Yes they fail ALOT. I am using cheap USB 2.0 A to A cables from amazon. We tried some USB 3.0 A to A cables from one manufacturer and they ended up some how damaging a large number of our HTC branded battery packs. Since then I stayed with the USB 2.0 variants.
We have also gotten some Anker branded batteries as spares and they have been more reliable than HTC's.
A few people ( home users ) that use the Vive wireless have gone with strapping the battery to the headset to make the cables last longer since they are barely flexing at that point, not sure if I would do that in a commercial setting or not.
These are the cables I am using, they last about as long or longer then the stock HTC ones did.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00551Q3CS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
There may be better cables out there, but do be careful with the USB 3.0 A to A variants as in our case, we found some brands would kill the HTC batteries ( the QC 3.0 circuit basically stopped functioning and the battery pack would not output the higher voltage that the headset was requesting, causing it not power up)
But yeah, finding good USB cables for this case is hard, since having an A to A cable is really not any kind of USB standard, so there are not many good ones to choose from, which I think is a total pain, and a really bad design choice on HTC's part, since it's totally against the normal USB standard (with an exception for usb C cables )
