“You get what you pay for”. I’m sure you have heard that expression before… probably a few times.

Well, in our experience in life, many times that is true… and sometimes it is not! Sometimes you can truly luck out when finding a bargain. However, when it comes to technology parts, the concept of “you get what you pay for” tends to be true more often that not!

Of course, the leading manufacturer and brand names are not 100% foolproof (just look at the issues Samsung have had with batteries!), and not every after-market product is a problem waiting to happen (it is common to upgrade a computer’s performance with changes in components from other brand parts like video cards, memory, SSD drives etc). The problems seem to arise, though, when the parts you are buying are being sold at that price that seems too good to be true. Do you really want to risk losing work time and important data, just to save a few bucks today?

It happens across the tech spectrum – cheap printers that then actually cost a fortune in ink costs, cheap laptops that can’t run the software someone needs and then cost more to upgrade than if the next model up would have been purchased, parts that die much earlier than their brand name counterparts.

The number one offender, in our experience, seems to be cables – particularly ones that carry power. I’m sure we’ve all seen the super-cheap phone charging cables at the dollar store, and been tempted – after all, they are usually a tenth of the price of their brand-name counterparts. Bargain! However, they come with 2 significant drawbacks – they rarely last anywhere near as long as the official brands and, with any kind of prolonged use, we have seen cases where they caused significant damage to the device they are charging, or even the user themselves!

Health Canada actually tested a number of uncertified USB chargers, that were available to buy across the country and their findings prompted an immediate recall for most of them! It is no wonder that over 100 incidents of injury from the malfunctions with these chargers were reported in Canada between 2011 and 2018.

This may be the most obvious (and well-known) example, but we have also seen the same to be true for other kinds of computer cable, and in the case of one client, the damage went beyond the cable itself…

Luckily, the burning was contained to the just the cable and device, but if it hadn’t been noticed, there is no telling how far the damage could have spread.

When it comes to charging cables, we like to stick to another popular saying – “better safe than sorry”!

If you are in the BC Fraser Valley, and need help with a hardware replacement or purchase for your business, our tech experts will be happy to give you some advice. Give us a call on 604-210-9811 or email accounting@wildfrogsystems.com .