$17 or $170?

A couple of years ago at Christmas my brother and I were flying to my grandmother’s house for the holidays. Two days before Christmas we got stuck in Detroit for more than a day. When we finally arrived in Virginia the airline had lost our luggage. So after a couple of days we decided to buy new gear. I bought a really nice new suit case – knowing I would soon be traveling a lot – that retailed for about $350. The brand of the bag is Atlantic and my reading on the internet suggests that people seem to like the brand. Over the last couple of years it has held up fairly well. Unfortunately it failed on the trip to New York. We didn’t realize what was going on at first it seemed like something was stuck in the wheel housing. So we just pulled it around and forced it. This was a pain though because roller bags are supposed to Roll! Finally on the way back to the airport to go home I flipped the bag over and took a look. The entire wheel bearing was shot. There was latterly nothing left.

This kind of torqued me off because this was supposed to be a decent bag. If I wanted a throw away bag I would have gone to Wal-Mart and bought and American Tourist bag. So I drug it the rest of the way home. At first I though, come on there has to be warranty. So I looked it up on line. Nope. So then I figured – well it can’t cost that much to fix it. Well as it can! And I would be with out a bag for up to 6 weeks in addition to paying for shipping both ways. Forget that. So my next option was to buy a new bag. I figured I could find something on sale for like $170. I really didn’t want to go out and spend that money for the second time with in two years. So what to do, what to do. Looking at the wheels I noticed they looked very similarly to the wheels on rollerblades/in-line skates. So I thought this might be an option. So I took the bag apart and took the good wheel shopping.

First I went to sport authority and looked at new wheels. Wheels cost $10. But they don’t come with bearings. To buy bearings and wheels either in different sets that you assemble or preassembled costs at least $45. I only wanted 2 wheels though and I didn’t want to waste $45 dollars if it didn’t work and still have to pony the $170 for a whole new bag. So I did the most reasonable thing I could think of. I went to play it again sports and bought a used set of skates for $17! I took them home, pulled two wheels out and put then in the bag. In all honesty they don’t fit perfectly, and the slide a little from side to side where the old ones didn’t. But it worked, and believe it or not the bag actually rolls better than it ever did! Also even if these go bad in a year I have 3 more sets of wheels on the same pair of used skates! What a great deal!. I was and am pretty happy with the fix.