i'm from Singapore and a big ferragamo fan. i own several of their bags and purses and i've only ever had problems with the sofia! which was a shame as i love the design but my experience with it has put me off the sofia and all their purses which have the gancino buckle closure forever.
what happened was i bought the bag at the duty free store while transiting through dubai airport. i carried the bag probably about 10x, took great care of it, and the clasp / buckle broke barely a month later! what happened was the entire gancino buckle broke off and that meant i had no way of using the bag since the flap can't be secured.
i had a huge tussle with the staff at the local ferragamo boutique about the quality of the bag. they offered to repair it for free but told me i had to wait 6 - 9 months! they said they have no spare hardware "parts" and all "parts" have to be shipped from italy. naturally i refused as it's incredulous that i've to wait 6 - 9 mths to get my bag back when i only had it for less than a month. so i demanded a refund or an exchange which was when things got ugly.
apparently only items sold at boutiques are entitled to a refund or an exchange. items bought from duty free stores are not entitled to the same, reason being these items are actually not sold by ferragamo but by the duty free stores. they are genuine ferragamo items but ferragamo's policy is not to allow refunds or exchanges for items not bought at their boutiques.
naturally i disagreed and told the staff that from the customer's point of view, this policy is unacceptable and unreasonable. although the bag was purchased from the duty free store, it was purchased from the ferragamo counter. how on earth am i supposed to or expected to know there was this distinction between items bought at the boutiques and the duty free stores? further, as a luxury brand with boutiques worldwide, i find it incredulous that they can't do an exchange or refund when this is clearly their product and it would take 6 - 9 months to repair a clasp.
to cut a long story short, after heated discussions with the staff, threats to write to the media, i got my refund. but it took 3 - 4 painful months before they agreed to the refund (apparently they had to get approval from the regional head office in hong kong) and i got my money back. i even had to go to the boutique in person 3 times and made several calls and sent several emails to the local boutique. it was a very unpleasant experience and if i didn't love their stuff so much, i would have boycotted the brand.
as i had such an unpleasant experience with the sofia, i think you lucked out in actually getting the refund so quickly!
i personally will not buy the sofia or any of the large gancino clasp buckle bags again, but i've had no problems with the bags and wallets that have smaller gancino clasp buckles as well as their leather bracelets with the small gancino clasp buckles. i wonder if it's a buckle quality issue as the weight of the buckle is quite hefty and it may be more prone to breaking than the smaller ones. my 2 cents worth.