Substitute parts in sets

scottdd2

Yesterday I purchased 75890 for a quick birthday build and noticed 2 1x2 red plates missing but an extra 2 black ones. Just wondering if this has happened to others?  

Astrobricks

Yes, it happens occasionally that a part is missing or the wrong color. Just call up lego customer service and ask for replacement parts.

madforLEGO

scottdd2 said:

Yesterday I purchased 75890 for a quick birthday build and noticed 2 1x2 red plates missing but an extra 2 black ones. Just wondering if this has happened to others?  

Make sure you followed the instructions as many times I'll find I am short parts... until I recheck the instructions and find I used the wrong color piece in the wrong place.

Otherwise, if parts are missing, like @Astrobricks says, contact CS and they can help you out.

Brainslugged

I've built hundreds of sets but never had a piece missing. I often think I have, but it's always my error. But then twice recently I have had a case of substitute bricks. The first one was building the 4000 piece Hogwarts Castle. I had an extra 2x2 green plate and was missing a tan 1x2x2 arched window panel. Fortunately I had exactly one spare that had appeared in an advent calendar two years ago so I didn't need to mess about with customer service. I assumed that these two pieces must weigh exactly the same which is how the mistake got through quality control.

The second instance of this happened just a few weeks ago. But before anyone thinks this is a sign of falling QC standards, it was actually with that Star Wars Rebels ship that drops TIE Fighters. So that sets is quite a few years old. It was odd that it happened twice in just the space of a few weeks though. In that instance I had a missing 1x6 DBG brick (I think) but had something like a 1x12 plate extra. The plate shouldn't have even appeared in the set at all, but fortunately I had plenty of the missing brick in my collection. I did look up the weights of the pieces but they didn't seem to be the same. Not sure how accurate Bricklink is in that respect. Whatever the reasons for the errors though, Lego's quality control is insanely good.

scottdd2

The missing pieces weren't an issue as the blacks did the job fine without effecting the outside look, just thought it strange as in 40 odd years I can't recall this happening before.

Customer Care has always been helpful in the past, they sent out stickers for a set as the sheet in the box was bent beyond being usable.

cheers

Brainslugged

BTW - I'd wager a fair amount of cash that you've used red plates in this step when you should have used black.

The_Rancor

Although it’s very rare, I don’t think it’s true that 100% of parts are always there in boxes. There are times, and it happens almost exclusively with larger sets, where there are incorrect or missing parts. I remember very well missing a good handful of key parts for the OG 2007 MTT in the box, but it turned out I had more than I needed of some other parts that were too big to normally have spares. In a similar occurrence, this didn’t happen to me but a friend got the orange Technic Porsche and it was missing almost all the printed body panels, like there was some major error in the boxing process. When they tried to get replacement parts, TLG thought they were ripping them off when of course that wasn’t true.

I should note that in both the situations shown the models were built correctly and checked, plus checking no parts lost on the floor as well - just the odd manufacturing error.

Again, this is very rare for me and I can maybe only think of one or two other times i’ve ever had a problem with parts supplied. Every other time something’s not been constructed correctly.

Astrobricks

I once bought my brother a TIE fighter for his birthday and when he opened it to build it, the box contained a completely different set! Luckily Target exchanged it for him.