[US] Shop.Lego.com - 5 pages of Sales & Deals items

prevere

Some ok stuff. Nothing great. Ninjago, Hero Factory, City, and of course Obi-Wan's ship. They've reposted some games that they had up for sale in the fall.

Odindusk

Earth Defense HQ is $71.98 again, for those who couldn't find one at Walmart.

Shipping negates a good chunk of the discount though. I really wish Lego would just fall in line with other retailers and offer free shipping all the time on orders over $X.

EDIT: also, the PQ battle pack is $3.48, which is kind of insane.

LegoFanTexas

Free shipping is actually really hard and expensive to offer, Amazon has kept up with it, but they don't make much profit because of it, they spent a billion dollars last year on shipping costs, most of which they did not recover from customers.

That being said, when I order a thousand dollars worth of stuff, it seems rather petty to tack on $50 for shipping. :) Maybe limit it to no more than $9.99 flat rate shipping? Motivate people to spend more per sale?

BTHodgeman

OT - @LegoFanTexas - Amazon has also earned well over $1B in goodwill and appreciated brand value as a result of offering that free shipping, along with other customer-friendly perks.

Brent

gmpirate

They should have some kind of set dollar amount to qualify for free shipping. But Lego does have some odd policies -- some random.

Ask them how many of a set you can buy and they may say two. Don't ask and 5 is generally ok.

Order something at their store from S&H and they will ship it free. But order over $500 worth of product and they charge. Go figure.

BTHodgeman

@gmpirate - they ship for free from in-store as a "gesture of customer service," since the customer made their way to the store and the store failed to have an item in stock.

I think that they should just always ship for free, at least at a certain $$ threshold, but I suspect they fear that would take some sales away from B&M stores, where there is more impulse buying and the ability to upsell.

Brent

LegoFanTexas

OT - @LegoFanTexas - Amazon has also earned well over $1B in goodwill and appreciated brand value as a result of offering that free shipping, along with other customer-friendly perks.

Brent

That may be true, but that $1B isn't a one time charge, it goes up every year as a rolling expense.

I'm not suggesting they stop doing it, just pointing out that it is not cheap to offer, and Amazon is pretty good at getting it done cheaply. Lego's fulfillment costs are probably double what Amazon's are...

dougts

in this day and age, you can pretty much always get free shipping from somewhere on the internet.

obviously, LEGO is expensive to ship both due to weight, and just as (if not more) importantly, size. the oversize charges really ring up. another argument for cutting down on those bloated box sizes full of air, but that won't happen since they still probably move 99% of their sales off the shelf, and the bigger boxes definitely have a psychological advantage there. But still, how about free shipping over $100 ? $150 ?

LegoFanTexas

Probably too expensive, but why not have 2 box sizes for the larger sets? One for "retail shelves" and the other for mail order...

Amazon and [email protected] and such can carry the small boxes, cheaper to store, ship, etc. TRU and Wally World can put the big oversize boxes in the stores.

Yes, I see several problems with this idea, but it is one possible solution to the issue as well.

BTHodgeman

@LegoFanTexas - Would two box sizes mean that collectors would have to have one of each box type?

Also your post got me to reading Amazon's annual report last night. Their net shipping cost was something like $1.3 billion. The actually amount was over $2 billion but they brought in $1B in revenue from shipping charges and Prime membership fees. Just baffling numbers ...

Brent

avoiceoreason

Remember too that Amazon views the shipping expense more as a sales & marketing/advertising cost as they use it in lieu of a lot of direct marketing/TV/print ads, etc.

It's certainly worked for me. I love Amazon, and I am definitely one of their word of mouth sales people as I think I have personally convinced 5-10 people a year to sign up for Prime.

LegoFanTexas

@BTHodgeman - thanks for posting the actual numbers... my numbers that I remember were probably from 2010. :)

The size and scale of Amazon's distribution system boggles the mind, rivaled probably only by Walmart. I have read that at any one time, Amazon has 1.5 billion items in their warehouse and are processing up to 1 million orders an hour.

Amazing...

louislego

Pirate Code at $2 sold out just as I was typing this message. I got an order in, so I hope it ships. Works out to less than a penny per piece.

madforLEGO

The Police Motorcycle sold out, glad a I grabbed a few during the sale.
The Train motors are back up on sale (albeit for $8.48) and the rail repair vehicles are still around 16 as well.

ljames28

Looks like some of the sales have increased their discounts in the last few hours.

Ninjago Skeleton Bowling from $20.98 to $12.48
POTC Mag Pack from $7.48 to $3.48
Horse Jumping from $13.98 to $9.98

pcirone

The technic truck too from 39.99 to 35.99 or so..

drewsbu

Call their customer service department and ask for free shipping. I did and go it.