I don’t know if I’m an anomaly b/c I’m a 05.5, but I had a ebay cable that worked just fine (version 6 or so iirc). I eventually upgraded to a legit vagcom cable b/c I thought I needed it for some issues with the headlights, but didn’t so I just gave my old one away when I sold my RNS-E.
And just general info for guys out there that may have issues:
The one thing with the knock-off cables is you have to make sure you ONLY are running the software version that the cable was designed for and provided with. I.E. you can’t run a knockoff cable that came with software 5.04 to run 5.07 or 5.02 (I don’t know what all versions they have, but you get what I’m saying). So don’t “update” when it tells you the software is out of date.