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.

[Guest brickcrazyhouse]

I don't think most people disbelieved you. For me it was like picturing a animal crossing a road. They made it so far but it's going to hit eventually. On the other hand there are the sayings "fortune favors the bold" "go big or go home". Hope you don't get banned and if you do not really a big issue. keep us posted

[Tex]

2 minutes ago, brickcrazyhouse said:

I don't think most people disbelieved you. For me it was like picturing a animal crossing a road. They made it so far but it's going to hit eventually. On the other hand there are the sayings "fortune favors the bold" "go big or go home". Hope you don't get banned and if you do not really a big issue. keep us posted

Thats all im going for, im looking to help and really didn't think this would ever be a problem and when i stumbled upon forums for selling legos i was quite surprised. Because this is my second time doing this. I manged to get my hands on about a dozen of the Super Star destroyers (keeping one for myself of course) and selling the rest for quite a good sum. 

Im trying to share my experience as ive never had a problem and when i was reading people getting banned for buying 2 pet shops or what have you, i was in disbelef and was trying to shed some light here.

Ive managed to get some from amazon, target and Walmart so i spread it all out, but now i can see the concern from most of you

Ill keep you updated as im going to order 2 more sandcrawlers, one from amazon and one from lego to cash in on the VIP points.  

[newbie77]

24 minutes ago, Tex said:

I got redirected over here from the speculator page, seems like i was a bit off topic and they were kind enough to point me over here,

I thought i would share my experience since there seems to be quite a lot of inconsistencies in who gets "banned" or who has problems. 

You can see my screenshot if you need proof of these orders (seems like some very quickly didn't believe me) but none the less i just want to contribute. 

all of these orders were individual, so 15 separate orders and not one large bulk order spanning roughly 1-2 weeks

6 tower bridges   1 canceled

2 sand crawlers 1 canceled  

1 SOH    0 canceled 

4 Ewok villages 2 canceled

I didn't get a single email saying any were canceled, i only found out by looking at my account 

From what I've read previously and obviously not every page there is no rhyme or reason or even a pattern to being banned, just some of my orders went through and some didn't, i even called lego on the phone 2 times and gave them my account to figure out what was going on, and they were nothing but helpful.

 

not sure what to say. people have said it all the time over and over;  if one plans on being RE-SELLER then SKIP LEGO Shop at Home or LEGO STORE as your primary source.  its given that sooner or later they will find and ban. its only matter of time. but its not the end of world when TLG bans you.  

For me it was an eye-opener that I must be doing something that flagged myself. what are those i don't know but to me it looks like TLG's system is configured to cancel order for 

a. if same item is ordered by lot of folks over short period of time { i don't know the threshold }.

b. high priced/exclusives order over period of time {again don't know the threshold }

c. number of orders over period of time. { don't know the threshold. }

once, your order is cancelled, there is a manual review and trust me "NO ONE IN THIS FORUM" who orders from LEGO Shop at Home will/can pass that manual review.

personally, i had never placed more than one (1) order in a day. and my guess is i got suckered by (a) one of the IDEA sets on the release day... 

i mean do you literally think that anyone would order multiple of each and every exclusives TLG releases for personal use. 

yeah there might be serious collectors but common. i don't think anyone would be buying 5X#10214 and 5X#10221 and 5X#75079 and 5X#10236 for themselves or family. sooner or later trust me once we get hit with the first auto cancel then its rare that we can survive manual review. its almost certain ban hammer falls. 

[Tex]

1 minute ago, newbie77 said:

not sure what to say. people have said it all the time over and over;  if one plans on being RE-SELLER then SKIP LEGO Shop at Home or LEGO STORE as your primary source.  its given that sooner or later they will find and ban. its only matter of time. but its not the end of world when TLG bans you.  

