Ed Brill

Tumi’d by an angel

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that my Tumi laptop bag had bit the dust, and had been assessed by Tumi as irreparable.  There were lots of good suggestions on what to go with as a replacement, and I was thisclose to buying a Briggs & Riley bag.  But that's when the e-mail came -- Tumi sent me an "angel", someone within the company who cared enough about my frustration and disappointment to take another look at the situation.  I was pleasantly surprised that someone at Tumi reached out to me, and after a few e-mails back and forth, I was convinced to give them one more chance.

So the replacement bag is a Tumi 26141, as seen here.  This wasn't a slam-dunk decision.  I was disappointed to learn that in the three years since I bought my last bag, the laptop bag market has started to move away from wheeled bags that also have shoulder straps -- Tumi no longer offers this option, and few others do.  I liked the either/or flexibility of the last one.  And as helpful as Tumi's angel was, I was often surprised by what I learned -- the difference in the durability of their various lines, for example, or the fact that Tumi doesn't publish the weight of their bags on their website. I gave up on the wheeled bag because I realized that more often than not, I have another bag with wheels along for the ride most of the time, anyway.  I can just stack this bag on top.  And it's pretty light-weight in terms of shoulder carrying (just don't ask me the exact weight :-) ). The new bag arrived yesterday, and I'm hastily packing it up for my departure to Rome tomorrow.  From many of the online reviews I read, this bag is one that "road warriors" swear by, so I'm hoping for the best.  After all, I have another 30,000 flying miles ahead this year, in what is turning out to have been my busiest travel year post-9/11 (though admittedly, a number of these trips have been personal and/or optional).  Let's see how it goes.