PB Tech withholding negative product reviews

Forums › Off topic › PB Tech withholding negative product reviews

1 | 2

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#2459179 11-Apr-2020 07:41

cyril7: I would suggest they looked at your feedback and compared it to the manufacturers spec, other feedback at their own test and concluded you did something wrong as it clearly didn't match up, so rightfully rejected the comment.

Clearly something is technically wrong in your end.

Cyril

The only change was to swap the Ext SSD supplied cable with the PB tech cable... same USB port, same laptop, same external SSD drive -- the only difference was the cable. Using the supplied cable is 500MB/s, using the pbtech cable speed is 25-30MB/s.

How would you explain that?

SirHumphreyAppleby

2847 posts

Uber Geek

#2459183 11-Apr-2020 07:59

surfisup1000:

The only change was to swap the Ext SSD supplied cable with the PB tech cable... same USB port, same laptop, same external SSD drive -- the only difference was the cable. Using the supplied cable is 500MB/s, using the pbtech cable speed is 25-30MB/s.

How would you explain that?

Look at it from another point of view. How does your experience justify calling the product specifications fake?

You haven't eliminated the possibility that you simply recieved a faulty product. You haven't tested to verify your assumption that the product specifications must be fake.

I'm sure if you simply said the product didn't work for you, the review would have remained on the site. You didn't. You simply jumped to a conclusion. A moderator of reviews, sans substantive evidence, would be quite justified in removing your review IMO.

Bung

6486 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#2459187 11-Apr-2020 08:13

Was the cable individually packaged or identifiable? If it was a commodity bulk supplied item did that brand ever make a similar lower spec cable?

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#2459190 11-Apr-2020 08:32

SirHumphreyAppleby:

Look at it from another point of view. How does your experience justify calling the product specifications fake?

You haven't eliminated the possibility that you simply recieved a faulty product. You haven't tested to verify your assumption that the product specifications must be fake.

I'm sure if you simply said the product didn't work for you, the review would have remained on the site. You didn't. You simply jumped to a conclusion. A moderator of reviews, sans substantive evidence, would be quite justified in removing your review IMO.

PBTech had ample opportunity to test the cable and get back to me but did not. The onus is on them. They could have called me if they disagreed with my review.

The cable is a fake, I don't recommend buying one.

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#2459192 11-Apr-2020 08:45

Bung: Was the cable individually packaged or identifiable? If it was a commodity bulk supplied item did that brand ever make a similar lower spec cable?

The cable was packaged in a plastic bag that had the manufacturer logo. The cable itself has no logos or branding.

$8.95 is an incredible price for a gen 2 USBC-USBA cable. I guess there is no point for them to make a low spec cable if they can make a high spec cable for the same price.

Average price for a 1m gen 2 cable from other brands is probably around $30-$35.

Bung

6486 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#2459225 11-Apr-2020 09:49

Ascent appear to have the same cable for ~$21. Their photo (if not just a representative shot) shows the usb A having a blue key.

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18660 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2459235 11-Apr-2020 09:59

There seem to be a lot of PB Tech fanboys here. I also had bad experiences with them and got hammered for complaining. I can't speak to this specific issue but I found their customer service lacking. Every other company I have dealt with (about a half-dozen) has been better. Some people say PB Tech is cheaper and has better range and maybe it does, but that hasn't been my experience. Anything I have needed I have been able to find elsewhere.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

Dial111

978 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2459238 11-Apr-2020 10:12

Rikkitic:
There seem to be a lot of PB Tech fanboys here. I also had bad experiences with them and got hammered for complaining. I can't speak to this specific issue but I found their customer service lacking. Every other company I have dealt with (about a half-dozen) has been better. Some people say PB Tech is cheaper and has better range and maybe it does, but that hasn't been my experience. Anything I have needed I have been able to find elsewhere.

Let’s be honest, you’ve had bad experiences with a lot of things you’ve touched.

PBtech is no different to any other brick & mortar, a lot will have bad experiences and same goes for good experiences. Saying “every other company I have dealt with has been better” wont apply in the wider scheme of things because there will be customers who would disagree and say otherwise because no business is perfect and sometimes that’s not the fault of the business because some people have very high expectations that are hard to meet, human nature, you can’t please everyone.

gregmcc

2147 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2459280 11-Apr-2020 11:05

Rikkitic:

There seem to be a lot of PB Tech fanboys here. I also had bad experiences with them and got hammered for complaining. I can't speak to this specific issue but I found their customer service lacking. Every other company I have dealt with (about a half-dozen) has been better. Some people say PB Tech is cheaper and has better range and maybe it does, but that hasn't been my experience. Anything I have needed I have been able to find elsewhere.