For me it was an eye-opener that I must be doing something that flagged myself. what are those i don't know but to me it looks like TLG's system is configured to cancel order for 

a. if same item is ordered by lot of folks over short period of time { i don't know the threshold }.

b. high priced/exclusives order over period of time {again don't know the threshold }

c. number of orders over period of time. { don't know the threshold. }

once, your order is cancelled, there is a manual review and trust me "NO ONE IN THIS FORUM" who orders from LEGO Shop at Home will/can pass that manual review.

personally, i had never placed more than one (1) order in a day. and my guess is i got suckered by (a) one of the IDEA sets on the release day... 

i mean do you literally think that anyone would order multiple of each and every exclusives TLG releases for personal use. 

yeah there might be serious collectors but common. i don't think anyone would be buying 5X#10214 and 5X#10221 and 5X#75079 and 5X#10236 for themselves or family. sooner or later trust me once we get hit with the first auto cancel then its rare that we can survive manual review. its almost certain ban hammer falls. 

Interesting tips there

But if you get banned how does that work? cant you simply check out as guest, create new profile? Maybe im naive to the subject, but it seems there are many ways around this, but this page is 100 times more experienced than i am since i just recently found out pages like this exist.  

I believe i may have been "banned" then at one point if your definition is correct. But i called in to their support line and and talked with one of the workers for a little bit and got one of the orders reversed, only one. Then a few days later placed a new order for an ewok village and looks like ill know for sure if it gets shipped as it says its "in warehouse" 

I bring all of that up simply for discussions sake. Is it possible by talking to her and getting one of my orders (sandcrawler) reversed that i was now able to make more purchases?      

[newbie77]

2 minutes ago, Tex said:

Interesting tips there

But if you get banned how does that work? cant you simply check out as guest, create new profile? Maybe im naive to the subject, but it seems there are many ways around this, but this page is 100 times more experienced than i am since i just recently found out pages like this exist.  

I believe i may have been "banned" then at one point if your definition is correct. But i called in to their support line and and talked with one of the workers for a little bit and got one of the orders reversed, only one. Then a few days later placed a new order for an ewok village and looks like ill know for sure if it gets shipped as it says its "in warehouse" 

I bring all of that up simply for discussions sake. Is it possible by talking to her and getting one of my orders (sandcrawler) reversed that i was now able to make more purchases?      

most likely whoever did the "manual" review of your account "gave you a break" and you are able to order again. { had happened a lot of times to many of us. no big deal. } but try to stay away. if you are (S)QFLL don't make TLG your source. 

we all know that TLG does know that AFOL & resellers & part-a-outers & themselves have symbiotic relationship.

they want to control current supply so its better to stay away from their path. 

{ try everything you have mentioned to circumvent TLG and see how many orders you can get through before permanently getting banned based on your address }

 

[cobrakai]

On 1/14/2016 at 6:10 PM, redcell said:

Finally got confirmation today that I have been banned by TRU.  The customer service person I spoke to was actually fairly nice about it.  She told me that they changed their policies in October and apparently banned a bunch of people then, but didn't flag me until sometime later.  She also said that this didn't apply to in-store purchases.  If I had to guess, I would bet that the free shipping was killing their margins on customers like me and that's why they made the change.  

I got the same story on the phone today.  They didn't shut down my rewards account though.  Is TRU as harcore with tracking IP addresses, etc like some other companies?  I have a lot of family nearby and I can make new accounts with their addresses.  My Target account was shut down because it was tax exempt, but I have had zero issues with checking out as guest with a different e-mail address. I just can't use my Red card online.

[newbie77]

2 hours ago, gregbaynes said:

I got the same story on the phone today.  They didn't shut down my rewards account though.  Is TRU as harcore with tracking IP addresses, etc like some other companies?  I have a lot of family nearby and I can make new accounts with their addresses.  My Target account was shut down because it was tax exempt, but I have had zero issues with checking out as guest with a different e-mail address. I just can't use my Red card online.

how big of a buyer you have to be to reach this point? $1k/month? $2k/month? $5k/month? 

