Super expensive Bricklink shops

[ChrisXY]

Hi,

as a regular buyer at Bricklink I am wondering why there are so many shops want super high prices.

e. g. https://store.bricklink.com/DDSEnt

This is such a scam. Demanding $0.48 for a 4070 ??? Come on...

[MAB]

I don't see a problem. Just buy from a cheaper store.

[JesseNight]

Exactly. Sellers are free to ask what they want, buyers are free to take it or leave it.

I see this happen more often with large stores that have a lot of harder to find parts. People prefer to order from the least possible amount of different stores and are easier willing to accept a few common parts being more expensive... or just overlook it in a large order.

 

[Mylenium]

I can only echo the other's sentiments. Capitalism works! You know, that old thing of demand and supply regulating prices. I've seen similar German shops, but at the end of the day it's entirely up to the buyer whether you use them or not. There are of course a few things to consider. The shop you linked has many older items, though in very limited numbers. Maintaining such an inventory already ramps up the cost. Also they have no minimums on lots and overall price, so they have high operating costs when sending out perhaps a handful of pieces below a certain threshold. Packaging costs money and parcel delivery in the US seems to be a complete nightmare, anyway. They simply may have figured that into their pricing. Anyway, they'll adjust their pricing as they go no doubt based on their sales.

Mylenium

[smazmats]

I've noticed this trend as well while ordering stuff on occasion. Typically they will have a wide selection of parts at much higher then normal prices. 

My theory: they are gaming the bricklink store finder algorithm. By having a wide variety of available parts, they are more likely to be matched to MOC part lists since it tries to find the least amount of stores as possible. I would say most people are not savvy to the typical average price for parts on the market so they don't realize that they are overpaying or even check the individual stores that bricklink gives them. 

The easiest solution is to just add the store as a disliked bookmark and it should be now exuded from future purchases when you run the store fining tool

[ChrisXY]

I know you can dislike stores and so on. In Germany we have a law that prohibits "usury" colloquial "daylight robbery"

Check this one: https://store.bricklink.com/GUYLOU#/shop

https://store.bricklink.com/GUYLOU#/shop?o={"sort":0,"pgSize":50,"itemID":81794,"showHomeItems":0}

https://store.bricklink.com/GUYLOU#/shop?o={"sort":0,"pgSize":50,"itemID":1445,"showHomeItems":0}

You can pick any item. The problem I do have is, that bricklink should be held responsible and do something against this. Those stores rip off inexperienced customers, who dont know better.

There are lots of stores that demand massive high prices for usual stuff. They are destroying the community.

Edited April 12 by ChrisXY

[MAB]

What are they doing wrong, and how exactly are they destroying "the community", whatever that is. If a seller is charging high prices for common stuff, then buy from a cheaper seller. 

[Murdoch17]

22 hours ago, ChrisXY said:

I know you can dislike stores and so on. In Germany we have a law that prohibits "usury" colloquial "daylight robbery"

Check this one: https://store.bricklink.com/GUYLOU#/shop

https://store.bricklink.com/GUYLOU#/shop?o={"sort":0,"pgSize":50,"itemID":81794,"showHomeItems":0}

https://store.bricklink.com/GUYLOU#/shop?o={"sort":0,"pgSize":50,"itemID":1445,"showHomeItems":0}

You can pick any item. The problem I do have is, that bricklink should be held responsible and do something against this. Those stores rip off inexperienced customers, who dont know better.

There are lots of stores that demand massive high prices for usual stuff. They are destroying the community.

There are other options available to buy things from on BL, and if there aren't, the stores can charge what they like. If people don't do research that's on them. "Buyer beware", and all that. Besides, Bricklink can't get in trouble - they aren't the ones selling, the individual stores are. And even if they could sue Bricklink for this, they'd have to also sue Ebay, Amazon Marketplace, and so on.... Germany can try to go up against LEGO legally, but Amazon and Ebay, LEGO, and every other major resale website? There's not a snowball's chance in hell they'd win that case.

