My beloved old Animal bag, a mahooosive 120l wheeled monster, suffered an injury recently. A broken buckle, the male part of the buckle. The bag’s well over four years old and has been through more baggage handling monkey mayhem than is strictly necessary, so beyond any hope of warranty. So, I tried to buy a replacement buckle for it. No joy, nothing I could find would fit exaclty in to the female part.

Sadly, because of the way the female part is stitched in, I couldn’t really replace both ends of the buckle.

So, a quick, ever hopeful email to Animal, asking to try and find out what the exact buckle type was so I could hold of one.

The very lovely young lady from Animal said she might be able to help, then asked my address and a day later a buckle of the exact type I needed arrived at Flash Towers, free of charge!

So, top marks to the lovely people at Animal!

I had very similar experiences with Topeak not so long back, excellent customer service in response to excellent customer stupidity.

I’d lost part of my multitool (it’s on a bridleway somewhere in Scotland if you want to have a look for it) so emailed them asking if I could buy a replacement without having to buy the whole tool again, they sent me the part for free.