An Amazon Order Might Lock You Out of Trusted Traveler Programs
lifehacker.com
lifehacker.com
Amazon is certainly at fault for the process which enable their platform to be used for fraud, but the core of this story is the government punishing people for offenses they not only didn't commit, but didn't know about and of which they were the intended victim.
Not having Global Entry doesn't prevent you from traveling anywhere, you just don't get to use the fast lane going through Customs or TSA lines. Global Entry is elective, not a requirement.
In other words, you just have normal status.
The appeal process should work better in this case than it did.
The unfortunate consequence: more erosion of rights at the margin. Not to be hyperbolic, but it really is just one more microstep along the slope toward fascism.
We laugh at them when online videos surface, but the people who are willing to inconvenience themselves in order to peacefully oppose these kinds of actions are everyday heroes.
Denial of Global Entry status is not a prohibition against air travel. It means you don't get expedited screening.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/us/supreme-court-texas-ab...
We may not be quite at that point with air travel yet, but each year the TSA finds new and innovative ways to slow down the process and increase all-around misery.
Treating everyone as a Terrorist, then "clearing" some people that choose to pay the government money, and go through their privacy invading process should be Unconstitutional and abhorrent to all free people
Airport screening sucks and is theater. Global Entry is extortion. No doubt. But current screening measures are not unconstitutional.
Certainly does not feel like I am treated with Respect, Dignity, and civility that a Free Society should offer its inhabitants as they peacefully travel from point a to point b
I shutter to think what you believe would be unacceptable or "being treated like a terrorist"
>>>> But current screening measures are not unconstitutional.
Only if you skip over and do not read the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 9th , 10th, 14th Amendments, and Article 1 Section 8
You mean non-ionising radiation?
The Government going through my underwear drawer does not physically harm me that does not mean I want to consent or be forced to allow them to search it.
That really depends on what nine partisans in fancy robes think, a group whose makeup changes over time and who can change their minds.
I think what GP was getting at is that it seems so fundamentally unjust that it should be unconstitutional (which is what anyone who is not a constitutional law scholar means when they say unconstitutional), not a claim about legal opinions of powerful judges.
They're using the Federal aviation system, public property airports, being routed by the FAA, and so on. It's much more analogous to requirements for auto safety and licensing.
The government can't mandate the color of your shirt in your own home, but they can mandate the exact shade of your turn signals when you're on public roads.
I'm not a fan of our current security state, it's insane. But air travel isn't a private act, it's important to calibrate the conversation to the issue actually at hand.
It's analogous to a state government monitoring citizens' speech, picking out anyone who criticizes the governor's political party, and banning them from using the freeway.
Would my argument pass legal muster? No, I'm not a lawyer and I thought of it in 3 minutes on a Friday afternoon. Is it articulable? Yes. Could the court rule in my favor if it were explained better by someone with esquire at the end of their name? Sure. Judges often accept or make any argument they like no matter how bad so long as it fits in with their political ideology.
When I choose flight as my mode of transport, and I choose to do business with a private company, (entering into a private contract with that company to convey my body from one location to another), I believe the government demanding that I be searched and inspected and scanned in order to allow the private company and I to conduct our private business of providing me with transportation is unconstitutional. The federal government does not have an affirmative grant of power over my right to travel, and two because I have the right to travel. All powers not granted to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people.
I feel like this fallacy that travel is a privilege comes from the whole “driving is a privilege” concept. But keep in mind, while driving is a privilege (under STATE law), riding isn’t a privilege, it’s a right. I may need the blessing of a STATE government to drive a car across state lines, but I don’t need the blessing of state or federal government to ride as a passenger in a vehicle across state lines. In the case of the flight, I’m not engaged in a regulated activity of flying a plane, I’m merely a citizen exercising their right to travel.
There are clear constitutional Bounders here, a Police Officer can not simply pull you over, search you, question you, and detain you with out a clear articuable reason to believe you have or are about to violate the law in some way.
We have no destroyed the 4th amendment to that point yet, but I know people like you continue to try.
>> But air travel isn't a private act,
People like me believe it should be, No Public Airports, not Public anything. It should be a private transaction where me a Private citizen contract with a Private company to transport me from A to B,
Subjectively, it feels to me like in most other countries I live or visit, if a government service is bad, the go to strategy is to try to improve it for everybody. In the US, the go to strategy is to create a separate line for "premium" customers so they get reasonable service instead of having to wait in line with hoi polloi.
