LEGO Events

[segreto]

Without whipping out my LEGO Terms and Conditions, I assume they are talking about the VIP program?

You got it.  I thought it interesting that they could strip all V I P points for almost any reason.

[dbost01]

All your points are strong and valid Justafrog. I just want to put forward a few point/ideas cause I am bored and it is Sunday.

I think #1 I think they could easily resolve that type of issue.

Number #2 seems tricky. If you remove the ability for collectors to buy discontinued sets it is possible you would deter AFOLs from coming out of the dark ages to collect sets. For example, I came out of the dark ages by stumbling across a modular that was discontinued but looked really cool to me. I ended up getting all the modulars and even one at a post secondary market value.

And I don't think there would be enough supply from just people selling used sets.(And if 30 percent of their consumers are AFOLs).

How many of us sale a few LEGO sets to just to make enough money to offset our LEGO addiction. I would probably stop buying LEGOs if I couldn't at least break even on the hobby.

If there ended up being less adult collectors isn't it possible there would be less Lego based websites that promote Lego?

[justafrog]

Oh, I'm not saying I agree with any of those points. I am an evil reseller, after all. 

 

But those are the most rational (in my opinion) theories I've seen for why Lego is behaving the way they are.

[MartinP]

You got it.  I thought it interesting that they could strip all V I P points for almost any reason.

I never knew they could do that. Only because I did not read the whole thing through. From what I have heard, customers have bought a lot of sets from LEGO Shop at Home and or Lego stores and accumulated a lot of points. If they were a reseller, they could justify taking all VIP points away, but if it was a collector who bought all those sets and got all their VIP points taken away, that would be a problem. Saying that, Lego has to find/get more reasons to ban someone or take away all their VIP points. Their current method of taking an educational guess would not work in the case of a collectors VIP points being taken away on a guess.

[grackleflint]

 

1) Availability of current sets. Last fall when the Minecraft sets came out, Lego wildly underestimated their desirability. With resellers scooping up as many as humanly and computer-ally possible, actual fans found themselves unable to find them in stock, the secondary market saw a huge boom for a bit, but Lego feels (and not unreasonably so), that fans and kids got a bit hosed in the bargain.

 

 

You can see this right now. Try searching for a Minecraft set that is available for shipping right now and none of the first line/major online retailers (Amazon, Target, Walmart, Toys R Us) has it in stock at the $34.99 list price except for Lego.com itself. If Lego didn't have their limit of 2, they would probably be cleaned out too and people would have no other recourse but to pay a higher price from an "evil" reseller.

[dbost01]

They definitely messed up with the Minecraft sets. However, a lot of resellers thought this would happen with the Delorean set but I don't think it did. I bet alot of resellers have stacks of Deloreans they cannot move yet.

[grackleflint]

I never knew they could do that. Only because I did not read the whole thing through. From what I have heard, customers have bought a lot of sets from LEGO Shop at Home and or Lego stores and accumulated a lot of points. If they were a reseller, they could justify taking all VIP points away, but if it was a collector who bought all those sets and got all their VIP points taken away, that would be a problem. Saying that, Lego has to find/get more reasons to ban someone or take away all their VIP points. Their current method of taking an educational guess would not work in the case of a collectors VIP points being taken away on a guess.

 

Every company that has a points/rewards system has a disclaimer buried in their terms and conditions that they can do whatever they want with them so all the bluster about suing/winning against Lego is just hot air. For example, the Kmart SYWR program has this in it: "Company may terminate Points, or any portion of your Points balance, at any time, without prior notice. "

 

So far, Lego's "educational guess" doesn't seem to have hit anyone who wasn't a reseller so there is some thought/reasoning/data analysis behind it. If anything, they are (correctly) being very conservative and only targeting the extreme/obvious resellers, which is their right.

 

We have a direct quote from a Lego rep that Lego doesn't hate casual/low-level investors/resellers (say 3 copies). It is the high volume reseller who is making a "real" profit that they are targeting.

