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.

[Darth_Raichu]

Just now, Jackson said:

What movie or show is that from?

You're joking right???

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/

[mauro23]

34 minutes ago, TabbyBoy said:

This CEO seems to be yet another nail in LEGO's coffin. I've was banned a while back, but I was ordering obscene amounts. No danger now as I don't buy anything.

Still remember the good times, when I ordered 20 Caffee Corners and 20 Green Grocers... without getting banned...

18 minutes ago, Jackson said:

What movie or show is that from?

He looks like Sirius Black... :-)

Edited February 13, 2017 by mauro23

[mauro23]

Two thoughts from my side:

1. LEGO increased some limits from 2 to 50(!) for sets like Valentine scene or Birthday cake etc. They have made it as a bait. I mean nobody makes a child's birthday with 50 kids...

2. LEGO does not care about sellers who are selling already retired sets only... Therefore buy now in limited quantities and sell later after retirement...

Think about an you will come to the same conclusion.

Edited February 13, 2017 by mauro23

[Darth_Raichu]

21 minutes ago, mauro23 said:

He looks like Sirius Black... :-)

And sounds like Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2

[John82]

On 2/6/2017 at 3:59 AM, Haay said:

 

So this may have actually came true?

Not the end of the world mate, the best deals are never at S&H, although missing out on some of the freebies is annoying.

[John82]

20 minutes ago, mauro23 said:

2. LEGO does not care about sellers who are selling already retired sets only... Therefore buy now in limited quantities and sell later after retirement...

Couldn't agree more on this.

[Shewie]

58 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

What was your buying history?

 

I think they have plenty of questions about my recent activity especially on 9 Feb.
6 orders with 2 Ecto's each during night sale each closed as a qualifying purchase to get Batman Poly and free shipping.
One Successful rest cancelled.

 

 

Edited February 13, 2017 by Shewie

[Bold-Arrow]

I would suggest removing the order numbers from your post 

[randrace]

I'm going to be the Canary in the Coal Mine to see how wide a net LEGO is casting. I don't place multiple orders, buy large volume, or buy outside of limits (mostly.)

 

I HAVE bought the same limit 2 sets twice online and twice in store.

 

My VIP username is a the same as my BL username.

 

I just listed a set on BL that LEGO recently discounted and is still available.

 

 

[Cheese]

 
I think they have plenty of questions about my recent activity especially on 9 Feb.
6 orders with 2 Ecto's each during night sale each closed as a qualifying purchase to get Batman Poly and free shipping.
One Successful rest cancelled.
 
 

You loading up on a load of Trevi fountains from the Lego store in Leicester last month probably didn't help. Assuming that you put it through your VIP card.

[Guest TabbyBoy]

My BP, eBay & LEGO usernames are all different as it won't that nasty new LEGO CEO long to find you ;-) The 2 BP members that I know who work for LEGO very rarely post on here but, know what we're up to. Because... they do it themselves!

Edited February 13, 2017 by TabbyBoy

[Brian Briggs]

2 hours ago, Shewie said:

I think they have plenty of questions about my recent activity especially on 9 Feb.
6 orders with 2 Ecto's each during night sale each closed as a qualifying purchase to get Batman Poly and free shipping.
One Successful rest cancelled.

I don't understand what made you think that ordering 12 Ecto-1 wouldn't raise serious questions regarding your intentions.

Nonetheless good luck preventing a permanent ban.

[MarleyMoose]

Remember when only the Americans were banned......?

[Mos_Eisley]

13 minutes ago, MarleyMoose said:

Remember when only the Americans were banned......?

I assumed you were looking for this:

[exciter1]

I assumed you were looking for this:

Just had some with my coffee yesterday.

[HandyHand]

Reminds me of a true story I once heard from a first person witness while working at a Dutch bank in the 1990s. This happened before the Euro was the common currency in the EU, when currency exchange still happened with financial transactions between countries (within the EU). And currency exchange means rounding differences... Some smart programmer added a line of code to the currency exchange module to move the 1 cent rounding difference off to a separate account. With thousands of transactions a day these 1 cent crumbles added up to a nice sum every month. And because of rounding errors taking for granted, it was undetected as well. Easy money for him!

Then after some time the guy became greedy and increased the 1 cent move to 2 cents per transaction to double his income. But this went beyond the accepted rounding error, triggering a suspicious transactions detection algorithm. The guy was caught and sentenced for fraught.

Morale of the story: when you have a good thing going, don't ruin it by becoming greedy!

[Furious_george]

Was he in Superman? 

Edited February 14, 2017 by Furious_george

[KvHulk]

[Guest TabbyBoy]

On 13/02/2017 at 6:18 PM, mauro23 said:

Still remember the good times, when I ordered 20 Caffee Corners and 20 Green Grocers... without getting banned...

He looks like Sirius Black... :-)

I ordered 99 Fire Brigades in 2013 - LOL

[asharerin]

11 minutes ago, TabbyBoy said:

I ordered 99 Fire Brigades in 2013 - LOL

In 2013 you could order all the 41999 you wanted and ship them to the UK for insane profits. Guy probably still has them stacked up next to his Ferrari all opened without number plates lol Good times .

[Bold-Arrow]

6 minutes ago, asharerin said:

In 2013 you could order all the 41999 you wanted and ship them to the UK for insane profits. Guy probably still has them stacked up next to his Ferrari all opened without number plates lol Good times .

I wonder what ever happened to he who must not be namesd  I know he scammed some good folks here . 

[Val-E]

 

[Guest TabbyBoy]

13 minutes ago, asharerin said:

In 2013 you could order all the 41999 you wanted and ship them to the UK for insane profits. Guy probably still has them stacked up next to his Ferrari all opened without number plates lol Good times .

41999 was limit 2 in the UK and subsequent orders were cancelled. However I get a couple of pallet loads cheap when a guy bailed out at a loss! No, it wasn't Mark!

[asharerin]

4 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

I wonder what ever happened to he who must not be namesd  I know he scammed some good folks here . 

He is still working at the family carpet business. I know on my last shipment he claimed the boxes I sent were empty lol. Of course the weight on the tracking proved otherwise. He was getting desperate at the end. I had him gift everything thru Paypal so he could not scam but Im sure he did his best with some other guys here. Looking back thru my emails he was paying $425 shipped for each set. After Lego was cleaned out we bought a bunch on ebay for $250 - $275 which was hilarious as he was bidding against us on the same sets. We would then flip them to him for an extra hundred.

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, TabbyBoy said:

41999 was limit 2 in the UK and subsequent orders were cancelled. However I get a couple of pallet loads cheap when a guy bailed out at a loss! No, it wasn't Mark!