I'm pretty sure you wanted to say disgusting.
It used to be that you could avoid most of them by just ignoring anything with less than 10 reviews, but with Amazon's latest change to factor in number of reviews for their "sort by average review" list has let the genie out of the bottle. Now you'll see literally THOUSANDS of 5-star reviews on their garbage, completely drowning out the real stuff :/
It's to the point now where I'll only purchase known brand-name items from the manufacturer, and hope to god it's not a scammer using their name, or some typosquatter, or their supply chain hasn't been polluted by counterfeits.
And it's only getting worse. Now I try to buy direct from individual websites like it's 1999.
My current complaint about Amazon is that when I order a grocery item, it's because I can't find it in a local store and Amazon charges double or triple the normal price.
Oddly enough, I ordered something once in bulk for an exorbitant price, and immediately it appeared in my local grocery store for the normal price (50% less). I'm not sure what's going on, but it feels like algorithms run amuck.
Apropos fake stuff and fake reviews, I won't buy anything of value from Amazon now, I can't be sure any more that I'm not going to receive a counterfeit. I'm in the market right now for a couple of new electronic gadgets, but I'll just get them from Halfords and PC World, their prices aren't that different from Amazon's.
My other annoyances...
Over the past few months I've noticed their so called "Next Day" delivery randomly isn't really that. For example this week I ordered a thing that was eligible for Prime next day. It was on Tuesday and I was well within the cut off time (by 7 hours or so). Oddly that item then showed as "Get it by Thursday" which is not Next Day. I thought it was specifically that seller or product that perhaps had ran out of stock. But no, every Prime eligible SKU was showing as "Get it by Thursday".
Upon querying this with Amazon they said: "One day delivery starts as soon as the item is marked as dispatched. We will aim to have your item with you in One day."I didn't have the energy to point out that the previous Tuesday all their Prime eligible SKU's were showing as "Get it by Wednesday" i.e actually and really next day.
They seem to vary this throughout the year to suit themselves. I did order the product though and on Wednesday I got notification that the item was dispatched and out for delivery. Sadly it didn't turn up and when I checked the parcel tracking sure enough it'd been bounced back to an expected delivery of Thursday again.
Another annoyance are these "Add On" SKU's (for example cleaning products) where there is simply no way to order these products without spending say a minimum of 20 quid on other stuff. Some marketplace resellers seem to game this by stocking these SKU's but the delivery price is almost as much as the SKU itself. No thanks, I'll just get these from the supermarket next week when I drive into town (I live in a rural area so having stuff delivered makes sense to me).
I also have an ethical problem with the seemingly ridiculous workloads, hours and low pay their delivery drivers have put upon them, I'd rather not fund these abuses. I know for a fact the that the usual fella that delivers to me is doing at least a 10-11 hour day, and that's screwed up.
So anyway, I don't really order enough "new" stuff to make the Prime next day worthwhile, and tbh I can easily wait a couple of days for an order to arrive. I also tend to only order books these days, and will hold out until I can get a decent used copy at a fraction of the new price.
The other thing that's deeply annoying are these add-on channels where you need to pay a monthly subscription for, on top of Prime. Films/TV that you could previously pay for are being silo'd into these channels with no option to just pay for the film itself. Sure I could run with the 10-14 day free trial, but that soon gets old.
Finally there simply isn't enough compelling "included with prime" video that interests me.
IIUC the maximum driving time in 24 hours is 10 hours, and the maximum duty time is 11 hours. (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/drivers-hours-goods-vehicles/2-g...)
There are GB regulations (which stipulate among other things max 10 hrs per day) but these are not practically enforcable on self employed drivers as there are no tachograph requirements etc.
And for safety-critical purchases...no way am I risking buying something like angle grinder discs or fire extinguishers off Amazon. Fake headphones mean a bit of distortion, fake discs might mean a lost eye.
So now its just low-cost, low-risk purchases where I don't care too much if the item is junk.
On that note, where do people buy electronic hardware if not Amazon/PC World? E.g. for SD cards - Amazon carries the risk of counterfeits, and PC World carries the high street premium.
NB - As they observe religious calendar/holidays both in store and online, make sure they're open before you visit.
