Update: July have made good on this error and sent me a replacement bag to where I was in the USA. Thanks for going the extra-mile guys.

I feel so heartbroken when I didn’t keep my word. I struggle as a parent when I make a promise - or a threat - to my girls because I want to make sure I can follow through on my word. When I fail to keep my word in friendships, family, or business, it pains me. It’s why I pore over our website copy and contracts to make sure we can and will do what we promise to do.

So I guess that’s why I’m feeling really disappointed in one of my favourite brands: July.

Flying from San Jose del Cabo to Brisbane through Los Angeles in November last year a wheel came off my Checked Plus July luggage somewhere between Alaska Airlines' check-in at Cabo and the luggage carousel in LAX. I’m no fool, I’m sure one of the gentle giants working in luggage handling delicately placed the bag where it needed to be and the faulty wheel just fell off.

I had travel insurance on the trip, and no doubt Alaska Airlines might have covered it - but I know from experience that airlines are painful about damaged luggage.

So I had one week to make the claim with Alaska Airlines, but I thought travel insurance was the sure bet, but I know they’d ask me if I’d contacted the airline for coverage or the manufacturer for warranty, so I contacted July as I arrived on Australian soil on November 21 - intent to get a quick no from them so I can make an insurance claim, buy a new bag, and be ready to go by the time I leave Australia on December 21. We have one month to solve a hopefully easy problem.

July’s ‘Happiness Team’ replies - and by the way, unless you’re actually going to make people happy, just be a customer service or customer disservice team:

“We would be happy to have replacement wheels sent out for you.”

This I was not expecting!

So I give all the details as required and requested, put to bed any thoughts of wrestling with Alsaka’s premiere airline, and even worse, my travel insurance, and await the wheel.

It shipped from July one month later, as I was boarding my flight to Nashville via Sydney and Dallas. I explicitly communicated that I was in the country for a month and it took a month to send the wheel.

Another wheel was then allegedly shipped to my Mexican address but it’s been three months and all I am left with now is a series of thoughts and no wheels.

  • going to “the media” aka social media or the news never works, until it does
  • I really like the July suitcases and kind of enjoy having a matching set of five despite one limping
  • we’re in Baja California Sur for another month until we go to Nashville and Hawaii then Europe before coming home in August, what am I going to do about this three-wheeled bag.
  • I’d really just like another big July bag but do I want to continue to do business with a company that can’t simply keep its word?
  • I wish they’d just said no back in November and I would have bought a new bag and they would have never experienced the pain of letting me down.
  • Can I even get a July bag in, or to, Mexico before April 8?