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Comments
The new Millennium Falcon has purchase limits in place, so it is not only IDEAS sets that may have limits applied.
Amazon limits orders all the time (and bans those that try to circumvent the limits), and as a result I'm guessing far more people get an item that is sought after vs 3rd parties likely buying them all (and likely to only to resell them right on Amazon).
I know someone who bought 3 MFs as a long term investment. His investment would yield the same if he had bought them next year when the hysteria dies down.
Also, not everyone who buys multiple sets is doing so as an investment. Many sets ranging from smaller battle packs to larger modular building sets are basically designed to reward multiple purchases. An investor might be able to space out their purchases without any negative impact, but someone buying sets to build and display will no doubt be annoyed by an artificial limit forcing them to wait months to realize their goal.
And who says they would have to wait months to raise the limits? If a set doesn't sell out in the first week: raise the limit.
Preventing fiascoes like we have today and stopping a few people buying multiple battle packs on day one would be a small price to pay, IMO. Smart battle pack buyers buy multiples when they go on sale anyway.
Hell, for “highly anticipated” sets, it should put them up for auction in advance of “release”. Highest bidder declares how many he/she/it/they/zhe/xhe/whatever wants and pays. Next highest bidder does the same, and so on down the line. This is a very “fair” way to allocation production - those valuing the product the most (determined by bid) get priority and Lego possibly gets more per set than it otherwise would.
Finally a way to keep all the blue collar peasants out of my way when I want something. You want that set for little Timmy? Tough shit I have more money, out of the way....
I mean - if I'm Lego, and I know I'm going to produce a set that I suspect is going to be hot seller, why NOT take customer money six months before the release date, all the way up through, say, 1 month before release date? Let the scalpers buy as many as they want under this program. All that is going to do is sell more product, as the "real fans" can ALSO order and get the product at the same price. It just seems like such a "duh!" What is the point of creating a mad rush, overloaded services, stock outs and unpleasant feelings?
FWIW, buyers in countries where non-refundable pre-orders would violate the law for some silly reason can always be excluded from the program ("Sorry, your address is not eligible for this pre-order program. Go complain to your government to changes its laws.").
What I know is that not only would I have sent Lego money the moment they announced a release date for the Saturn V, I would have ALSO paid an extra 10-15% for the privilege of getting my order in six months early and being guaranteed shipment on the release date. And I would have been smiling about it too.
Take MF for example. If they did what you suggested, the amount they would have had to make would have exceeded their overall manufacturing bandwidth and pushed out the manufacturing of other sets creating a delay/back order with them.
They can can not just take unlimited orders when they can not control for how many will be ordered, which may cause too many sets to be ordered in relation to actual manufacturing capacity they have. If they did that, for MF, there would have been plenty of people that would have ordered preorders that would then have a back order date.
If if they instead went with, preorders and only based on what they were able to produce by the release date, thus limiting the availability, that would be no different than the model they have now of release it and then moving to backorder.
Companies can not simply make unlimited sets to fulfill customer demand. They have to look at manufacturing constraints, other sets they are making and what sets they are ramping up on for the start of big releases.
Fair enough - some good comments in there. OK, this can easily be adjusted for by providing a date for delivery based on when you order and the orders ahead of you, and the manufacturing capacity allocated to that particular set. In this case, there is still a difference, in that you are guaranteed a set - even if it is after the release date. This is NOT the case now - where if you miss the initial run, and it goes into "backorder" - you may or may not end up getting a set (your back order may or may not get fulfilled).
Even so - having the demand info from pre-orders would certainly help them make adjustments to manufacturing allocation as/if necessary and desired. As it is now, they just have to guess.
The Falcon is a strange case though, people are still on waiting lists at stores and backordered online while supposedly third party retailers are set to get them in stock. I personally do not believe any third party company orders should be fulfilled until the current backlog is cleared.
From what I understand, making adjustments to manufacturing is not so simple as stopping production of one set and starting another. The runs have to be significant in size to make it viable and will often be done alongside complementary sets requiring the same parts to minimise downtime due to switching over parts, boxes, prints, etc. I also imagine they would have difficulty guaranteeing a delivery date for early pre-orders in a particular batch, unless they are very conservative about the date so that they do not miss the guaranteed deadline. If they have to make them in batches of say 50000 units to be viable, and cannot book in production slots until they reach say 35000 pre-orders in that batch, then times for those pre-orders will have to be guessed rather than accurately predicted.
Where I do completely agree... it makes no sense on some of the highly limited runs. When there is still so much demand, put out another run, even if delayed and small based on people still requesting orders. I barely got the Curiosity Rover or RI, and those both went crazy fast.
I really think that is what need to be overhauled. I do not mind delays, but if I wanted Curiosity and could not manage to order it and it sold out, because of such a limited run... Lego is leaving money on the table and they are creating ill will.
In general ‘most’ sets there are simply no issues buying from Lego at least eventually.
Do we know what the last set was that had such a small time window to order, was constantly back ordered and very hard to catch one? I am wondering if Lego has been resolving this recently or if this is still happening as of late.
But also, they could probably predict regional demand better. For example, Mars Rover was easy to obtain in Europe, it was available for three months or more via [email protected] Anyone wanting one during that time could order it. I bought one in late March, not because I wanted it, but to meet a threshold for a freebie. Whereas if they had predicted US demand would have been higher than Europe, they could have satisfied more US customers and not really had much effect on the European market. Women of NASA is still available here too (limit of 2).
Then again, they seem to have been bitten when it came to exosuit. That sold out fast first time around and there seemed to be money on the table there based on the original sales, so they made loads more and then couldn't shift them needing the very long 'decomissioning period'.
I've just taken this snapshot for Saturn V. It is backordered not in stock, but they say it will ship by ... tomorrow. That's faster than many orders placed for items that are in stock, as they often take a couple of days to ship regular orders, especially in December. Presumably it means stock should arrive tomorrow and then ship out the same day. It'll be interesting to see if it changes to in stock tomorrow or goes to another date for backorders (in that all arriving stock goes towards fulfilling existing backorders).
I can see how it makes sense big picture/long term even if costs them a few sales (or a few higher priced sales)
Or, in my case, it was items that stayed on sales and deals, so they were probably glad to get rid of them even in large quantities.
I've seen them cancel repeated orders by the same person, but I also haven't seen them cancel orders to the same address, which they also threaten to do it you go over the limit. It probably helps that my sister and I have our own separate VIP accounts, but there's still been a few high demand sets we weren't sure we were both going to be able to get when we wanted to.