The only way to avoid this is to by things only sold by 1 seller.
Pretty sure this has to do with the co-mingling people are mentioning which means you can’t be sure even if it’s coming from the brand.
Any random bin can contain books, food, electronics, jewelry, anything from anywhere as it gets picked from, restowed into, counted and recounted, etc. There's little room for quality control before items are available for purchase, because the system is optimized to get as many things listed on the site as quickly as possible. There are many ways in which the process could be made more robust, but it won't be because doing so would cost precious seconds.
But, you still run the risk of being shipped widgets that will [combust|impale|disintegrate|other calamity]
Yep, I avoid anything that's going to need a wall-wart power supply, I really don't need to wake up in the middle of the night to find out it's burned the house down. Some of the PSU's Big Clive[0] has dismantled and studied are downright scary.
I would not want to buy a first-party charger because I think they're way too expensive. However, I'm also not going to just buy the least expensive one, because as Clive has shown, they're unreliable at best and downright dangerous at worst.
But I've bought dozens of items from Monoprice and Anker. They have made a brand for themselves as being high quality and low cost.
Of course, the whole house of cards comes tumbling right down once the counterfeiters stop bothering to make 'App1e' chargers and start making 'Ankeer' and 'Moonprice' models.
Reminded model servos Tower Pro, who were sort of knock off Blue Birds (copy of their distinct blue colour). Cue few years later someone started making Toward Pro...
I bought some socks for example: for the price of cheap socks in a brick-and-mortar store I got some of the best socks I have ever owned.
I think AliExpress could do some really good bussiness if they were to add a QA person in the loop and would start selling 'premium' products under a different name. So far the median price/quality ratio of the things I bought has been very good (with a few duds, all gimicky electronic crap).
Link? :-)
Monoprice/ newegg for the other stuff.
The loss-leader strategy appears to have worked! I typically try to buy from Microcenter now when possible, and I almost always give back that $50 cpu/mobo combo savings in margin on the rest of the build (and then some) simply due to convenience.
This is interesting - my experience is that outdoor gear is one of Amazon's absolute weakest markets. I can't remember the last time they beat out my alternatives for backpacks, tents, etc.
There seem to be a bunch of factors in that. One is that buying offbrand is rarely a good idea (since you end up stress-testing everything), so people go for less-famous branded stuff instead. Two is that close equivalents aren't - I can buy any charger with the right voltage and plugs, but not any equal-size backpack. Three is that outdoor gear already has a lot of tiny-margin sellers; between REI, Campmor, MooseJaw, and ActiveJunky rebates there's very little room to undercut.
B&H and Monoprice have been getting more and more business from me lately.
I was shopping for a Hario coffee grinder on Amazon and noticed about 10% of the reviews were 1-star as opposed to the usual 5-star reviews. Turns out about 10% of people who bought this item on Amazon received a counterfeit even though it was apparently the manufacturer's own page and listing (if it wasn't I couldn't tell nor figure out how to determine that).
So after researching on Amazon I went to the manufacturer's site, found their list of authorized resellers, and bought it from Williams-Sonoma. I've since bought more items from WS. They should send a thank you card to Jeff Bezos.
I'm a new father now too. Guess where we don't buy any baby stuff from.
The problem here is that when you buy from Amazon, you expect that you're buying it from Amazon. But with they way they have it set up, it's also very likely that you'll buy from another seller that's a few pennies cheaper than Amazon, with Amazon facilitating the sale.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003872
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944675
I'm plenty willing to be a diligent buyer, it's not much different than avoiding phishing attacks, but at this point any item with Amazon as the seller may be compromised, and there's no way to tell in advance.
It's not even hard: just require anyone selling on Amazon to wire a large enough deposit before they are allowed to sell (magnitude depending on the price, volume of their items and possibly their assumed trustworthiness); then, if they are found selling counterfeits or otherwise misrepresenting their products or their company, Amazon pockets a third of it, rewards another third to the person reporting it to Amazon and distributes the remaining third to affected shoppers.
It seems to me that the gains would far outweigh any possible reduction in the number of legitimate sellers and products.
And another questionable thing that is starting to happen more and more is that you get something for free from the seller if you leave a review. It's very difficult for Amazon to guard against this, because the offer is made in the parcel you receive.