As for the community bit: Bricklink was founded in 1999. This has always been the way of things - and the community has been doing just fine.

Edited April 13 by Murdoch17

[Toastie]

57 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

Germany can try to go up against LEGO legally

Just leave Germany out and treat this member of EB as a member of EB. Outing oneself as residing in a country does not relate to anything that country may or may not do. There is currently enough chaos in this world.

23 hours ago, ChrisXY said:

They are destroying the community.

That only holds true - in a global world of capitalism, where the free market is dominating (should "tariffs" not get in its way) - when the community is completely cut out of "information". The thing called Google or any other search thing will tell you, what competitive prices are. Heck, even BL, this very site, depending on your settings (my is "cheapest first") takes 100% care of that. Should members of the "community" pay terrible prices, then - hey - welcome to reality.

Best
Thorsten     

Edited April 13 by Toastie

[Murdoch17]

9 minutes ago, Toastie said:

Just leave Germany out and treat this member of EB as a member of EB. Outing oneself as residing in a country does not relate to anything that country may or may not do. There is currently enough chaos in this world.

I was referring to ChrisXY's comment about German "daylight robbery law"(s). No offense meant to Germany itself or people from Germany.

[ChrisXY]

Unfortunately you dont get the point...that´s sad

[MAB]

11 hours ago, ChrisXY said:

Unfortunately you dont get the point...that´s sad

So what is the point, and what is stopping you from marking the stores that you don’t  like as 'least favourite' and hiding their items when browsing or using wants lists?

[danth]

I had the misfortune of running into some of these stores when buying parts for a MOC. 

I imported a parts list into Bricklink and was letting their system find lots where I could get most of the parts I need from the fewest sellers. The first one it finds is absolutely ludicrous. It was like $250 for 60 or so common, cheap parts. The next option was slightly cheaper. The third store was way more reasonable, something like $80 for the same parts. Honestly even that store had a steep mark up, but was the most reasonable of the big US stores that had many of the parts I needed. 

I actually remember this happening the first time I bought of a bunch of parts this way. I had to manually filter out the scam stores. 

When they are always the first store to pop up when buying big lots of bricks, that's a problem. It's not just "don't buy from them", it's "manually filter out these jerks during an already complex process". 

Not sure how people are defending this. "What's wrong with ripping people off? Just don't buy from them." How about don't try to rip people off? These stores add no value to the world whatsoever. They are a nuisance at best, and a scam at worst if someone was naive enough to buy from them. 

 

[ChrisXY]

Thanks danth. 

Finally someone is on board and understands that this practice is a shame for this site. And that Bricklink/LEGO is closing their eyes is pathetic.

[danth]

27 minutes ago, ChrisXY said:

Finally someone is on board and understands that this practice is a shame for this site. And that Bricklink/LEGO is closing their eyes is pathetic.

I will clarify that I'm more angry at the individual stores that do this, and the people defending them, than Bricklink itself. I'm not sure what Bricklink could/should do about this. I don't think any website that has third party sellers does any sort of high price/ripoff detection. Something that flags a price if it's outside of 3 standard deviations from the average would be interesting (and possible since they have the exact part/color/condition and price guide info). Hell maybe Bricklink does have something like that.

I definitely like the idea of marking these stores as "least favorite" or whatever the option is.

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, ChrisXY said:

Finally someone is on board and understands that this practice is a shame for this site. And that Bricklink/LEGO is closing their eyes is pathetic.

Hmmm.

Mixed feelings about this judgment here, but it is only me! 

We are living in a truly capitalistic world. TLG is a truly capitalistic company, just check on their pricing for their entire range of products (plates, beams, and bricks), which are (naturally) in a very mature state. In a capitalistic world, this is hell. Yes, there are the “varieties” of models, but they are built with essentially the same product for decades now, over and over again and for sure the exact same principle of attaching these products. Talk about product innovation: There is basically >none<. Get ABS, mold it, build something, make money. Over and over again.    

So any kind of "TLG checking on way overpriced stores on their BL site" is at best a pleonasm - TLG charges whatever they can pull off from their dear customers per default; why should that behavior not be mirrored on BL stores? On the BL site, they own?

