Extended Stay America

How To Deal With Luggage Malfunction

How To Deal With Luggage Malfunction

Your trusted old luggage will malfunction sooner or later. It's just a matter of time. Pray that it doesn't happen while you are lugging it on a busy street or a flight of stairs or while you're on your way to take a flight.

If your prayer goes unanswered and the unfortunate incident happens, take deep calming breaths and steady your nerves. You will need a calm and focused mind to effectively deal with a luggage malfunction.

First, you need to realize that your luggage needs to retire after so many years of service. If you have been seeing the phenomenon of spreading frayed edges and have been hearing the tell-tale sounds of groaning metal for quite some time, it is time to retire your luggage.

Those are the signs of a dying luggage and you want to place them to rest soon enough. Don't wait for your luggage to act up while you are using it. If you do, you might end buying brand new luggage at the airport for an exorbitant price or resort to wrap your baggage in a plastic bag as a desperate measure.  

Luggage malfunction occurs in so many different ways and each occasion calls for a unique solution. Here are some of the problems you may encounter involving luggage malfunction and the creative ways you can employ in dealing with them.

Zippers that remain open. This is a common problem if you tend to over pack. Many travelers, to save on the number of bags they need to bring, pack too much stuff on a single bag and force the zippers to fasten. Packing in excess of your bag's capacity causes the zipper to over-stretch.

Do it often enough and you get a busted zipper. If this happens and you don't have the luxury of time or money to buy a new bag, use a packing tape to close your bag. Wrap it around your luggage, horizontally and vertically. If you do a solid enough job, it'll buy you enough time to reach home without losing your bag or the contents inside.

Stuck handle. This happens to both new and old luggage alike. For some mechanical reason, the retractable handle either fails to retract or stays drawn out.  If the handle cannot be pulled out, you can use the fixed handle (not the retractable one) of the luggage and carry it with you. But if your luggage has tires, you can use an umbrella to take the place of the retractable handle by attaching the umbrella's J-shaped grip to the bag's fixed handle.

Now, if the retractable handle gets stuck in a drawn out position, it is recommended that you just check-in your luggage because the stuck handle may render your luggage too long to fit inside the airplane's overhead bin.

One tire less. If your luggage lost a tire and there is no way of putting it back, remove the remaining tire. It will restore balance to an otherwise lopsided luggage. A lopsided luggage can easily fall over and you will end up bending too many times to pull it back again to a standing position. So, better keep it well-balanced to avoid back pains later.