down vs synthetic

From my experience all the down sleeping bags I have owned lose the occasional feather. I personally would not worry about it.

I bought a Fairydown Explorer at about the same time as you bigpaul. Within a year I had sold it and bought an Everest because it wasn't warm enough. I now have a MacPac Solstice and find that good. The old Fairydown bags used to shed the odd feather and I remember the documentation saying that this was normal. When the Fairydown bag was getting a bit older I would occasionally wake up in a cloud of feathers. used to keep a roll of duck tape handy for running repairs.

Down has the finest of quills and will generally find a way through the majority of fabrics used. If it doesn't get through the fabric its probably the trade off for a less breathable fabric and the down quills will use the stitching to escape. It is normal and i would expect most situations of returning to shops with it will result in a waer and tear claim and not a warranty claim. Unless you can show the bag has lost as much as 100g of down in a few weeks. I used to be able to send a bag to get topped up with down for about $100 for 100g of down. It's not too economical. The only things you can do to extend the life of your bag is store it lofted and dustproof and limit how often you wash it. The constant stuffing into a sack will reduce the life of down as the quills rub against each other and break down.

Thanks for all the feedback (again). It sounds as if it may not be as bad as I'd suspected, and that's nice to know.

My bag is less then a year old as well so I too am relieved that the odd feather turning up doesnt mean the bag is about to come apart! :-)

I recently re-stuffed a Macpac Tempest with down from my doonah, as the bag is more important now. It seems quite a bit heavier, but boy is it warm and comfy. Pity the zips are still just as annoying.