Bags: pre-purchase judging points

For bags the two failures that come up most are these: hardware that looks correct in a wide shot but has no weight once you hold the strap, and edge paint that hides a raw cut on the corners until the first week of use. Both are decided by photographs a seller can take before dispatch, which is why the points below start where they do.

Bags are bulky for their value, so volumetric weight and the carrier tier decide more of the delivered total than the listing price does.

For bags, 6 distinct things have to be visible in the set a seller sends — beginning with the platform message thread, screenshot showing the date and the seller's reply naming a version and a colourway:

• the platform message thread, screenshot showing the date and the seller's reply naming a version and a colourway
• public comparison photos for the same version word, plus the storefront's own older listings of that model
• one continuous clip of 30 to 60 seconds, bag on a plain surface, no cuts, the seller's hand turning it
• arrival photos taken at the same angles as the clip, read beside the exported message thread from step 1
• one photo per metal part in indirect daylight, with a plain white sheet of paper held beside the metal as a colour reference
• the frames from step 1 laid side by side, examined at the highlight rather than in the shadow

Asking for that set in one message is what the photo request wording is for. When a seller skips one of these shots, the gap surfaces first at batch identity: does the named version match the build?, which is why that point sits at the top of the list above. What each angle can and cannot show is set out on the photo limits page.

Bags are bulky for their value, so volumetric weight and the carrier tier decide more of the delivered total than the listing price does.

3 gauges cover this category, listed beside this column with the date each parameter set was last read. On bags orders the line that moves first is bags are bulky for their value.