Issues replacing cigarette lighters

I have a small fleet of Tacomas. This one is a 2012 Tacoma base model.

I am attempting to replace the two cigarette lighter/power ports in the dash. It is not going as well as planned. The 15a fuse is good. I am going to refer to these as power ports. I purchased some replacement power ports on Amazon (that may be mistake #1). The originals have a large male spade connector marked 12v and a smaller one. The factory harness connector has a black/white wire that connects to the larger spade, and a green wire that connects to the smaller spade. The new power ports have 2 large spades marked + and -.

Here is where it gets interesting. I cut off the factory plug harness, and spliced my new wire and female spade connectors. Black/white to the + male spade, and the green to the other. I plug in my USB charger and get nothing. No lights. This is a USB charger that I primarily use in my GMC Sierra and it worked this morning. I tested it in another Tacoma this morning before starting on this truck and it worked. I grab another USB adapter for the cigarette lighter. Nothing. Again, worked as late as the day before. Does not work now. Testing it in multiple vehicles and simply does not work. I grab the old cigarette lighter which has the coil plug. I plug it in, press in the coil lighter, it gets super hot. That works.

WTF? I remove the cigarette lighter. I test the two female spades together with my multimeter and get -12v! From the factory, for 12 years, the polarity has been reversed? Did this blow 2 USB chargers this morning? Am I missing something?

Currently, I have several more power ports still to install in my other Tacomas. Am I doing something wrong?

 

So, on the original OE port, polarity shows reversed at the splice, reversed at the spade connection on the back of the old power port, but when checked in the interior of the port, it goes back to normal. I don't understand. There is a minor differences between the OE port and the new. Notably on the OE is what appears to be a link between the two spades. Online, some were calling this a fusable link?

 

The center contact of the power port (as viewed from the front, down inside the port) should be positive, the outer barrel should be negative. Since you've already spliced the factory harness, if you put your positive probe on the center contact and the negative probe on the barrel, you should get +12V. If you get -12V, reverse the connection on the back.

The fusible link is present on some applications and is an additional safety feature that will blow if the device drawing power from the port exceeds some safety factor, so that even if the fuse doesn't blow, the port does not overheat and catch fire.

It is entirely possible that your USB adapter got fried by the reversed polarity. The cigarette lighter won't care about the reversed polarity - it's simply a heating element.