Heck, >you< decide on buying or not. It is your decision. In a truly capitalistic world, there are many options to do so - or not. Some call it freedom. Others applause the deregulation: Just let them do what they want. TLG for sure does.  

Is it elaborate to find the best value? Sure it is! And even more so, when using an algorithm, such as the programs making “buying lists" ... Why do these exist? To make life easier, but >certainly< not cheaper. Not in a capitalistic world. >You< have to do something = invest time to get the best value.

To be honest, I believe that being still in the position of making own choices on a website owned by TLG, is absolutely favorable! As they say: Just do it. What they don't say: It may take some time to do it.

Best
Thorsten  

    

    

[ChrisXY]

I am more wondering how those stores have a buyer...I guess those are the ones who uses the quick buy option... 

Edited July 28 by ChrisXY

[anothergol]

It's easy to avoid overexpensive BL shops, however IMHO BL gave too much power to sellers and it's not always easy to spot the annoying ones at a first glance.

I'm talking about all those annoying rules like "average lot value" (min buy is ok), "I charge X if the average lot value is less than Y", "I add X for packaging", "I charge X for shipping" and it ends up being different on the cart.

Also the fact that a used part and a new part being 2 different parts in the system, offer & demand works independantly for them and it's not uncommon at all to find a used part more expensive than a used one within the same shop.

But I also understand that BL is full of shops ran by dads and their kids, so it may just be a hobby for many so the sellers need options as well.

I buy a lot less nowadays though, because shipping prices in Europe kinda killed the game. No shop has everything, you usually have to split what you need into multiple small orders for which the shipping can be like 50% of the price. And these days we kinda have other options.

[Toastie]

49 minutes ago, anothergol said:

And these days we kinda have other options

Isn't that nice . I am really glad about that.

Best
Thorsten

[MAB]

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

I'm talking about all those annoying rules like "average lot value" (min buy is ok), 

Try running a store and you'll soon realise why some sellers have average lot values. Once you get your first 200 lot order with one part in each lot and you make a few pennies on each part, you then spend a 2-3 hours picking to make 3-4 Euros/dollars/pounds just for about 25% of that to disappear in BL fees, paypal fees and other costs like bags and mailing supplies. 

I find that parts under 5p are not worth selling individually.  I bag them in 10s so if someone wants 1, they have to buy 10 or 20 at once. And I use a minimum average lot value of 50p. I don't think it affects the orders I get and if it does, I only lose the type of orders I don't want anyway so it is not a big deal.

[anothergol]

9 hours ago, MAB said:

Try running a store and you'll soon realise why some sellers have average lot values. Once you get your first 200 lot order with one part in each lot and you make a few pennies on each part, you then spend a 2-3 hours picking to make 3-4 Euros/dollars/pounds just for about 25% of that to disappear in BL fees, paypal fees and other costs like bags and mailing supplies. 

I find that parts under 5p are not worth selling individually.  I bag them in 10s so if someone wants 1, they have to buy 10 or 20 at once. And I use a minimum average lot value of 50p. I don't think it affects the orders I get and if it does, I only lose the type of orders I don't want anyway so it is not a big deal.

Yeah I forgot those silly "x50" for something you only need one of, like a minifig head...

"Try running a store" is the worst thing to say and a sign that maybe BL is doomed to end, or go back to what it used to be: a way for parents to teach kids about running a small business and make pocket money (I'm really surprised when I see large stores showing that a BL store can really be a genuine business).
But that's not gonna convince the customer, unless you're the only way to get something he really wants, and I can only think of minifigs or retired sets (which may really be what BL is gonna end up being, normal parts being thrown away because they take too much time for too little).

Paypal fees btw, that's something you self-inflicted. When I started using BL, bank transfers were the norm. It should even be easier nowadays with free immediate bank transfers in many places. Yet most shops are Paypal first now. Or is it LEGO that pushed it forward when they acquired BL?

