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xkcd 927 - How Standards Proliferate
(See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.)
Situation: There are 14 competing standards.
Cueball and Ponytail stand facing each other:
Cueball: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone’s use cases.
Ponytail: Yeah!
Soon: Situation: we did it our standard beat all the other ones and is universal yay :D
I recently did the same and sorted my cable clutter. What a drag!
Personally I don’t blame USB-C as a standard - despite how everyone seems to dump on it constantly. I consider it mainly a problem of unverified marketplaces.
Anyone can sell anything on Amazon or eBay claiming to be something it isn’t, and cables are rife in this group specifically because it’s almost impossible for the average consumer to verify the claims. So of course unscrupulous sellers mercilessly exploit this to sell absolute crap posing as something quality.
Sounds weird, but these days I am increasingly buying a surprising amount of my electrical and electronic stuff from IKEA.
IKEA sell their own products (or in the case of electronics, likely have them manufactured directly for them to a known spec) and so they have a lot more control on the supply chain. They also have more to lose if their products don’t perform as expected, because they have direct responsibility.
So yeah, if I want an extension lead that won’t burn my house down or a cable I can trust to do what it should, I’m finding IKEA a safe bet.
I’ve heard good things about IKEA electronics and white-goods also; for instance their LADDA batteries are apparently Eneloops, their dishwashers are/were Bosch, and they partnered with Sonos for their speakers also.
Costco apparently does quite similar with their Kirkland own-brand products - but at least here in Australia they haven’t offered (m)any electronics yet.