Evan Leibovitch wrote on 2026-01-12 19:21:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 9:49 PM Ron via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org <mailto:talk@lists.gtalug.org>> wrote:
Evan Leibovitch via Talk wrote on 2026-01-12 18:23:
> I've shopped at Ali for almost a decade from multiple locations over two > continents. It's my dollar store for cables
Has anyone tried this Canadian seller:
https://www.primecables.ca/ <https://www.primecables.ca/>
No, and I wouldn't based on customer experience. <https:// ca.trustpilot.com/review/www.primecables.ca>
Those are bad reviews and indicate some problems, but... Trust Pilot mostly gets reviews from pissed off people looking to vent. They do not make a fair representation of a company's performance in my (limited) experience. TekSavvy gets a 2.7/5 and my experience has been closer to 4.5/5 over the past decade+. I take Trust Pilot reviews with a whole bag of salt, even though the posts may indicate actual problems people have had. Is there a company on there that has a generally favourable review score? It does sound like they (Prime Cables) have gotten worse over the years though.
The claim is "100% Canadian", but they likely employ far fewer Canadians than Best Buy.
Well, obviously. They're probably 1% the size. Where do the profits go, where are the employees (Canada, USA, China?), and how well are the employees paid are all more relevant than absolute numbers. Otherwise, Walmart would be a better choice than $Local_Mom_n_Pop_Shop.
Reviews indicate that most -- maybe all -- products in the catalog are imported
Again, I wish it weren't so, but does anyone make cables in Canada? It's unlikely manufacturing can "re-shore" from overseas if no one will value Canadian operations. Not that these guys are necessarily the answer, but they seem like a *possible* step in the right direction. Always looking for those...
The promotional video <https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=QMQKO8bIIUs> strikes me as more sketchy than persuasive.
It's hard do hit all the right notes for everyone, but that one is lame. Also, throw back to 1990s when 3×"w" was too hard to say:
double you double you dot prime cables dot com
(while video title says "| PrimeCables.ca| Our Cables Are Great!" <-- a dot CA domain. They probably have both, but it's funnier than the video's flat jokes.
The ad was 10+ minutes of discussing design decisions in each component of disassembled products - and I love hearing about these engineering thought processes.
The MO sounds like a Kickstarter/Indiegogo project. BTW, that's not an insult, I've bought my share of Indiegogo stuff, but the marketing style is unmistakable and not uncommon in that world.
They did start out as a Kickstarter project, I guess they continue that ethos. One of the things I kind of liked about some of the old-time ads on late night radio replays of shows from the '40s and '50s - the advertising was more "what and why" instead of pure BS.