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.

[gmpirate]

1 hour ago, carini26 said:

Tried another small LEGO order a few days ago using something other than red card and it went through. 

This for sure is an issue.  They especially do not want the Red Card (5%) used for reselling.  I have such a ridiculously low credit limit because of non-use that's it's a "non-issue" for me but I have received letters in the past to that effect.  I imagine my $2k - 3k orders helped me get flagged as well, but the letter specifically stated improper use of the Red Card.

[cladner]

22 minutes ago, gmpirate said:

This for sure is an issue.  They especially do not want the Red Card (5%) used for reselling.  I have such a ridiculously low credit limit because of non-use that's it's a "non-issue" for me but I have received letters in the past to that effect.  I imagine my $2k - 3k orders helped me get flagged as well, but the letter specifically stated improper use of the Red Card.

i have/had been using red card w/o issue for last $40K since the gift card deal.  for me, bans have always been around getting carried away and having too many orders of the same set waiting in preparing shipment state.   the circle thing was different and basically neutralized my ability to order from the app in the middle of the night when i get a stock alert 😕 .  i am currently experiencing a ban since those damn duplo mickey birthday parades came back in stock for $10 yesterday.  reseller venus flytrap.  i can get orders through on my wife's account but giving up on what's currently available hoping we get a 50% off blowout on some of the retiring target exclusives. 

Edited December 3, 2020 by cladner

[glostik]

2 minutes ago, cladner said:

i have/had been using red card w/o issue for last $40K since the gift card deal.  for me, bans have always been around getting carried away and having too many orders of the same set waiting in preparing shipment state.   the circle thing was different and basically neutralized my ability to order from the app in the middle of the night when i get a stock alert 😕 .  i am currently experiencing a ban since those damn duplo mickey birthday parades came back in stock for $10 yesterday.  reseller venus flytrap.  i can get orders through on my wife's account but giving up on what's currently available hoping we get a 50% off blowout on some of the retiring target exclusives. 

Do you only buy LEGO? or do you buy normal stuff at Target?

I have not been banned but I think its because we spend alot of money there on things other than LEGO. All using Red Card , All using Circle.

I also do most of my items by store pickup.

[cladner]

8 minutes ago, glostik said:

Do you only buy LEGO? or do you buy normal stuff at Target?

I have not been banned but I think its because we spend alot of money there on things other than LEGO. All using Red Card , All using Circle.

I also do most of my items by store pickup.

yes i buy tons of normal stuff at target.  i do a lot of instore pickup but i also buy $40K in lego since the giftcard deal, so....  all using red card - they up'd my limit from $2800- $3400.  like i said, get carried away and have 6 or 7 open orders for the same set and don't be surprised when the hammer comes down.

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by cladner

[cobrakai]

4 minutes ago, glostik said:

Do you only buy LEGO? or do you buy normal stuff at Target?

I have not been banned but I think its because we spend alot of money there on things other than LEGO. All using Red Card , All using Circle.

I also do most of my items by store pickup.

Gets tricky using the same credit card (redcard) for business use purchases and also personal purchases.  I only use my redcard for my toy business purchases.  Did everyone have their redcard switched to the Red Card "Mastercard" that works anywhere now?  

[cladner]

1 minute ago, cobrakai said:

Gets tricky using the same credit card (redcard) for business use purchases and also personal purchases.  I only use my redcard for my toy business purchases.  Did everyone have their redcard switched to the Red Card "Mastercard" that works anywhere now?  

no - i have the standard old red card works only at target.

[TheBrickClique]

So, I was banned from target.com in June and tried a week ago to see if I had been unbanned -- instant cancellation in two minutes.

My wife set up a new account with her email, phone number, and CC and used it for pick-up orders only and they haven't connected her account to mine.  Made sense since they don't ask for your home address for pick-ups so the only information they could possibly tie the accounts would be the internet IP address.

Well, I thought I would try to circumvent their detection on the basis that they may not be looking necessarily at the IP address.

