Originally published at: Why I'll never forget to use this luggage scale again | Boing Boing
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Uhm…
This whole story seems a bit off. Why didn’t you remove 500 grams from the bag then check it?
Sure, that’s not always possible based on what’s in the bag since you might have one heavy bag, but from that last bit, it was just regular stuff.
The topper at the end of the story kind of makes me feel the whole post is fictional, deliberately told in the fashion of an unreliable narrator.
That said, I have found luggage scales to be useful on trips because I tend to pack to the limit. One of the few things to ever go missing from my checked luggage, though, was my luggage scale. No idea why.
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How dare you impugn my sterling character by doubting my veracity good sir. Next you’ll claim my Playmobil VW camper story was a confabulation. 
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Now I’m feeling like you and Rob are doing a collaboration… 
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I hope your chosen lodgings were easier to deal with.
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Recently me and the family took an international flight, due to some miscalculations on my part our bags were over the limit, by a lot, after about an hour of moving things around and leaving quite a bit behind (My father and mother in law met us at the airport to say goodbye, kept our excess baggage) we went back to the counter only to find out that our flight had been moved up two hours, the plane was about to leave, we were the last people they needed to contact. Anyway, they took my word that the bags were the right weight (Probably weren’t), and just slapped a sticker on them and tossed them on the plane, this was only the first time a plane almost left us behind during the next 18 hours.
Anyway the luggage scale I bought worked great, 10/10 would buy again. Hopefully I won’t need it anytime soon.
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500g huh? Just pull out your aluminum foil hat, and you’re good to go.
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Corny and suspicious story of a 1lb overweight bag aside, a luggage scale is a great idea if you travel with a family. You can get them for ~$10 USD and they will save you that, or at least the time/annoyance of shuffling items around.
While I have used a manual one for years, I just bought a new digital one earlier this year as I found the manual one has become off by a few pounds. It’s entirely possible that the airline’s scale is off, but since part of my job of Official Family Support ensures making sure my inlaws have plane tickets and are all able to easily board planes, weighing bags has been a subportion of the job for some time now. Holding them while standing on a scale got old years ago, thus the move to the manual one, and the digital one is, reportedly, more exact.
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I especially like that my digital scale has a peak weight hold feature, so I just have to wait for the beep rather than try to juggle luggage while trying to watch the scale reading settle. The luggage scale is one of those rare, inexpensive “Makes my life better” purchases. And I use it to weigh packages that are too heavy for my 5 pound postal scale. (I just tare a grocery or IKEA bag and weigh the package in the bag.)
As to accuracy for weighing packages. I weighed some “5 pound” weight plates at the grocery store self-check kiosk as a much more expensive reference, wrote down the measured weights and then checked the weights on my luggage scale for comparison.
Luggage scales are indispensable these days. I finally broke down and bought one a year or so ago.
My wife just packed for an international flight with lots of gifts. She was 5 pounds over, but it was easy knowing how much the bag was over and quickly remove several 1/2lb jelly bean bags and at least 12- 6oz chocolate bars.
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Username checks out.
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I was hoping Mark would pull a 500g vintage ashtray out of his luggage, smash it on the ground, and storm off muttering about how he will never let the airlines haggle his luggage fee.
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As someone suggested above, test your scale before relying on it. We have 3 small luggage scales, the two electronic ones are consistent but off (one by more than a pound), the manual one rarely gives the same weight twice in a row.
Moreover, packing within a pound of the max allowed reflects a good deal of faith in the correctness of the scale the airport counter is using.
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I had one of those. Found it useful on a few occasions, but it broke quite soon after I bought it. A few months perhaps.
Mark should know better than suggest we add more crap for our ever growing pile of electronic waste.
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Your $5 bribe was an insult.
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Mine has lasted for many many years. I’m sorry you had a poor experience with the one you bought. Do you recommend something else for people who want to weight their luggage at home?
The guy who was shipping his monkey was able to avoid the paperwork for $5, so I thought I’d give it a try. But you should have seen the monkey when it got to Warsaw. That’s a different story.
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Luggage scales are also useful for things like propane tanks and large fish such as halibut.
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I love this story!
I do not fly as much as as you ( I was in the Air Force as a Maintenance Crew Chief and know what holds them together )
So, I am not a comfortable passenger and always feel your experience will come true if indeed we land safely. As we used to say ‘Any landing you are able to walk away from is a good landing.’
Although slipping a $ bribe is something I never thought of.
