Paying multiple hundreds of dollars is a choice, not a necessity. An active 40 Gbps, 240W cable is around $50 these days. I doubt that most repair shops would even give you a repair estimate for less than that.

> But then again, most people don't have the SMD rework tooling to be able to easily replace receptacles

And that's exactly why a reasonable design assumes that buying a new cable will be the preferred option (over having to re-solder components on a device) by most consumers. It certainly is for me.