A bag a year, hmm you must be really hard on your bags or some really cheap stuff. What is the inconvenience of a bag failure during a trip and having to replace ? The math says if you buy cheap versus something that last x more years is simple, but there again for the far more expensive take the post from the BR owner of lifetime warranty, as long as it doesn't break on a trip the cost for me was a small portion, it would the SOL in some trip and having something break mid travel.
I have a BR and I lug it on weekly trips for 3 years now, sometimes checked-in mostly carry-on, miles and miles in airport, and a few tough miles on streets, subways etc. It's got mileage and still going strong. Every time I go by the Costco here and see their cheap/value spinner wonder how well it would go, of course they got "liftetime" costco, but you can tell it is less well built and what if it fails at the most inappropriate time.
You got to pay for quality, but paying a lot doesn't always assure quality. Manytimes people buy quality which almost always require lots more money to become image.