LEGO Bans - Open Discussion

[TheBrickClique]

As for operating with a single account to stay within the vendor’s technically-enforced limits, I believe this is the current state of things.
 

Cliff notes: you’ll be fine as long as you don’t go on a spending spree at Target.com, and try not to bring attention to your buying patterns by dealing with online customer service for small gripes that can be dealt with in store instead.

Target - the easiest place to get banned based simply on purchase volume online and the most aggressive against resellers in store — employees trained to identify resellers loading up carts for example.  Can still use red card in store after online ban, but using with a new email account will result in repeat ban — start receiving auto cancellations and email about possible issues including payment purchase method.  Some people have bans lifted after a period in timeout. Others indefinitely. The amount of purchases that may identify you as a reseller and get a ban? One data point: I have been unable to purchase online going on 18 months now after two months of $5k purchases on the red card. Same red card still works fine in store.
 

LEGO shop at home — with the purchase limits mechanics implemented a few years ago, it is much more difficult to get the SAH ban hammer. If you exceed a limit on any item based on past purchases of the same item, they will cancel your entire order. Be warned that if they cancel an order with a VIP Rewards purchase, the reward is not automatically credited back to your account. Also, if they cancel an item due to inventory issues, the system still tracks it as qty purchased. Qty purchased in brick and mortar stores that are purchased with VIP accounts are not counted towards SAH limits and and limits in store are done at the individual store’s discretion. If you do have to call customer service to resolve an issue, they do have easy visibility to all of your previous orders and will make comments about you “really liking LEGOs”.  No indication that that is how the ban process starts, but unless you really have an issue that needs CS, might be best to just let the small things go. 
 

Amazon — shop away. Their limits are tracked to the second on a 168-hour FIFO.  Limits apply and are tracked in that window only to items sold and shipped by Amazon.com. Buy as many third party items as you wish. Anecdotal stories of bans for excessive returns, but no clear information on the metrics used. Generally, probably best to save the returns for the really bad boxes.  Creating multiple accounts will get noticed and is the quickest way to get the warning shot emails. 
 

Barnes and Noble — similar to LEGO, has a five qty per item lifetime limit online. Exceed that amount and just that item will be cancelled from the order. No reports of bans. In store purchases do not appear to be tied to online memberships as far as adding to your 5-count quantity.  
 

Walmart — most LEGO are limited to two per order, but they won’t say how often that limit is reset.  Doing a couple of multiple limit orders in the same day has worked.  Doing dozens has resulted in order cancellations of those specific items but no bans that I am aware of. Generally, I have found one limit order per day has never resulted in a cancellation. 
 

ShopDisney — some items have limits but they are selectively enforced. If you put in multiple limit orders at the same time, they might cancel those items. If you space them out, they will be fine. I ordered a dozen castles (limit one per customer) last year and they all went through. Sometimes two in two consecutive days. 
 

Costco — has item limits on some items, but I haven’t seen any on LEGOs. Even with items with limits, possible to space them out without issue.  In store limits are usually “per day”. 
 

Best Buy — unsure on LEGO as I’ve never pushed the limits on them. In the past, I would make 50 purchases at a time of 2-dollar items that had limits and they would all go through.  I have tried to make multiple purchases of Xbox consoles and those were cancelled.  So YMMV. But no reports of bans.

Anyways, those are my observations.

[newbie77]

5 minutes ago, exciter1 said:

We've heard that before...  Folks also get banned within their first 2 orders after staying under the limits as well. 

Super cookies are where it's at!

yup dyamn super-cookies.

[California92563]

10 minutes ago, exciter1 said:

We've heard that before...  Folks also get banned within their first 2 orders after staying under the limits as well. 

Super cookies are where it's at!

I'm more of an oatmeal kinda guy  

[Breeder]

I'm just wondering if there is a buy limit of 1 at the Lego.com Shop does this also apply to Lego stores? Eg I already bought a Sandcrawler on the Lego.com Shop a month ago and I then bought a week later 2 more Sandcrawlers on the same day in my local Lego store. I'm wondering do I risk a ban if I now buy any more at Lego stores? Will probably looking just to buy 2 more spread over the double VIP period. My Lego store doesn't seem to have an issue with my buying but I'm more concerned because they will be bought using the same Lego.com VIP card.

I generally feel uncomfortable about creating a second VIP account or anything like that.

 

 

 

[gregpj]

On 3/4/2016 at 1:04 AM, macpro76 said:

If they track via IPs, this is difficult. Since most homes have dynamic public IPs from their internet service providers. Most work locations have static public addresses. So tracking home purchases would be difficulty

(I know, I am an IT engineer)

That's not entirely true.. more and more people are getting static IPs because of things like HDTV services. Any ISP that wants to track bandwidth usage also tends to use static IP addresses. Also, because people tend to leave their home router on all the time, once they get an IP address it usually sticks for some time as the routers attempt to renew the IP before it is released back into the wild.

