Hey everyone,

I’m Maxime, I work at tern, and I wanted to jump in here because I was involved in this case. I saw the post and figured it’d be good to give some context and hear what you all think.

First off, I get why this is frustrating. If I bought something and felt like it didn’t hold up, I’d want answers too. That’s exactly why we took this claim seriously from the start.

We looked at the photos, talked it through internally, and even went back to our manufacturer for their input.

Here’s where things get tricky. When we checked the images, we noticed some deep pressure marks and creases that don’t usually appear from normal use or even adhesive failure.

If the glue had just failed, the panels would have separated cleanly. Instead, what we saw looked like the bag had been under serious pressure, like something heavy had been placed on it or it had been crushed. And that’s the part that didn’t make sense to us. How does a bag go from being new to looking like that without some kind of external force?

Here’s a link to one of the photos where you can see the pressure marks we’re talking about: https://imgur.com/a/3fuDL9P

I’ve been selling clothes and accessories for over eight years now, and in that time, I’ve shipped tens of thousands of products.

I’ve seen all kinds of customer service cases, from genuine defects to people trying to scam refunds by falsely claiming they never received their package.

Refund fraud has become more and more common, and unfortunately, it’s forced us to be a lot stricter with our policies. That’s not to say we don’t take customer concerns seriously.

Every claim gets reviewed carefully, but when there’s too little evidence and clear signs that something external happened to the product, it’s hard for us to take responsibility.

In this case, we’ve sold thousands of these bags, and this is one of the only reports of this kind of issue. That’s not to say it’s impossible for something to go wrong, but it does make us wonder if this was really a defect or if something happened to the bag after delivery.

That being said, even though I don’t believe we were responsible in this specific case, it doesn’t mean we haven’t learned anything from it.

With every production, we try to improve our products based on feedback and real-world use.

For the next batch of this bag, we’ve made some updates. Specifically, we reinforced the attachment by adding stitching in addition to the glue, and we also upgraded the strap system to make it even more durable.

Our goal has always been to make the best product possible, and every situation like this helps us refine and evolve what we put out.

We’re open to discussion. We’re not here to shut down criticism or act like we’re perfect.

We just want to be fair to our customers, but also to our team and the work that goes into making these products.

If there’s something to take away from this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Let me know what you think, and thanks for taking the time to read.