JanSport warranty works

As I reported in Testing JanSport warranty, I sent my worn-out JanSport backpack in to their warranty service a month ago, as it was no longer usable (hole in the leather bottom, main zipper fails frequently, shoulder straps fraying where they join the body of the pack) to try out the JanSport warranty:

JanSport engineers quality, durable, and reliable products. So, if your pack ever breaks down, simply return it to our warranty center. We’ll fix it or if we can’t we’ll replace it or refund it. We stand by our packs for a lifetime and since we’ve been making packs since 1967, that’s a guarantee you can stand by.  [http://www.jansport.com/shop/en/jansport-us/content/warranty]

Shipping the pack to San Leandro, CA only cost me $5.32, which seemed like a better deal than $55 for a new backpack.  The replacement pack came today (as I expected, they figured it would be cheaper to replace rather than repair the pack), a month later than when I sent the old one in.

The new pack is a different color (they no longer make a brown pack), and they have gone cheap on some aspects of the design—the old pack had an organizer that held 4 or more pens and pencils, plus a checkbook or two.  The new one barely holds 3 pencils and credit card, and the material for the organizer seems flimsy.  They’ve added a new feature—a laptop sleeve that adds weight to the pack while not adding anything I find useful, just making the main compartment more cluttered. I’ll use this one for a while, but I’ll probably be looking for a pack that has a decent organizer, since that was the feature that drew me to the old JanSport pack, and they have abandoned the one feature that made it stand out from a bunch of similar packs.

So the new pack is not as useful for me as the old one was when it was new, but better than the worn-out pack.  At least the zipper works and the shoulder straps aren’t in danger of falling off. The JanSport warranty works, if you don’t mind that they no longer make their sturdy pack with a decent organizer.