Sounds like me. I have anxiety everytime I check in my Rimowa.

 

I wish... hard enough to even get a passport stamp these days! My wife has been buying a sticker in each city we visit and putting them on her Heys hard plastic carryon. A couple serve as protection to damaged spots. The stickers have sparked a few airport conversations, especially with kids.

 

If you stand at the far (exit) end of the room at MAN T3 reclaim,
where the belt and bags emerge,
and part the rubber windbreak with your hand,
you can watch the baggage handling process.

I doubt it is significantly more brutal at MAN than anywhere else

(I am still meditating on how AA managed to puncture multiple drinks cans,
which had survived several previous trips,
amply wrapped up in multiple layers of packaging,
in the centre of a hard-shell case,
without visibly damaging the case)

but you will see it's not a gentle process.

The trailers of cases are driven up to the belt and then thrown from the trailers onto the belt.
They're not trying to damage your cases,
but they're also not making any effort to be gentle.

No doubt the sooner the cases are flung to the belt, the sooner they can go back to scrolling their phones in the warm.

 

Sounds like you need a suitcase for your Rimowa. ;-)

 

At the end of the day the case is there to protect what is inside it from the ordeal of travel. As long as the contents is ok and it still does that then it's done its job. Anything cosmetic should really just be there so you can identfy it easily. A scratch/gouge will help with that

 

Think of it as a fencing scar = badge of honor, not your first rodeo, etc., etc., sexy, even, possibly...

 

Yes, but not when the gorilla ad campaign was introduced:

https://www.woot.com/blog/post/the-debunker-did-gorillas-ever-beat-up-samsonite-luggage

(The company which owned Samsonite would acquire American Tourister years later.)

 

I am guessing the OP bought one of the Lite-box Alu series, which came out as a direct competitor to RIMOWA Aluminium cases, albeit at a slightly cheaper price point.

whilst scratches and small dents are to be expected, anything major i would report it to Samsonite to see what they says. One of the selling points of RIMOWA ALUMINIUM is that they will repair/refurbish your case for life.

As other have said though, stickers are a good option. They make the case immediately recognisable on the carousel, but also more ragged /less desiderabile to thieves, and can mask existing scratches and somehow protect it from new. I use mostly the luggage airports tags (just cutting off the barcodes).

I do this on all my hard cases (started with my vinyl trunk case as a dj in the 1990s) , and on a easy scratch-able Neopukse one, has been in some rough handling airports coming out the other end fairly well for the last 5 years covered like that

 

Airlines like BA actually provide targets in their Service Level Agreements for Bags on Belt. It varies by station but might, for example, look something like this:

FBOB F Class 10m
LBOB F Class 15m
LBOB J Class 25m
LBOB Y Class 45m

This would require the handlers to have the First Bag on Belt from F Class on the carousel within 10 mins of the cargo hold opening and the Last Bag on Belt from F Class within 15 mins. All J Class on the carousel within 25 mins and all Y Class within 45 mins.

Given passengers get irate waiting at the belt, it is not overly surprising that the bags get handled a bit roughly to meet these targets.

 

I had a Rimowa hard shell (plastic) that was smashed on its very first use, at HKG after my very first F flight on BA, ironically. That’s why I then went metal, it has been bashed around and dented for sure, but it’s still in good working order and has protected many bottles of wine!

 

I initially thought the "m" stood for metres - as in how far the luggage was thrown.

 

Rimowa metal is not safe either. I repaired the damaged Topaz after the Hong Kong - London flight last June and the British Airways smashed it again on a flight in Johannesburg last August. It's still being repaired in Germany..

And the Rimowa pilot, which was used instead, was declared unrepairable because of the lack of parts after the flight to Berlin in October..

I gave up expecting them to handle the luggage safely.