Edited March 1, 2016 by newbie77

[redcell]

I got the same story on the phone today.  They didn't shut down my rewards account though.  Is TRU as harcore with tracking IP addresses, etc like some other companies?  I have a lot of family nearby and I can make new accounts with their addresses.  My Target account was shut down because it was tax exempt, but I have had zero issues with checking out as guest with a different e-mail address. I just can't use my Red card online.

I don't think TRU is tracking IPs. I have successfully placed orders and had them shipped to my work address. The CSR that I talked to told me they track by address, phone, or email.

[redcell]

how big of a buyer you have to be to reach this point? $1k/month? $2k/month? $5k/month? 

It's not clear. For TRU, I likely got snagged because of multiple orders for max quantity. I think the orders that did it were for Coruscant Gunship and I think I placed 5 or 6 orders for 5 each in about 10 minutes.

[cobrakai]

17 hours ago, redcell said:

It's not clear. For TRU, I likely got snagged because of multiple orders for max quantity. I think the orders that did it were for Coruscant Gunship and I think I placed 5 or 6 orders for 5 each in about 10 minutes.

I did $500 transactions at 2 TRU's on a Thursday.  When I got home, I did several online orders and the fraud department triggered my TRU credit card.  My order from that morning got cancelled and then the other orders were cancelled. Everything since then has been cancelled. I thought it was some fraud protection issue until I spoke with someone yesterday who said "corporate informed us that all of your online orders will be cancelled due to suspected reseller activity." My TRU spending varies from $300 a month on the low end to $4000 on the high end. 

[newbie77]

6 minutes ago, gregbaynes said:

I did $500 transactions at 2 TRU's on a Thursday.  When I got home, I did several online orders and the fraud department triggered my TRU credit card.  My order from that morning got cancelled and then the other orders were cancelled. Everything since then has been cancelled. I thought it was some fraud protection issue until I spoke with someone yesterday who said "corporate informed us that all of your online orders will be cancelled due to suspected reseller activity." My TRU spending varies from $300 a month on the low end to $4000 on the high end. 

thanks @redcell and @gregbaynes

any insight on how long have you had your rewards card? or returns. and lastly are you using tax-exempt status?

[cobrakai]

6 minutes ago, newbie77 said:

thanks @redcell and @gregbaynes

any insight on how long have you had your rewards card? or returns. and lastly are you using tax-exempt status?

My rewards account was opened in Feb 2014. I think I have done one online return and one in-store return during that time.  I have never used my tax exempt with TRU since I knew they didn't like resellers using the rewards program.  Not sure if it matters, but I was using the shoprunner free shipping program since you get it for free if you have an AMEX card.  I think I have heard of reseller problems with shoprunner before.  I did have 5 or 6 items that I bought from TRU.com over and over again whenever they were in stock.  I think the largest quantity I bought of something was 18 in one order.  I do miss the old Target.com days also when you could use a discounted gift card and still get 5% off if you had a red card AND get tax exempt on your order.

[newbie77]

8 minutes ago, gregbaynes said:

My rewards account was opened in Feb 2014. I think I have done one online return and one in-store return during that time.  I have never used my tax exempt with TRU since I knew they didn't like resellers using the rewards program.  Not sure if it matters, but I was using the shoprunner free shipping program since you get it for free if you have an AMEX card.  I think I have heard of reseller problems with shoprunner before.  I did have 5 or 6 items that I bought from TRU.com over and over again whenever they were in stock.  I think the largest quantity I bought of something was 18 in one order.  I do miss the old Target.com days also when you could use a discounted gift card and still get 5% off if you had a red card AND get tax exempt on your order.

thanks again for taking time to explain. i just have to say that i have been lucky so far. i did buy a whole lot at one point but right now regular BigBox sources are very very bleak.

[AD41]

In Belgium we don't have Target or Amazon, so Lego Shop is an important source to me. But when you've bought a set (with limit 1) at B&M LegoShop, would it be a risk to buy the set again @ LS@H? 

Still looking for a good place to buy "Hard To Find" sets, without having to go through the minefield of LegoShop.

