Cheap luggage bites

Good on you!

You buy cheap luggage, use it, then decide it's not your flavour. Fantastic,
now I know how that retrn policy is made............


"Donald Newcomb" wrote in message
...

"spamfree" wrote in message
news
I thought I'd mention this story to
show the people who buy cheap bags that quality has a value beyond
money. These people were going to have a difficult time moving their
bag on their vacation, and judging from their comments, this was the
start of their vacation.

Once upon a time, a friend recommended rolling luggage from a company that
sells clothing by mail order adds in the back of magazines. We decided to
give it a try and bought two for $60/pr with a "satisfaction or your money
back" guarantee. Well, we dragged these bags all over Spain and Portugal.
By
the time we got home the cloth was ripped, wheels broken, zippers
mistracked, etc. I mean these things were cheap. In essense they were made
of cloth over cardboard. Anyway, we got home, the boxes they came in were
still in the den. We packed them up and sent them back to the place we
bought them asking for our money back. In a few weeks we got a check and
that was the end of that. Lesson learned. Those were "one trippers".

--
Donald Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

Good on you!

You buy cheap luggage, use it, then decide it's not your flavour.
Fantastic, now I know how that retrn policy is made............


"Donald Newcomb" wrote in message
...

"spamfree" wrote in message
news
I thought I'd mention this story to
show the people who buy cheap bags that quality has a value beyond
money. These people were going to have a difficult time moving their
bag on their vacation, and judging from their comments, this was the
start of their vacation.

Once upon a time, a friend recommended rolling luggage from a company
that
sells clothing by mail order adds in the back of magazines. We decided to
give it a try and bought two for $60/pr with a "satisfaction or your
money
back" guarantee. Well, we dragged these bags all over Spain and Portugal.
By
the time we got home the cloth was ripped, wheels broken, zippers
mistracked, etc. I mean these things were cheap. In essense they were
made
of cloth over cardboard. Anyway, we got home, the boxes they came in were
still in the den. We packed them up and sent them back to the place we
bought them asking for our money back. In a few weeks we got a check and
that was the end of that. Lesson learned. Those were "one trippers".

I bought a Wheelie for GBP 25 from the UK discount store 'Woolworths'. Very
high quality build, and over 20 trips later, not a single problem.

Thomas wrote:


I bought a Wheelie for GBP 25 from the UK discount store 'Woolworths'. Very
high quality build, and over 20 trips later, not a single problem.

Speaking of luggage, before our last trip we bought a couple luggage
straps, and they worked out wonderfully well. Not, I hasten to add, to
keep the luggage intact, since the bags are quite sturdy, but just to
make them easy to spot on the baggage carrousel.
The straps are a bright lime-green and white, easily identifiable
from 100 feet away. They happened to carry the Air Canada brand and were
about $7.95, as I recall.
On the other hand, if everybody adopts this tactic, we'll lose our
advantage.
Forget I mentioned it . . .

-- Ron

"Thomas" wrote in message ...
I bought a Wheelie for GBP 25 from the UK discount store 'Woolworths'.
Very
high quality build, and over 20 trips later, not a single problem.

You never know when you might hit a good bargain. My current favorite bag is
a TravelPro roll-onboard that I bought (new) at a salvage shop for something
like $50-$60. It has served me very well for many trips and when I lost a
strap, I just called TravelPro for a replacement.

In the case of the two cheap bags we took to Spain & Portugal; well, they
were recommended by a friend and they did have a money-back guarantee. We
thought we'd give them a try to see how they would work out. It turned out
that we were not satisfied and returned them. I guess the company just
assumes that 95% of their customers won't really give their bags a real test
and of the 5% who do, only a few will ask for a refund. But they did follow
through, so all's well that ends well.

--
Donald Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

"spamfree" wrote in message
nk.net...
Experienced travellers know that cheap luggage is far less likely to
be broken, particularly into when passing through airport baggage
handling. A far more important lesson from this story is to pack light.

Did you transpose the "into" in your post, meaning to say that cheap
luggage is less likely to be broken into by airport baggage handlers?

Yes. A slight editing error on my part.

I might agree with you on that. However, I have seen plenty of
cheap soft bags come out of airport conveyors with their seams
ripped open and the contents spilled on the conveyor, ruining some
of the clothes in the process. Those "experienced travelers" lost
quite a bit due to their cheap bags.

There is, of course, cheap and cheap. I use bags made from Cordura, which is
well-nigh indestructible. Those bags most often fail because the internal
steel stiffening breaks, while the outer remains intact.

