We have not experienced what you describe, but we did notice that both our big zip bladders eventually started leaking at the zippers after approx 2+ years of heavy use. Not what I would describe as catastrophic failure, as we used them for the remainder of each trip after we noticed that they seemed to leak. I can't be sure it wasn't just grit in the zipper, but scrubbing the zip didn't seem to improve it. we elected to go ahead and replace them as we felt we had gotten more than our money's worth out of them, not sure they were truly designed to withstand what we have put them through. We replaced the with the same product without hesitation, figuring that they served us well but just wore out eventually.