Sharing an unexpected experience with Peak Design in store customer service.

I bought the PD Travel Backpack 45L in June 2019 and it’s been my trusty onebag for numerous international and domestic US trips.

On the way back from my last trip, my right collarbone was badly irritated by the shoulder strap where the padding had been compressed over the years causing the fabric from the shoulder lash strap to poke through the padding a bit.

Since I was going to be near a PD store today, I brought it with me figuring it’s worth asking if it could be fixed.

When I showed the salesperson the bag, they explained this “variation in stitching” is not part of their warranty coverage but…

tl;dr Peak Design gave me a brand new 45L travel backpack at zero cost.

Honestly shocked by this outcome - have y’all had a similar experience with PD or other bag companies?

Someone

Hi all

Firstly, thank you to all of you who make this community what it is, a great place to find reviews of quality products from around the world, and speak freely about our thoughts on them.

Fakes of the kind found on AliExpress and Temu have always been a difficult topic here. Originally, these posts started off as genuinely helpful comparison posts against the real thing, but increasingly have been treated as ways to share information about these knock off products. Our one rule was that you shouldn’t share or ask for links or ways to find these products, but this rule is being repeatedly broken with the increasing volume of discussions around fakes.

In addition, we recently had abusive posts from a particularly difficult user that treated our allowance of legit brands like C-Tactical and the presences of the fakes as indicative of our disregard for bag manufacturers, so basically tarring them with the same brush unfairly. I am really not keen to see that comparison …

I was wearing my Tom Bihn Synik 22 and when I slung the bag over my shoulder to retrieve my wallet, the store clerk said (verbatim), “That’s a nice looking bag.”

I have been working on putting together the “perfect for me” small tech pouch for a while now and I think I finally have the finished version of it for the near future and wanted to share what I have in it, and my reasons for it. The pouch is an Aer Slim Pouch 2.

First, the purpose of the pouch… I built this for several reasons.

1. Most trips I take are with my wife and I have a larger tech pouch buried at the bottom of my backpack that has all the charging stuff I need for all my tech and her tech and my CPAP (it sucks to lug around, but is medically necessary). This pouch sits at the top of my bag, easy to get to for anything I might need on a travel day such as powering my iPad on the flight while we watch movies or topping off my phone on a long flight, etc…
2. While at our destination, it gets tossed in my sling for days I know we will be out a long time and heavily using our devices for pictures and navigation and might need to top some stuff up.
3. On the …

I know this is an international subreddit so I’m hoping all of us from outside the USA can step over here for a minute to have a discussion. In light of being dragged into a tariff war I’m looking for a backpack to travel with that isn’t made in the USA and that doesn’t support a USA based company. I want it to be small enough to be considered a “personal” item for most of the airlines. It would be nice if it looked a little more “corporate” and a little less “camping”. Any suggestions?

Going to Europe for a 2 month trip with my girlfriend. Going to Greece (Greek islands), France, Italy, Switzerland (possibly) and Spain. It’ll be mostly a holiday trip however due to my job I can work remotely so there will be a bit of work sprinkled in throughout the trip. I’ve actually never one-bagged internationally before, however I do videography for work so I normally have 2-3 bags/cases but roughly the same amount of space for personal items. So feeling pretty confident. MORE DETAILS BELOW:

Second official one bag trip and I’m hitting Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and Italy in 14 days. This is everything I’ve packed, full list in the comments. Feeling good with this

I am 8 months into 1 year of travel around Latin America (it totally rocks). By now, my pack is pretty dialled in and I am pretty happy with it. So without further ado, here is my packlist — more info at bottom of post!