[MartinP]

Every company that has a points/rewards system has a disclaimer buried in their terms and conditions that they can do whatever they want with them. For example, the Kmart SYWR program has this in it: "Company may terminate Points, or any portion of your Points balance, at any time, without prior notice. "

 

So far, Lego's "educational guess" doesn't seem to have hit anyone who wasn't a reseller. If anything, they are being very conservative and only targeting the extreme/obvious resellers, which is their right.

 

We have a direct quote from a Lego rep that Lego doesn't hate casual/low-level investors/resellers (say 3 copies). It is the high volume reseller who is making a "real" profit that they are targeting.

What I am concerned about is that TLG educational guess may go wrong sometimes. It hasn't happened yet, but it may in the future. It is a good thing that they are being conservative, because if they weren't a lot of people would not be happy with TLG.

[DoNotInsertIntoMouth]

You can see this right now. Try searching for a Minecraft set that is available for shipping right now and none of the first line/major online retailers (Amazon, Target, Walmart, Toys R Us) has it in stock at the $34.99 list price except for Lego.com itself. If Lego didn't have their limit of 2, they would probably be cleaned out too and people would have no other recourse but to pay a higher price from an "evil" reseller.

 

Exactly - and this is the dumbest one too. Why in the hell, if you liked the game, would you ever just want one of these. THE GAME IS ABOUT ENDLESS BUILDING WITH NO POINT.

 

I mean, you would expect people to buy 20 of these and make a giant set of stuff. WAY more than building armies of clones or something like that.

[dbost01]

The exceptional MOC builders out there, that use maybe more than 30000 pieces in one MOC, how do they acquire all their pieces?

[MartinP]

The exceptional MOC builders out there, that use maybe more than 30000 pieces in one MOC, how do they acquire all their pieces?

Bricklink or buying multiples of a certain set that has those pieces.

[grackleflint]

What I am concerned about is that TLG educational guess may go wrong sometimes. It hasn't happened yet, but it may in the future. It is a good thing that they are being conservative, because if they weren't a lot of people would not be happy with TLG.

 

Until it does and on a major scale (mainstream media reports of a crying soccer mom with 6 kids who can't buy LEGO's),  no one outside of a reseller, which is 99.9999999% of the population is going to care.

 

I'd love to see a reseller try to sue Lego over losing their points. The publicity would be great, for LEGO. Imagine the PR that will be spun, a toy company just trying make sure every kid has a chance to buy a toy at MSRP vs a reseller who wants to keep/hoard tons of LEGO sets in storage for YEARS in order to eventually sell them for 4/5 times the original price.

[MartinP]

Until it does and on a major scale (mainstream media reports of a crying soccer mom with 6 kids who can't buy LEGO's),  no one outside of a reseller, which is 99.9999999% of the population is going to care.

 

I'd love to see a reseller try to sue Lego over losing their points. The publicity would be great, for LEGO. Imagine the PR that will be spun, a toy company just trying make sure every kid has a chance to buy a toy at MSRP vs a reseller who wants to keep/hoard tons of LEGO sets in storage for YEARS in order to eventually sell them for 4/5 times the original price.

Very true. Agree with every point you said. Even if it does happen, TLG would probably correct the problem quickly.

[grackleflint]

The exceptional MOC builders out there, that use maybe more than 30000 pieces in one MOC, how do they acquire all their pieces?

Alice Finch, the AFOL who made the massive 400,000 piece Hogwarts MOC used Bricklink and Bricklink even hired her as a communications officer.

 

if you seriously need that many pieces/sets, just talk to a LEGO store manager or LEGO customer service. They will handle legitimate special requests. It's the resellers who act as if they are "normal" buyers that LEGO is targeting.

[cissi]

Alice Finch, the AFOL who made the massive 400,000 piece Hogwarts MOC used Bricklink and Bricklink even hired her as a communications officer.

 

if you seriously needed that many pieces/sets, just talk to a LEGO store manager or LEGO customer service. They will handle legitimate special requests. It's the resellers who act as if they are "normal" buyers that LEGO is targeting.

wow, 400,000 pieces, that's like sooooo much $$$$$$$. Assuming 1 cent/brick, it's $4,000 but lego brick is never this cheap on BL. I bought a lot for used missing-piece sets and some of MOC on BL. The cost just added up. I can't remember how much I have spent on BL. 400,000 is a lot!

