Check who the handling agent is.

We flew back to Gatwick from some place abroad once and were waiting in the baggage hall for our bags.  An announcement came over the tannoy for my wife to go to the ??? baggage handling agents desk.

They informed her that her (rather ancient and tatty) bag had been damaged by the handlers and they gave us, there and then, a direct replacement new bag (from a couple of choices of generic bags).

We had a similar experience to Steve, but we weren't called to customer service, we just discovered a damaged bag when retrieving it from the conveyor belt.

We'd flown with BA to Denver and cheapo cheapo suitcase (bought from Auchan in Clais for circa €6 Euros IIRC) had the wheels and supporting legs ripped off and the handle smashed.  :(

Reported it to the BA helpdesk, no questions asked about it's initial cost or condition, they simply produced a brand new suitcase of the same size (or larger) and comparable (or better) quality there and then. We ended up with an Antler case that was slightly larger than the one we had originally!  :D

Must remember to take a suitcase with broken wheels on my next flight then and say that they broke it!

Can't work out if this a good bag or not to take on a plane?