The PB Tech customer service can vary wildly, I've had a hard drive replaced one day out of the warranty with very minor pushback from PBTech, and a complete opposite, installed a 4 camera security system, one camera was faulty IR LED's - so no go at night, they advise to return the camera to them, this was done, after 2 weeks of no contact I pushed the point, Yes we will replace the camera, but you need to un-installl the complete camera system and we will swap it out for complete new system. Talk about brain dead - They expected the customer to pay for the un-install and re-install of the completely replaced system. I advised them that I would eat the cost of my labour to replace the 1 faulty camera, but if they wanted the whole system out and another put back in it would be at their cost.

As the customer had purchased the system directly from them I told them to use the CGA to apply some common sense to PB Tech as they even had the correct replacement camera in stock as a separate item. Eventually after a strongly worded email common sense took over.......

cyril7

9058 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Subscriber

#2459281 11-Apr-2020 11:09

Hi, this exact same cable and product description can be found on quite a number of NZ/AU outlets, most of which are very well known. The product description it would seem is that provided by the manufacture 8ware and reproduced by various outlets in good faith.

8ware have been around for sometime and all the product they produce that I have used seem to be as they describe. A USB3.1 r2 cable is not a complex cable, and to achieve 10Gb/s is readily done on stock 3.0 cable that that has two SuperSpeed channels and is <1M in length, it would seem very strange that 8ware would produce a cable that was not fully wired as 3.0 with 2x SuperSpeed channels and being 1m in lenght can support the higher rate coding for 10Gb/s and further advertise this ability, so its reasonable to believe the cable is in fact good for 10G.

What maybe missing is an ID chip, in a cheap cable this may not be included, some applications/drivers will automatically revert to USB2 speeds if they dont get an appropriate handshake from the cable chip, even though the cable is fully 10G capable, other applications ignore the chip and attempt the highest speed they can, could this be your problem.

Cyril

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#2459294 11-Apr-2020 11:24

cyril7:

Hi, this exact same cable and product description can be found on quite a number of NZ/AU outlets, most of which are very well known. The product description it would seem is that provided by the manufacture 8ware and reproduced by various outlets in good faith.

8ware have been around for sometime and all the product they produce that I have used seem to be as they describe. A USB3.1 r2 cable is not a complex cable, and to achieve 10Gb/s is readily done on stock 3.0 cable that that has two SuperSpeed channels and is <1M in length, it would seem very strange that 8ware would produce a cable that was not fully wired as 3.0 with 2x SuperSpeed channels and being 1m in lenght can support the higher rate coding for 10Gb/s and further advertise this ability, so its reasonable to believe the cable is in fact good for 10G.

What maybe missing is an ID chip, in a cheap cable this may not be included, some applications/drivers will automatically revert to USB2 speeds if they dont get an appropriate handshake from the cable chip, even though the cable is fully 10G capable, other applications ignore the chip and attempt the highest speed they can, could this be your problem.

Cyril

For sure, the situation around USB cable specifications are a mess. Even if what you say is true about the chip, they shouldn't advertise this as having 10gbps bandwidth if it cannot deliver that in real world use.

In general, 99% of people wouldn't care about the speed of a $8.95 cable. Most people are buying it to charge their phone and don't care about the bandwidth.

I did test this cable with both my MacBook pro and my windows 10 PC -- both gave identically slow speeds on the 8ware cable. Both the mac/pc ran at 500MB/s when using my Samsung OEM cable.

Ultimately PBTech are clearly selling a cable that does not work as advertised. PBtech did not dispute this when I talked to them.

Dunnersfella

4086 posts

Uber Geek

#2459375 11-Apr-2020 15:22

Perhaps it works with other drives, just not your Samsung drive... as they would like customers to only buy their replacement cables?

Would it be the first time?

Nope.

Speculation on my part, but then again, I believe it holds just as much water as some other theories in this thread.

The ultimate test would be to check another brand of drive and see if the speeds are what they should be.

Shapenz

518 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2459485 11-Apr-2020 17:58

I can't comment on that cable but I have the Samsung T5.. I can get full speed with the original cable and the C - C cables I've bought from Amazon... However I've tried a few C - A cables that haven't worked despite the reviews being good.

1 | 2