[Achilles]

You know, considering most of the people here are resellers, I'd figure most of you would be happy about LEGO trying to crack down on obvious heavy resellers. These sorts of policies (just like their strict Independent seller policies, their low margin wholesale prices, their tight reigns on Exclusives) - All of these things help keep the price of these items HIGH. The fact that these things are tightly controlled are exactly the same forces that keep demand and value for these items high.

 

I find it a bit funny that some people are like, "Well, they don't know what they're doing." They've been around a long time. They are more popular now than ever. I'd take odds on the Lego corporate board room before one of us sitting on our laptop on our couch.

 

K-Marts closing and TRU in trouble should be of way more concern to the average reseller than TLG banning a few people. The less competition there is, the higher prices stay and the harder it is for us to find bargain items. 

 

Ed, you mentioned that resellers need to sell a "variety of toys" - Does that mean a variety of lego sets, or do you mean toys that AREN'T lego?

[dbost01]

I think he meant all the male lego resellers need to sale Barbie dolls too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cissi]

I don't want to see TRU go, given they are being so nice lately.

[sadowsk1]

The delorean is a great example of how Lego is suppressing the secondary market and going for the throat of resellers.  They have more to gain by appealing to the majority in the way they do business.

[kenchu2000]

I don't want to see TRU go, given they are being so nice lately.

 

Haha, very true.  For the past couple of weeks, I really enjoyed shopping at TRU and B&****** stores.  Now they are one of my favorites!

[Anakinisvader]

I don't want to see TRU go, given they are being so nice lately.

It's called "deathbed repentance".

[cissi]

It's called "deathbed repentance".

lol

 

Yeah, I used to think TRU always overpriced their toys. The recent deals really make me love them. always good to spend less for collections, pay less = buy more! very bad cycle though lol

[redcell]

I hope someone with big bucks sues the pants off Lego and/or a large class action lawsuit follows.

 

For what, deciding that it wants to control its distribution channels?  Hardly the stuff of a successful lawsuit.

[Ed Mack]

You know, considering most of the people here are resellers, I'd figure most of you would be happy about LEGO trying to crack down on obvious heavy resellers. These sorts of policies (just like their strict Independent seller policies, their low margin wholesale prices, their tight reigns on Exclusives) - All of these things help keep the price of these items HIGH. The fact that these things are tightly controlled are exactly the same forces that keep demand and value for these items high.

 

I find it a bit funny that some people are like, "Well, they don't know what they're doing." They've been around a long time. They are more popular now than ever. I'd take odds on the Lego corporate board room before one of us sitting on our laptop on our couch.

 

K-Marts closing and TRU in trouble should be of way more concern to the average reseller than TLG banning a few people. The less competition there is, the higher prices stay and the harder it is for us to find bargain items. 

 

Ed, you mentioned that resellers need to sell a "variety of toys" - Does that mean a variety of lego sets, or do you mean toys that AREN'T lego?

Yes. They want toys besides LEGO sets. They didn't care what kind to be honest. They said it was OK to sell your old sets in addition to the new sets, in that it was "your" store and you can do what you want, but you could not go and buy exclusive LEGO sets and sell them in your store. You must buy 75% of all the themes they allow you to, but I would imagine most major sets were not available to Independent LEGO Retailers.

I got the impression they were not interested in older sets. If you have them to sell as collectibles, they seemed OK with it, but they didn't want you to compete with them on the current exclusives. He stated that the reason to sell other types of toys was to protect you against failure. They don't want you to be completely dependent on selling LEGO sets to make money. Maybe that says something about the viability of LEGO stores themselves.

[c4dreams]

Forgive me if I'm missing something, but I don't understand why resellers are buying so much from LEGO Shop at Home, other than exclusives.  LEGO Shop at Home rarely has sales, and even the sales I've seen aren't that great.  The only time you're getting a decent deal is when you get a good free set (like the winter set).  But even then, it's usually in the 20% back range.  Between Amazon, target, TRU, Walmart, Kmart, B&******, and even eBay, it seems like every set I've ever been interested in has been for sale cheaper at some point anywhere besides LEGO Shop at Home.  So why spend thousands if they're going to charge you more AND possibly ban you?