I don't want everyone to think that waiting for a period of time for a new IP address from their ISP would be a good way to try and avoid "detection." Any smart tracking would be doing a combination of IP/name/address/payment method checks and flagging them for review rather than automatic cancellation.

(ps, you don't need to really need to different between public vs private IP addresses in this context)

[newbie77]

1 hour ago, Breeder said:

I'm just wondering if there is a buy limit of 1 at the Lego.com Shop does this also apply to Lego stores? Eg I already bought a Sandcrawler on the Lego.com Shop a month ago and I then bought a week later 2 more Sandcrawlers on the same day in my local Lego store. I'm wondering do I risk a ban if I now buy any more at Lego stores? Will probably looking just to buy 2 more spread over the double VIP period. My Lego store doesn't seem to have an issue with my buying but I'm more concerned because they will be bought using the same Lego.com VIP card.

I generally feel uncomfortable about creating a second VIP account or anything like that.

 

 

 

do not plan on using LEGO Shop at Home or LEGO Stores for ones reselling inventory.  

what that means is: 

a. never use LEGO Shop at Home or LEGO Stores for ones reselling inventory

b. use other sources for "reselling inventory"

Why 

i. eventually when one start making LEGO store & LEGO Shop at Home source for reselling inventory, sooner or later when their account is reviewed then it will all come and will be banned.

if you really plan on doing that then forgo 

a. VIP points 

b. use lego stores to purchase in cash and gift cards { never never use credit card with vip account } 

so that one is not tied to what was purchased.

some people may have some other ways of doing it though which i am not going to highlight

Edited March 7, 2016 by newbie77

[macpro76]

1 hour ago, gregpj said:

That's not entirely true.. more and more people are getting static IPs because of things like HDTV services. Any ISP that wants to track bandwidth usage also tends to use static IP addresses. Also, because people tend to leave their home router on all the time, once they get an IP address it usually sticks for some time as the routers attempt to renew the IP before it is released back into the wild.

I don't want everyone to think that waiting for a period of time for a new IP address from their ISP would be a good way to try and avoid "detection." Any smart tracking would be doing a combination of IP/name/address/payment method checks and flagging them for review rather than automatic cancellation.

(ps, you don't need to really need to different between public vs private IP addresses in this context)

a static IP has no bearing on HDTV services provided by ISPs

[lego_fan]

has anyone tried LEGO Shop at Home via Tor?  Assuming you use a prepaid credit card and a burner address you should be able to circumvent the ban, irrespective of how they track. Mind you it would be a little bit labour intensive...

[exciter1]

1 minute ago, lego_fan said:

has anyone tried LEGO Shop at Home via Tor?  Assuming you use a prepaid credit card and a burner address you should be able to circumvent the ban, irrespective of how they track. Mind you it would be a little bit labour intensive...

Where do you want them delivered?

[lego_fan]

4 minutes ago, exciter1 said:

Where do you want them delivered?

Friends houses, relatives, hotels, work. It's not impossible, it would just be annoying on a large scale.

[exciter1]

Just now, lego_fan said:

Friends houses, relatives, hotels, work. It's not impossible, it would just be annoying on a large scale.

Yes, the thought of it is annoying.

[asharerin]

15 minutes ago, lego_fan said:

has anyone tried LEGO Shop at Home via Tor?  Assuming you use a prepaid credit card and a burner address you should be able to circumvent the ban, irrespective of how they track. Mind you it would be a little bit labour intensive...

This has been the go to work around for a few years now. You need to be a little creative on the delivery address. I only order from them once or twice a year as they are very expensive but this method always works without issue. 

[merchant]

Is the lego ban permanent or for a period of time. 

From the posts so far looks like only way to get around it is to use a different address, credit card, email address and may be a vpn that will change your ip. 

I tried everything except the delivery address as, people can move and it does not make sense to use to use the address check. But lego cancelled the order and when I called the cssr, they tied my new account to the old one using the address. 

 

[asharerin]

36 minutes ago, merchant said:

Is the lego ban permanent or for a period of time. 

From the posts so far looks like only way to get around it is to use a different address, credit card, email address and may be a vpn that will change your ip. 

I tried everything except the delivery address as, people can move and it does not make sense to use to use the address check. But lego cancelled the order and when I called the cssr, they tied my new account to the old one using the address. 

 

AFAIK it is permanent. I was banned 7/14 and it is still in effect. There are different levels of bans but even at the bottom level the delivery address is banned forever. At the top level they will also ban anyone with your name regardless of any other information. Most of the time it costs more in lost time trying to jump thru all the hoops than it is worth to buy from shop @ home. Cheaper and faster at other big box retailers. Sometimes their xmas promos make it worthwhile.

[merchant]

I never buy sets from lego unless its double points or the xmas promos. By using my wife's name and her credit card, I think i burned that name too. Its like each failed try makes it exponentially harder. 

