This article highlights various factors that can trigger distress in a Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil (GRS) wall, focusing on connection failures. Over the past three decades, large numbers of GRS walls have been constructed in India, and several distresses were also observed across the country. The widespread reasons include the use of non-select fill, lack of construction quality control and improper designs. Often it was observed that connection failures occurred even in most of the well-designed walls on soft foundations. The available codal provisions/guidelines are silent on the design of connections in such situations. This study investigates the relation between connection loads and relative settlement of reinforced fill and fascia to address such issues. 1-g instrumented model test of full height panel GRS wall with one typical positive connection system is carried out to study the effect of the differential settlement on connection load. Strain gauges are used to measure the forces in reinforcement near the connections. The increasing rate of connection loads with the transverse differential settlement is reported. A few practical suggestions are provided to avoid the concentration of loads at connections and, thus, connection failures.