so i was getting weird symptoms. the upper port in my macbook air stopped working, my hp laptop 65w charger stopped outputting voltage. i power-cycled the macbook, unplugged the charger, and it took several unplug attempts before it would output voltage again. i blew out the ports with a gas duster and thought it was back to normal.
today it stopped working again. blowing out the ports didn't work. i'd get intermittent charging in some orientations with my Pixel 4a charger, and no charging at all with my 65w. sometimes my usb-c power meter (mine works for most but not all devices, but blocks adjacent ports!) would register 5v entering the macbook rather than 20.
coincidentally my new android phone arrived today, i had to connect it to root it. ...yeah the bad usb port doesn't connect to pixel phone either. i realized it was likely my port was physically damaged, and it was time to disassemble to look.
apple self-service, manual codes when purchasing parts (you really should link to the specific device ra