we didn't have any such issues, but i have a lot of the old style USB cables with the rounded square ends. They are used a lot in rugged devices and "equipment"

we didn't have any such issues, but i have a lot of the old style USB cables with the rounded square ends. They are used a lot in rugged devices and "equipment" or instrumentation, like ham radios, packet modems, ADC/DAC devices, scanners, printers. So i just collect them. I have noticed in the past 4 years or so that i am throwing away "broken" USB cables at about 10x the rate of the years prior, so maybe the overall quality of cables has gone down? Even extension cables - those are "breaking" at a very high rate - and i mostly use those for wired controllers!