This doesn't seem to be that hard to guard against. Amazon could offer a large bounty to report sellers that do this, and since Amazon has direct access to seller funds they could debit their account to pay for the bounty.
Personal opinion: They have consumer confidence to burn, and selling these products is almost pure profit. Amazon doesn't have to source or pay up front for these materials, and only has to pay a minimal storage/shipping fee on them (where they even store the items themselves).
It's hard to turn that kind of profit down, or to slim down the profit by adding more checks and balances.
Maybe they could use mturk?
Or maybe give you a button to set up an mturk job on a product to weed out the fake reviews for you, then you could pay only a few cents to get a 'real' review...
Case in point. I just bought a couple of Samsung Qi wireless chargers. There were certainly cheaper ones listed but this one won Wirecutter recommendation so it's what I got. Are there counterfeits? Probably. But they probably aren't packaged like the legit item.
I was looking for a Mophie battery case for the iPhone SE. Go there now and look. You’ll find a bunch of cases “by Mophie”, which are all counterfeits, no exceptions. Mophie doesn’t sell on Amazon.
Are you saying that Amazon themselves bought and stocked counterfeit Morphie products?
If I've gotten anything else that was counterfeit, it was a good enough reproduction for me not to notice.
But some people might be buying items exclusively in categories where the rate is higher? I don't know. I buy a lot of electronics and electronic accessories off of Amazon, and that seems to be what others complain about being bad.
I'm actively wondering whether it would be possible to build an external ranking-by-review system, since Amazon's <Sort By Best Avg Review> system has been fully gamed, and I use a completely different algorithm.
Meanwhile entire categories are completely full of fraudulent junk -- start with LiPo 18650 batteries. One seller was even using Tesla's brand and logo claiming to sell their batteries. It disappeared a few days after I reported them, so Amazon does appear to be doing something, but it's completely inadequate.
If they did start sending me junk I'd return it, and complain loudly. So far I've only had to engage their customer service about a few delivery-related screwups, but they've been extremely helpful for that stuff, so I'm curious what their threshold is for actually addressing stuff like this.
Oddly, Amazon has reversed roles with the brick and mortars for me. Instead of using a physical store as a showroom and then buying online, I use Amazon's user reviews and algorithms* to see what to buy and then I go to a physical store to get it. I buy from the physical store with confidence I have a reasonable product and price and can return/exchange it easily if I'm still not happy with it.
* the "Frequently bought together" and "Customers also bought" sections.
Punishing consumers for ordering a product for which the supplier/supply chain sent a counterfeit which was flagged by customs is just dumb.
Importing and selling counterfeit products is already illegal. If the person has a 20' shipping container full of counterfeit product, maybe investigate it and level penalties.
But to disqualify someone from an entry program because of one counterfeit product, when clearly no one from Amazon, CBP, or the manufacturer put in any effort whatsoever to investigate, is just wrong IMHO. The article states the manufacturer took the lazy route and punished the innocent customer because going after Amazon and someone in China would be more effort/expense.
Guilty until proven innocent. Ridiculous.
Can you provide an example or two ?
Amazon is incorporated in the US.
Amazon's distribution centers reside in many states.
In Indiana, since they have a presence, they are legally obligated in collecting sales tax.
My bank statement shows "AMAZON", not 3rd party importer.
I find your claim of "technically an importer" to be completely bunkum. The importer here is Amazon, and full blame on import fraud should be levied against them. I have no issue in giving a grace period to get "shit in order", but they've known about this for quite some time. Enough's enough. (Claiming that I buy stuff from Amazon makes me an importer would also make me an importer buying crap from Walmart.... And yet we don't see that, do we?)
You may well find his claim to be bunkum, but he's correct. If you purchase something from a third party seller in a different country on Amazon's platform, and the seller ships it from their country to your country and it passes through customs, you are the importer.
Walmart imports goods from China and gets them through customs and then sells them, so you are not importing things when you buy them from Walmart, unless you purchase something from a foreign country from a third party seller on their marketplace platform, just like Amazon.
The sale is made to Amazon, The product goes through Amazon's warehouses, and Taxes are paid to Amazon...It's an Amazon Sale and they are acting as the importer for these goods.
