par with higher end cables from Apple and Google.

*Conclusion*
AmazonBasics USB-C to USB-C 2.0 cables are excellent charging and high-speed data (up to 480mbps) cables. My testing shows they can handle high voltage high power charging up to 60W easily. I am pleased to see that Amazon is jumping into the ecosystem with a compliant and good offering. This is a no brainer for folks with Nexus 5X/6P, Pixel, Pixel XL, Chromebook, or MacBook users looking for an affordable spare cable at various lengths.

 

 

But hey, why listen to an engineer who tested the cables when you can listen to someone who is trying to sue a company for lots of money and have all the reasons in the world to distort the truth and paint Amazon as terrible.

Amazon bad. 

[Mihle]

7 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

Not legally speaking and not as far as reality is concerned. It's literally impossible to produce a product in which 0% of the items have faults. likewise it's literally impossible to have a QC process that is 100% proof against failure. To start assigning blame you have to show both that the problem was preventable and that the failure to catch the fault in QC was a result of a fundamental failing with the QC process. Otherwise it's just part and parcel of buying anything, anywhere, any-when. Failures will happen no matter what we do. The aim is allways to keep them to as low a level as possibble, the more serious the type of failure the lower we seek to keep it. But you can never completely eliminate them, the laws of probability don't allow it.

I wad not taking any fault, I was talking faults that can cause someone to die, or serious hurt. Also faults that can be blamed on company doing something wrong.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

Lets compare this to how another company, Target, handled a similar situation: 

 

Target recalls 90,000 USB cables that caused consumer finger burns

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/05/29/target-recall-90000-usb-charging-cables-can-shock-catch-fire/1277867001/

the deal with a house brand is you trust the brander (in this case amazon) to pick something not too bad.  I find that target, for example, had pretty good food house brands.  It was kind of wacky because sometimes the house brand was actually a bit more expensive than the cheapest name brand.  It was always a lot better though.  This is a problem for amazon because it damages the value of the house brand.  It says amazon can’t be trusted to pick stuff that isn’t garbage.  This is where the veracity of the complaint comes in.

[LAwLz]

Also, this reminds me of the person who said his Galaxy S3 exploded. He said his phone caught on fire while charging in the car. He gave a sob story about how he was so lucky it had not burnt his face or set fire to his bed during the night... Then after some investigation it was found out that he had put the phone in the microwave on purpose.

 

Moral of the story: Don't believe what people say. People constantly lie to further their own agenda. In this case, there are many variables that are still unknown and could play a major factor in the case of the burnt chair. For example, was the cable damaged? Was it the cable that failed or something else?