These moving parts require maintenance repairs after so many years of use.
The funny thing about "so many years of use" is that the bag has been hardly used the last few years (partly because of the handle issue). Probably about one round trip a year for the last 3.
Either way, I'd like to see the recommended "maintenance" schedule. And this didn't seem like maintenance: The repair gent said that the whole assembly would need to be replaced and that the correct replacement parts are no longer available, so that he'd have to find a part that fit from a more recent product.