[c_rpg]

32 minutes ago, AD41 said:

In Belgium we don't have Target or Amazon, so Lego Shop is an important source to me. But when you've bought a set (with limit 1) at B&M LegoShop, would it be a risk to buy the set again @ LS@H? 

Still looking for a good place to buy "Hard To Find" sets, without having to go through the minefield of LegoShop.

I wouldn't risk it. You could ask a family member to order sets for you (different address and preferably different name), but watch out if you only order exclusives.

There's some alternatives to LEGO Shop at Home. Fnac is pretty expensive most of the time, but they have most of the exclusives at around RRP. Consider getting a member's card for a 5% discount. Other than that there's dreamland, fun, bartsmit, maxitoys and top1toys where you can sometimes find exclusives. These stores all have webstores, but you can often find exclusives at the stores that are not listed online.

Also, there's no reason why you can't order from amazon.de or amazon.co.uk. Although it will probably be more expensive with shipping etc.

[redcell]

thanks @redcell and @gregbaynes

any insight on how long have you had your rewards card? or returns. and lastly are you using tax-exempt status?

I've had rewards card for 2 years. Very few returns and no tax exempt.

[cissi]

Just opened a small set I got from Target and there is no sticker sheet while there should be one.

Just wondering if LEGO bans people asking for parts after some # of times like Amazon seems doing? As being mentioned by many, I don't want to raise any flag on my account. Should I call LEGO up or just exchange the set at Target?

Off topic: any idea what LEGO's defeat rate is now?

[macpro76]

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)

[macpro76]

In Belgium we don't have Target or Amazon, so Lego Shop is an important source to me. But when you've bought a set (with limit 1) at B&M LegoShop, would it be a risk to buy the set again @ LS@H? 

Still looking for a good place to buy "Hard To Find" sets, without having to go through the minefield of LegoShop.

I

I hate that as well. I think SOH and Amazon are then only places to get HTF or Lego Ultimate collector sets.

Wish there were other sites..

In Belgium we don't have Target or Amazon, so Lego Shop is an important source to me. But when you've bought a set (with limit 1) at B&M LegoShop, would it be a risk to buy the set again @ LS@H? 

Still looking for a good place to buy "Hard To Find" sets, without having to go through the minefield of LegoShop.

I

I hate that as well. I think SOH and Amazon are then only places to get HTF or Lego Ultimate collector sets.

Wish there were other sites..

[exciter1]

On 3/3/2016 at 7:04 PM, 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)

I just find it incredibly humorous that you are hanging out in this thread and then also entertaining a $3500 order.

[Lordoflego]

Love the pic of Benny

[newbie77]

23 minutes ago, 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)

seasoned IT engineer knows that:

a. its not only the IP by which they track you albeit its the most basic one.

here are few others:

i. if you are going via "referral_id" i.e. links provided by 3rd party commonly known as http_referral

ii. browser's user agent

iii. cookies & super cookies

and hence combination of all of above + others available. 

there are other ways talked about in lot in academia.

in addition to that there are lot of ways to uniquely identifies you, even when you are incognito in certain browser. 

never ever think that you are anonymous in the web. yes it might be a little difficult for them to implement that but if they want to they have the resource.

there was a rumor back in october that they contracted amazon to implement some backend user verification. not sure about its authenticity. 

that may be true since we all have seen/heard of more re-sellers being banned starting from december or just a mere coincidence.

 

Edited March 4, 2016 by newbie77

[macpro76]

12 minutes ago, exciter1 said:

I just find it incredibly humorous that you are hanging out in this thread and then also entertaining a $3500 order.

whats so humorous?  You can order as much as you can online (under the qty limits).  In store purchases don't matter.  

[exciter1]

1 minute ago, macpro76 said:

whats so humorous?  You can order as much as you can online (under the qty limits).  In store purchases don't matter.  

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!

[Lordoflego]

Stop god damn it stop!!!! Benny pic I loved but this one simply made me laugh out loud...