Now, Alibaba/Aliexpress on the other hand, I do agree wholeheartedly with you. Because you are ordering from a Chinese company, ordering Chinese goods with no regard to US copyright/patent/trademark law.
While not in huge text, it's pretty visible.
https://www.amazon.com/Seiko-Japanese-Automatic-Stainless-Le...
You can have it fulfilled by Amazon and pay $392. It's already past customs and ready to ship to you.
You can order it from a third party seller, where the description says 'Ships from Japan' and warns you about customs fees for $370. You are purchasing the item directly from someone in Japan via Amazon's platform and any customs or importing fees are on you. They explicitly state it, I'm not sure how you're still confused.
(Disclaimer: this post is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer even though I asked one, etc)
I bet it was rather CBP directly who flagged him.
They have his address in a database for a trusted traveler program.
They were the ones who intercepted the shipment.
They checked the destination address on the shipment and cross-referenced it.
I'm not sure how Rimowa would be involved, frankly.
We don't know if they were involved, but it's possible Rimowa knew who the exporter was (from seeing the fakes online and ordering one themselves) and CBP then seized the package when it was imported. The article says, "Reed never received the suitcase" which indicates that the shipment could have been seized upon entry (because they were tipped off by Rimowa to look for packages from that exporter). Now they knew who the importer was (Reed) and they added his name to a database of illegal importers.
Since it was just one suitcase, it probably wasn't worthwhile going after him, but now his name was in the database (likely because they think it will help them catch more illegal imports). The tricky problem arises because there is likely no distinction in the database between one guy who didn't know he was ordering one counterfeit product for himself versus someone who imports container after container of counterfeits for resale. CBP enforces the law by seizing the product and it's up to the company to sue the importer. It's clearly a broken system with nasty ramifications for the people who got scammed.
Well, actually the "normal" experience that everyone but the ones that were granted the "privilege" have.
I mean, the decision (provided that the reason is actually the counterfeit suitcase) seems silly, but it is not like they took away his driving license or passport, or however limited his freedom.
I have no data, how many people are in the "Global Entry" thing?
And how many international travels per year would justify applying (and the background check and the in-person interview)?
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-...
What is the actual difference in practice? Like half an hour to pass customs on average?
It really depends on the airport. As a US citizen returning to SFO I have spent anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours in line.
I am considering signing up for Global Entry.
So, given the procedure (and the non reimboursable fee of US$ 100)and depending how distant you are from an "interview center" (and how long does the interview take):
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-...
I would say that a "make even" point could be around 3-4 international travels planned per year (given that the program needs to be renewed after 5 years).
For me ... well, I'm an American but I live in Colombia, which generally meant lots of questions and highly suspicious treatment before I got Global Entry. Now I don't have to say anything more than mornin' when entering the country. Totally worth it to me. :-)
Yes, that would probably be the most convenient way.
Mine took 5 minutes at most. The real inconvenience was the closest place to do the interview was a 3 hour drive. YMMV but anything I can do to spend less time in an airport is worth it to me.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequently-asked-questions/what-d...
It also expedites entry back into the US via land crossings.
From my experience entering the country from LAX and BOS, passing through security at many airports around the country, Global entry is extremely convenient if the airport is large and busy (LAX) but not that much more convenient if there isn't a large crowd. (BOS)
TSA-Precheck on the other hand is a godsend for almost any average-large city airport.
For a normal traveler, this probably wouldn't matter too much. But it was a big deal for my lifestyle.
obviously YMMV
So, some time ago, I was looking to buy lemongrass seeds. The lemongrass that is sold on either supermarkets or farmers markets usually has the leaves cut. And that’s precisely the leaves my wife looks for, to make tea.
Okay fine, let’s grow our own. We had little success growing from existing lemongrass, so why not try from seeds them.
Couldn’t find seeds on Home Depot. Found a seller on, guess what, Amazon.
There was no indication that the seller wasn’t in the US (but in retrospect, no indication he was) so I ordered without thinking much about it.
Fast forward a couple of months, I received the open packet (sans seeds) and a document indicating that import was not allowed. They also had lab test results attached, which indicated lemongrass seeds (by their scientific name) and some other seeds I can’t remember mixed in.
Now, all of this was legal, it’s just a customs rule violation(given the right paperwork, one should be able to import seeds, as I undestand it). Imagine what would have happened if the seller also had planted pot in the field, and got some of those mixed in...