Colin Bignell

"David Bennetts" wrote in message
...

"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert my surname here wrote in message
...

"spamfree" wrote in message
news Experienced travellers know that cheap luggage is far less likely to be
broken, particularly into when passing through airport baggage handling.
A far more important lesson from this story is to pack light.

Colin Bignell
I'd also suggest that it's far less likely to be broken into.

That's what I meant. All the words are in there somewhere :-)

An anecdote was given by an Australian travel writer some time ago before
we got paranoid about unattended luggage. A battered "cardboard"
suitcase, with a nametag such as A Singh, Bombay could be confidently left
anywhere in a railway station or airport terminal without any thief
showing the slightest interest in it.

Another useful tip is to tie the case up with string. It not only looks
cheap, but it takes a lot longer to undo than a baggage strap. That means it
either has to be cut, making it obvious that the bag has been tempered with,
or left alone.

Colin Bignell

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 06:27:34 +0100, "Thomas" wrote:

Good on you!

You buy cheap luggage, use it, then decide it's not your flavour.
Fantastic, now I know how that retrn policy is made............


"Donald Newcomb" wrote in message
...

"spamfree" wrote in message
news I thought I'd mention this story to
show the people who buy cheap bags that quality has a value beyond
money. These people were going to have a difficult time moving their
bag on their vacation, and judging from their comments, this was the
start of their vacation.

Once upon a time, a friend recommended rolling luggage from a company
that
sells clothing by mail order adds in the back of magazines. We decided to
give it a try and bought two for $60/pr with a "satisfaction or your
money
back" guarantee. Well, we dragged these bags all over Spain and Portugal.
By
the time we got home the cloth was ripped, wheels broken, zippers
mistracked, etc. I mean these things were cheap. In essense they were
made
of cloth over cardboard. Anyway, we got home, the boxes they came in were
still in the den. We packed them up and sent them back to the place we
bought them asking for our money back. In a few weeks we got a check and
that was the end of that. Lesson learned. Those were "one trippers".

I bought a Wheelie for GBP 25 from the UK discount store 'Woolworths'. Very
high quality build, and over 20 trips later, not a single problem.



Woolworths?

That's the name of a very old retail firm which went out of business
in the US a few years ago.

We bought a roll-aboard after much consideration. Sturdy, well-made but
HEAVY and looked just like everyone else's. In fact, we picked up the wrong
bag on an airport shuttle. We've replaced it with a very lightweight, purple
item costing $10. It still looks good after several long trips. Of course,
we're not trusting it to the tender care of baggage-handlers. And purple
hasn't suddenly become fashionable.

Marianne

spamfree wrote:
While departing a train in Bamberg, I followed an American couple
with a 30" (so it looked) rectangular wheeled bag. The bag looked
cheap, like a bag bought at Walmart. It must have been their first
trip to Europe as they were unfamiliar with trains. The guy attempted
to take the bag out of the train by extending the handle and dragging
it across the gap. I thought this was risky, as the bag could catch in
the gap, and besides it is easier to use the handle (not the extended
one, the one for carrying) to carry the bag from the train. However,
by looking at the woman, I'll bet the bag weighed a lot. As the guy
dragged the bag out of the train, the handle (the top part) shattered,
leaving him with two sharp sticks. I thought I'd mention this story to
show the people who buy cheap bags that quality has a value beyond
money. These people were going to have a difficult time moving their
bag on their vacation, and judging from their comments, this was the
start of their vacation.


Pete


Precisely the same thing - handle breaking - happened to a cheap wheeled
bag my daughter bought on its 3rd transatlantic trip.

T.

spamfree wrote:
Did you transpose the "into" in your post, meaning to say that cheap
luggage is less likely to be broken into by airport baggage handlers?
I might agree with you on that. However, I have seen plenty of
cheap soft bags come out of airport conveyors with their seams
ripped open and the contents spilled on the conveyor, ruining some
of the clothes in the process. Those "experienced travelers" lost
quite a bit due to their cheap bags.

This experienced traveler uses a bag that wasn't cheap, but sure looks like
crap. It's held up for a remarkable 13 years of near-constant travel, and
other than a broken zipper handle (which I replaced with a jumbo paper clip
in order to accentuate the trashy look) it shows no signs of giving up. It's
never been broken into, and I attribute that to all the stains it's picked
up from rain, baggle handling, being kicked along airport floors, and the
like.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 36 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
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