I created a new account with:

New email -- free from Microsoft

New phone# -- using a phone number that is on an emergency phone we give to my daughter when we go on trips.  The account was from USMobile.com and I'm able to keep the number "snoozed" except when I need to enable it for trips for $3 a month.  I don't think Target needs to send a message to the line, but if they did, I could unsnooze temporarily.

New CC# -- brand new debit card for a new bank

Incognito browser session.

No Circle, or Red Card.

Used the exact same shipping address and name though.

Ordered one LEGO set.

20 minutes in and the order is in Preparing to Ship status with an expected delivery date.

It'll be interesting to see how long this lasts.

But at least there might be hope.

I'll update when it ships.

[MotorCityMuscle]

What got you banned? 

[gmpirate]

I know I could go back and look through this thread, but how does one get going with Barnes & Noble again?  I got banned years ago because there was fraud associated with a gift card I bought from one of those sites.  I think someone said to just create a new account with a new cc and address?  Same name is ok.

[TheBrickClique]

57 minutes ago, MotorCityMuscle said:

What got you banned? 

20k in LEGOs in two months.  Some red card, some not. 

[brickolodon]

All lego employees greet me by my name every time I come...

[gmpirate]

11 minutes ago, brickolodon said:

All lego employees greet me by my name every time I come...

Enjoy it while it lasts.  

[Mark Twain]

What got you banned? 

[coelian]

Is there a poste restante service in the US? I use that in the past to direct mail to a post office near my office, if it's not sent via the national mail usually the private carrier will notify you that the address is undeliverable and you can then redirect to somewhere else for pickup.

 

Ok seems like poste restante is known as general delivery the US. Don't try it for big orders though...

Edited December 4, 2020 by coelian

[zads]

Is there any way to circumvent Lego.com's order limits if you are limited to 1 address?

[brickvoyeur]

9 minutes ago, zads said:

Is there any way to circumvent Lego.com's order limits if you are limited to 1 address?

No, but there is a way to get permabanned if you try too hard. 

Best opportunity is if they change the limit. Sometimes that resets you back to 0. 

Edited December 4, 2020 by brickvoyeur

[landphieran]

I spent about 4 hours going through successive holds and transfers through Kohls regarding my current ban (which was a reasonable ban lol). I finally got to what must have been someone in management. Long story short they associated my name with my Amazon seller account due to Amazon's change to expose your your name on your selling profile. 

Based on my preliminary research, Amazon will not let you change your Business name on your account unless you have a legal business entity (DBA's don't count as far as i can tell). If someone has any information on the best way to change the seller profile business name that would be appreciated. I'm guessing most online retailers will use this information to ban you at some point in the future. It would be smart to have a different address and name compared to what name/address you purchase with.

[Bricklectic]

Anyway to order multiples of sets with BN? BN not letting me order LV since I already ordered 5.

[gmpirate]

25 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

Anyway to order multiples of sets with BN? BN not letting me order LV since I already ordered 5.

What you need to do is setup a corporation which is a separate legal entity.

[Bold-Arrow]

27 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

Anyway to order multiples of sets with BN? BN not letting me order LV since I already ordered 5.

LV is ? drawing a blank 

[Jessekidd13]

3 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

LV is ? drawing a blank 

Vegas, baby, Vegas. 

[cmartin33]

Anybody having trouble ordering from Walmart.com. I keep getting the following error when asked to choose my delivery address. Sometimes the system lets me bypass the delivery address step, which allows the order go through just fine. Any thoughts?

[Aib84e]

1 minute ago, cmartin33 said:

Anybody having trouble ordering from Walmart.com. I keep getting the following error when asked to choose my delivery address. Sometimes the system lets me bypass the delivery address step, which allows the order go through just fine. Any thoughts?

Have you logged out, cleared cache of browser, re-sign in.  Do you still get error? 

[joesnow2005]

10 hours ago, cmartin33 said:

Anybody having trouble ordering from Walmart.com. I keep getting the following error when asked to choose my delivery address. Sometimes the system lets me bypass the delivery address step, which allows the order go through just fine. Any thoughts?

I had the same problem a couple of days ago, but now works fine.

[AmazonSucks]

newish post on reddit. Someone supposedly banned from LEGO Shop at Home for having a BL store