Liz Claiborne Just Lost Two Customers

My mom purchased a Liz Claiborne branded luggage suitcase in July 2007, with a 10-year warranty. During the new years, the metal zipper on the main compartment broke off. The suitcase was only 6 months old.

I emailed Liz Claiborne on behalf of my mom and inquired about the warranty to replace the zipper. I received a fairly quick response the next business day and they said the luggage was actually made by a company called Badanco Enterprises, and I had to contact them myself.

So I called the number and spoke to a lady about the broken zipper. She sounded casual and indifferent. She said she would send me a zipper so I could replace it myself. I said I didn't believe I could replace the zipper myself. She said it was just a snap-on piece and I could definitely do it myself. I didn't totally believe her but I didn't have the suitcase in front of me to look at the zipper, so I gave her my mailing address and did not further challenge her.

Three weeks passed and I received nothing. My mom was going to travel soon, so she reminded me to call the company again. I called Badanco first, and got three different voicemail boxes at three different times. It was like no one was working there.

I called Liz Claiborne and asked if they could do anything to help me. After all, the suitcase had their name on it. The answer was no. All they could do was to give me the phone number of Badanco, which I already had. And the Liz Claiborne girl on the phone gave me a wrong number this time.

I kept calling and finally spoke to another lady at Badanco. She didn't bother listening to my description of the problem, and told me that they would fix it if I packaged the suitcase, shipped it to their factory in California, and included a check of $12.99 to cover their shipping cost (to ship the fixed luggage back to us). She had a really bad attitude when I said their warranty should have covered the shipping costs.

We decided not to get it fixed because it's not worth the costs. My mom will just put a string to the ring and use it that way. We are pretty unhappy because the warranty is useless. When my husband's laptop broke, HP sent a courier to our house, picked up the laptop, and later returned the fixed laptop back to us, completely free of charge or any shipping cost. That is called warranty.

Besides, a metal zipper broke off in 6 months after the suitcase has only been used twice? That tells us the quality of the suitcase is super low.

We are pretty disappointed at the way Liz Claiborne handled the situation too. They sounded like "it's not my problem, and I don't care." My mom and I have decided not to buy any more of the merchandise with their brand name on it. Who knows which ones are manufactured by other companies with poor quality construction?

This is a photo of the suitcase with the broken zipper on the right.

I don't know if it's clear enough but there is really no way we could have just "snapped" something back on and fixed it ourselves.  (Besides, I never received whatever they said they would send to me anyway.)