I agree, CCA (or CCS) wire is not "snake oil".
If the sellers openly revealed what they were selling, then you could call it "budget products".
But they are encouraging the customer to assume it is copper. And THAT practice is outright fraud.
How is that snake oil? I haven't seen any claims about "healing" or "quantum effects" or any other pseudo-science. Don't confuse budget products with snake oil.
I thought of it as snake oil because of the claims of it meeting standards but then as you say they didn't specify that it had to be copper.
They don't always tell you what "CCA" stands for and especially my first encounter but oh well at least that was a clue as to why it went wrong.
I have found a picture of that Jaylo stuff and it says on the box:
On the box:Jaylo Supplies LTD:
CAT6cca
Networking Cable
UTP Solid Conductors, 23 AWG (Solid what?)
CCA - FLUKE CHANNEL TEST
ACC TIA/EIA 586/B.2 UP TO 80 M
CE COMPLIED
1000' Pull Box
So if something doesn't meet standards it is not necessarily snake oil but just rubbish if it at least works to some extent.
CAT6 is defined by the TIA/EIA-568 standards which does not specify what material the conductors need to be made of. You may not be a fan of Aluminium, but it most certainly does comply with the specifications.
Incorrect. ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 refers to ANSI/ICEA S-90-661-2006 which states “solid conductors shall consist of commercial pure, annealed, bare copper”.
Further reading (search copper): https://www.fia-online.co.uk/pdf/Whites/wp-IAN002-01.pdf
Anyway TIA/EIA-568 specify DC resistance 9.5 Ohms @ 100m which is enough to disqualify copper-clad aluminium (for Cat 5 and higher).
[edit] I agree that CCA TP cables are not snake oil, yet it is fraud to sell CCA TP cable marked as Cat 5 or higher.
If I knew it was crap I would have avoided it.. and refused to work with it as I didn't buy it but I didn't know at the time. If it was selling at a very low price I wouldn't have paid any attention but they were everywhere in the shops locally where I was working and highly over priced than the real stuff. Some were about £120 to £140 and shocked to find they had CCA written on it (but nothing about aluminium or what it stands for) when we looked around after ripping it out but not even the shop keepers selling the stuff knew what CCA mean't. From where I normally got the real copper cable reels they just went up from £70 to nearly £80 and that was in 2012 but took a couple of days to delivery. I have brought cable reels in the past from all sorts of places, I don't remember CCA written on them and I had no trouble to investigate.
Now I am very careful and test them when they arrive and I always have a box waiting just incase someone wants work done on the quick so that doesn't happen again other than that I refuse to use any any cable given to me without testing it first.
Sorry about that for classing it as snake oil.