I bought my wife a new rucksack as she needs an upgrade from the flimsy day sack she has been using, my ulterior motive is that she can carry more of our camping gear.
I was shown the sack at my local shop and was impressed with the features, she liked the colour
Anyway we got it home, and I always like to examine new kit fully so I had a good check over everything. I was a bit annoyed to see that there was a zip inside but no slider tag, it looked like it had dropped off. It was from the access pocket to the internal frame.
Yesterday I was passing the shop where I bought the rucksack so I dropped in to tell them what I had found. I did not want to return the thing as it was just a petty annoyance but it cost quite a bit of cash, even with my regular customer discount.
I told James (one of the owners) about it and as soon as I mentioned a zip he laughed and picked up a similar sack from his display, opened it up, and showed me a zip without the pull tag on it. Apparently they are all like that, you are not meant to open the zipped compartment. (Did if feel stupid? Yes!)
It seems that the sacks are shipped without internal frames in order to take up less space in the container. The innards are inserted here in the UK and the pocket is zipped shut, never to be opened, and anyway it's too tight to be of use for anything else.
In order to spare my embarrassment James told me that for every three of these sacks he sells he gets one complaint/query from the buyers so I am not alone.
So there you go, to save you from needless new rucksack angst.
That said, it's a cracking pack and I look forward to many adventures with the wife carrying our tent and cooking gear, maybe the food too, in comfort.
Only joking, we will split the load equally!