——Packlist——

Bag(s)

• Osprey Farpoint 40L
• Cotopaxi Batoc 16L (packable)

Clothing

• 5 t-shirts (1x merino, 4x cotton)
• 2 short sleeve button-ups (cotton/linen)
• 1 lightweight long sleeve button-up (synthetic)
• 3 shorts (Cotopaxi Brincos — lost! — double as bathing suit)
• 1 pants (Goldwin Field Mil Pants — amazing)
• 7 boxers (2x merino, 5x natural/synthetic blends)
• 3 pairs ankle socks (Darn Tough)
• 2 pairs crew socks (Smartwool)
• 1 lightweight sweater (Marine Layer)
• 1 down jacket (Rab)
• 1 rain coat (Rab Paclite)
• 1 ball cap (lost! — looking to replace)

Footwear

• Runners (On Cloudrunners — not bad but prefer wider toe box)
• Hikers (Roy, Guatemalan brand)
• Olukai leather sandals (heavy but great if they don’t stay wet for too long)

Electronics

• iPhone …

Meaning no sling, no packable tote, no day pack, etc. I ask because the longer I’m in this sub, it seems like most people are 1.5 bagging. Which, to me, seems like the most convenient way to travel.

Don’t worry, I talked to the one bag police and convinced them to take the day off. You are free to come forward and share your rationale for actually one bagging or 1.5 bagging.

Edit: idc what is actually one bagging or not, it’s just a made up label. idc how many bags someone takes with them when they travel, do whatever is the most convenient for you. If you take a checked bag, personal item, carry on, and each of those bags has another bag in it and you want to call yourself a one bagger, then by all means, go for it. This post isn’t about the label.

I just posted this because when I initially joined this sub I thought everyone literally just brought one bag. But the longer I’m here, and as evidenced by the responses, most people bring an extra bag whether packed in their main bag or …

Regretting my life choices with carryon only trip to Sydney. Due to poor thought process currently shlepping to my international flight with onebag packed to the brim. Unanticipated gifts and a “great deal” on a surprisingly heavy picnic mat (from Picnic season, IYKYK). It also unfortunately included tent pegs that I had to ship back home separately. Plus my 6yo struggling to carry her own onebag 🫠

If the flight is delayed we can have a picnic at the gate, I suppose…

ETA: Regret evaporated when we landed at midnight and swiftly exited the airport exactly 1 min before a fire alarm went off. That would be very unfun if we had checked luggage.

I have been in hotels before with barely any sun coming through and have had a tough time drying clothes. I know you all buy special/expensive clothing like merino for this but I just have cotton or synthetics.

Air bnbs are easier because you can book places with balconies so you can hang them outside. But what about hotels?

First, the pics.

Outlier was kind enough to give me (shoutout, u/kennious. Gotta specify as per FCC regulations) a pair of the upcoming D400Works to share my thoughts. I’m wearing a 34 waist and currently weigh around 205.

As a successor to the beloved and now extinct Duckcloth, the D400 have a lot to live up to and immediately upon receiving them I realized I would have my work cut out for me.

Out of the box, I registered that while the texture of the material was similar, the weight was noticeably different. The 400gsm D400 cloth is 791g compared to the 460gsm Duckworks at 869g. They felt light, but are still heavier than 360gsm Bombdungarees at 600g. My brain knew they were not Duckworks, but my the texture on my fingertips were telling me otherwise.

Once I had them on, that difference in weight was no longer a factor. On the body they felt and stacked like the Duckworks. The biggest differences were a slightly less cottony feel than duck on the inner and outer faces - not …

Whichever one of you driving up the price on the ramienorth Boxfords: I hate you. 😉

But seriously, good luck! Glad to see I’m not the only fan of that fabric. Outlier team, I know why you had to stop producing it but maybe this is a sign it might be worth bringing it back??

D400works

A high performance 100% cotton pant experiment [#523] in an elegant yet rugged four-ply Ventile canvas. Tough as nails with decent water resistance, this is a pant made for people who want to put in the work to break them in beautifully. Features a hidden front shank, slanted seam front pockets, extra wide belt loops and a discreet dime pocket in the rear.

Now available in Olivine

My closet consists of navy and grey items and I’d like to add another color or two. I saw some caramel colored pants I really liked. I would love to get some in one of Outliers fabrics but I am not seeing any on the website.