This post is very much a rant. If you don’t like reading rants, and I don’t blame you, it may be wise to move on to the next article.

Last month, I went on vacation. My cheap luggage from 1996 died and I bought a replacement – an American Airline branded set from Luggage America (. I was extremely excited about the new luggage with four freely moving wheels. My excitement lasted five days. On that fifth day, I took my first trip with the luggage. It performed quite well until I picked it up at the baggage claim when I returned home. It had a big hole in it. Luckily all possessions were accounted for.

As I bought it from a military base 3000 miles away, my options seemed limited. I could drive to the nearest military base, which at an hour away, would cost me a bit of gas money. My other option was to explore the 20 year warranty, something that comforted me significantly when I made the purchase. I wrote Luggage America via their website and asked for them to cover the shipping or repair costs. They responded that they’d waive the $9.50 check that they normally require for return shipping. Today I went to ship the luggage to them. It cost me $22 to ship the $60 piece of luggage… within my own state. It was nice of them to not require that I’d spend the other $9.50. As it is, it will cost me $82 for something that I was willing to pay $60 for. I’m not sure I got $22 of use out the luggage on one way of trip thus far.

When I found out that it would cost me $22, I replied back to their mail and politely ask that they reimburse me for all shipping costs. I hope they can understand that I would expect a product expected to last for 20 years to work for more than 5 days before I have to pay another 33%+ for the product. I did imply that if they sent back an upgraded piece of luggage (a step bigger from the medium size that broke) I would be happy with the company. I’m curious to see how that will go.

(Final interesting side note for conspiracy theorists: The luggage I bought is no longer available on their website. My luggage was made with an 840 D. nylon (not mentioned anywhere on the luggage that I could see), while the one new version on the website is a 1200 D. polyester. It’s only because I caught them upgrading their website that I noticed that the old version of the website had the luggage I bought.)