Your story would be completely unchanged. Customs would seize the package and you would receive a letter saying that they seized contraband and that would be the end of it.
People have packages of drugs seized at customs without any consequences. Unless it's a massive amount or it happens frequently, nothing would happen to you.
I used to think that wasn't a big deal since I really only check the estimated arrival date if I need something in a hurry. But, as of this article, it is a big deal no matter what because it changes who the importer is...
If something ships from Amazon then it was Amazon or a third party who imported the goods. If it ships directly to me from another country then I am the importer and I am on the hook for customs issues that I am not in control of (ex. is it OEM or is it counterfeit).
Amazon needs to make it very clear who and where each item is being imported from when it's not shipping from a warehouse in the same country as the delivery address. They have to stop pretending they are walmart or target in the cloud and that every purchase is a safe purchase.
I wonder how they know it was the suitcase that's causing this when... CBP doesn't release specifics.
The client should never have to endure bad consequences because of bad behavior of Amazon or banks.
Responsibility for a wrongdoing is not always restricted to one party; in this case there is one party active trying to commit a fraud involving counterfeit goods, and one profiting from a system which is structured so as to enable that fraud and make it difficult for the target to detect or avoid (which may initially have been innocent, but has been maintained that way long after the operator had information on which they reasonably should have known that was a recurring and significant issue.)
No, I'm saying a marketplace that knows, or reasonably should know of an ongoing pattern of fraud enabled and protected by features of its marketplace that does not take reasonable steps to mitigate that fraud but instead chooses to continue to allow and profit from it bears responsibility for it.
So it's my responsibility now to go into the minute details of these things? Why isn't CBP doing its job? Shouldn't they be looking carefully before denying TT status? Shouldn't they be paying attention to what they are doing?
I feel like more and more these government agencies just shrug and do the most expedient thing possible, even if it means screwing others over.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-polic...
So I guess don't do that if you work for someone who's going to send the police to your house over it after they fire you? Not sure there's really a larger point to be made here about watchlists, surveillance, or indeed anything, considering the only element of that story which couldn't happen in 1930 is the part about Google.
Client certs are a different thing entirely, and unrelated to this discussion.
One supposes there might be some banks or B2B sites that might use client certs, but they're such a minority that no one ever heard of them.
Separate from that, client certificates are certainly common, being used for authentication, in the US Federal Government, which issues tens of millions of certificates for this purpose as well as smartcards, since George W. Bush banned passwords with HSPD-12.
One-time-use credit card numbers also help. I used this feature all the time when Discover offered it, but unfortunately they stopped. Now companies like privacy.com now offer it as a service, but adoption is probably slowed down by needing to trade-off rewards for privacy.
It's yet another reason why I hope cryptocurrencies succeed. In the future I want to pay for anything without the seller having access to my personal information. Even if you trust the merchant, it's too tempting for thieves.
Maybe someday someone will also solve the issue around shipping details. Like a DNS for shipping addresses. That would be awesome.
As a green-card holder I'm already pretty wary of them being able to search my devices or deny me entry, and I'd rather that the CBP hadn't enriched all my identifiers and got a fat-little-file on me beforehand.
Given an interest in debating politics online, I wouldn't be surprised if GE membership would increase the chances that I get stopped regularly.
Does anyone on HN have any knowledge or experiences about what kind of thing goes into the GE "rigorous background check"?
It's also troubling to see inline ads at all, but hey.
This seems ripe for a class action lawsuit against either amazon or the USCBP (are you even able to sue them). Obviously suing each brand wouldn't work because there just wouldn't be enough litigants for a class action, but maybe we can hold amazon responsible for this and make them change somethings?
Be scared, and prostitute yourself.
Whether it's artificially designed or not is a different question.
- skip due process
- punish people on unverified accusations
If you're on the move a lot then you and your luggage become engaged in a deeply personal relationship :)
One time at baggage claim it came out without a wheel. I suppose it doesn’t matter how tough your piece of luggage is if your baggage handler happens to be having a bad day.
To replace the wheel a Delsey store asked me to give it up for three weeks in Hong Kong, which I couldn’t do. Some pricier brands’s policies promise 1–3 day turnarounds, which makes a difference if you’re moving around frequently.
A private jet and a butler would however do quite fine. ;-)