 

[cobrakai]

I did 6 orders right when the Freeze promo started Friday night. The first five say "in warehouse" and the 6th one shows "cancelled," but I didn't receive any e-mail notification about the cancellation. Should I be worried? I didn't order any exclusives or anything crazy and didn't go over any limits.  I think I used a different credit card on the last order, but I assume they would let me know if it was a credit card problem. Just wondering if anyone else had random cancellations lately? The last time I had an order cancelled was when they ran out of stock of something during Black Friday.

[DadsAFOL]

Yes you should be concerned. The promo is "one per household" and you bent that rule. Multiple orders to the same address in a short period of time sets off all the fraud/reseller alarm bells at Lego. Just wait and see after those 5 orders ship to see if you can place another order or not.

[biking_tiger]

44 minutes ago, DadsAFOL said:

Yes you should be concerned. The promo is "one per household" and you bent that rule. Multiple orders to the same address in a short period of time sets off all the fraud/reseller alarm bells at Lego. Just wait and see after those 5 orders ship to see if you can place another order or not.

Shouldn't it be incumbent on LEGO Shop at Home to cancel the promo portion of orders if they're really going enforce the "one per household" rule? Nothing states you can't place multiple orders from LEGO Shop at Home, just that the promo is one per household. 

Agreed that multiple orders crammed together does look awfully fishy, first from a CC fraud standpoint, and secondly as a reseller alarm. 

[Alpinemaps]

Shouldn't it be incumbent on LEGO Shop at Home to cancel the promo portion of orders if they're really going enforce the "one per household" rule? Nothing states you can't place multiple orders from LEGO Shop at Home, just that the promo is one per household. 

Agreed that multiple orders crammed together does look awfully fishy, first from a CC fraud standpoint, and secondly as a reseller alarm. 

You can tell yourself it's LEGO's responsibility. But that isn't going to stop them from choosing to ban you.

[cobrakai]

2 minutes ago, biking_tiger said:

Shouldn't it be incumbent on LEGO Shop at Home to cancel the promo portion of orders if they're really going enforce the "one per household" rule? Nothing states you can't place multiple orders from LEGO Shop at Home, just that the promo is one per household. 

Agreed that multiple orders crammed together does look awfully fishy, first from a CC fraud standpoint, and secondly as a reseller alarm. 

I've followed a similar order pattern with any decent promo over the last few years and never had any issue.   Also looking back over my account the last few years, I have usually done 5 consecutive orders at the beginning of each promo.  I have only done 6 in a row one other time.  Maybe 5 orders in a row is the "soft" limit before the alert goes off?  The cancelled order was placed with a different credit card than the other orders also.  The account has been open since 2009. I guess we shall see what happens...

[MarleyMoose]

Ordering from LEGO a few years ago is not the same as ordering from LEGO now.

[exciter1]

2 hours ago, gregbaynes said:

I did 6 orders right when the Freeze promo started Friday night. The first five say "in warehouse" and the 6th one shows "cancelled," but I didn't receive any e-mail notification about the cancellation. Should I be worried? I didn't order any exclusives or anything crazy and didn't go over any limits.  I think I used a different credit card on the last order, but I assume they would let me know if it was a credit card problem. Just wondering if anyone else had random cancellations lately? The last time I had an order cancelled was when they ran out of stock of something during Black Friday.

I have 2 orders In Warehouse, but their weekends are usually slow for getting anything done out of their shipping department.  I haven't seen anyone really updating the order status with shipping notifications yet.  I had an Easter Chick in one of my orders and I see it's cancelled.

[merchant]

I have had the same thing happen to me twice. In my case all orders were cancelled. When I called them they said, if multiple orders are placed within a span of few minutes than it automatically cancels the order. The rep sent all the orders for reinstatement to some other dept and in a day or two all the them showed up as in warehouse. My guess is this is more of a fraud alert than lego ban alert. But they could obviously change the rules. 

[cobrakai]

7 hours ago, merchant said:

I have had the same thing happen to me twice. In my case all orders were cancelled. When I called them they said, if multiple orders are placed within a span of few minutes than it automatically cancels the order. The rep sent all the orders for reinstatement to some other dept and in a day or two all the them showed up as in warehouse. My guess is this is more of a fraud alert than lego ban alert. But they could obviously change the rules. 

Thanks for the insight Merchant, that does make sense.  My advice for others is to not place more than 5 consecutive orders in these scenarios.

[BP]

I think I should consider this a warning

 

Dear ...,
We’re really sorry, but your recent LEGO® order has been cancelled because it went above our purchase limits for the following item(s): 
21303 WALL•E

We sometimes put limits on popular sets so that as many LEGO® fans as possible can get their hands on them. If you’ve placed previous orders for a particular item, it may be that you’ve simply gone above the number we’re currently supplying per household.
Although you won’t be able to buy those sets right now, we regularly change and remove purchase limits, so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on our website over the next few months. If there were other items in your order, these can be reordered at any time. 

Kind regards, 

LEGO® Customer Service

[justapilgrim]

People don't get banned for mr.freeze. it's the things they order with Mr freeze