I see you're in the UK btw. I'm sure that's also a factor that affected you. I know I was ordering in the UK once in a while, but completely stopped after the brexit.

 

Also, the "you then spend a 2-3 hours picking to make 3-4 Euros/dollars/pounds", assuming you're not selling used parts (which is completely different logistics), you're wasting most of your time sorting something that was definitely not packaged to be in the first place. It's all wasted time & money unpacking and then manually sorting and re-packing. And of course it would be pointless for LEGO to streamline this, since they're already selling parts themselves, and BL is the reason why a toys store will always be able to sell LEGO, which has value and I can't imagine LEGO willing to get rid of that.

Edited August 6 by anothergol

[SpacePolice89]

9 hours ago, MAB said:

I find that parts under 5p are not worth selling individually.  I bag them in 10s so if someone wants 1, they have to buy 10 or 20 at once. And I use a minimum average lot value of 50p. I don't think it affects the orders I get and if it does, I only lose the type of orders I don't want anyway so it is not a big deal.

As a frequent Bricklink customer I don't see that as a problem. Almost every time I build large MOCs I am missing some part that I need. Even without any restrictions I buy five or ten or twenty of small inexpensive pieces when I order even if I only need one for the MOC that I am currently building because I know I might need them in the future. Yesterday I was very happy that I had stocked up on blue forestmen hats because I needed some for a MOC.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

Yeah I forgot those silly "x50" for something you only need one of, like a minifig head...

But not so silly for a cheap 1x2 brick or plate. All the cheap parts in my store (under 5p) come as lots of ten or more. If a buyer doesn't like it, they can shop in another BL store that has a different business model. Some people don't mind selling one of this and one of that, but I do. That is a positive of BL, you can pretty much sell how you like and there are not too many restrictions. 

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

"Try running a store" is the worst thing to say

Why is trying to see something from another person's point of view a bad thing to suggest, especially if you don't agree with them? Viewing something from another view can help understand it.

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

... a sign that maybe BL is doomed to end, or go back to what it used to be: a way for parents to teach kids about running a small business and make pocket money 

It isn't doomed to end. There are plenty of buyers willing to place orders at BL. Selling of both new and used LEGO is still pretty decent. Not as good as during covid, and it is harder to make money on new sets now so many investors are in the game. But there is still enough to be made to make it worthwhile, depending on the buy in price.

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

But that's not gonna convince the customer, unless you're the only way to get something he really wants, and I can only think of minifigs or retired sets (which may really be what BL is gonna end up being, normal parts being thrown away because they take too much time for too little).
 

That is kind of the point though. If you have a wide range of product that customers want then you can charge more for the same items than a small store that can only supply 10% of what the customer wants meaning they have to shop in multiple stores. Similarly, if you have something scarcer, you can charge more than for a similar item that is common.

I occasionally get people asking whether I would price match a (typically small) store's price for a part. Why would a seller with bulk of a part price match another seller that has one a part that they price so low just to get rid of it? Especially for a part that is typically used in quantity and not as a one off.

As to normal parts being thrown away, I disagree. That is where bundling 10 5c parts together to make a 50c sale makes it worthwhile selling. There is no need for those cheap parts to disappear if they are relatively quick to sort and store as well as to pick.

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

Paypal fees btw, that's something you self-inflicted. When I started using BL, bank transfers were the norm. It should even be easier nowadays with free immediate bank transfers in many places. Yet most shops are Paypal first now. Or is it LEGO that pushed it forward when they acquired BL?

There are positives of paypal, such as integration into bl so you don't need to constantly check bank accounts, especially if you have multiple transactions in a day for the same amount. BL also made it (or stripe) pretty much mandatory wherever they need to collect tax. There are downsides of course, namely the fee.

But then there are downsides of bank transfer, especially when new buyers see a great deal on a high priced set from a very low feedback seller and send that stranger a bank transfer payment.

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

I see you're in the UK btw. I'm sure that's also a factor that affected you. I know I was ordering in the UK once in a while, but completely stopped after the brexit.

It has been good and bad. International buying has become more expensive anyway and I often see complaints about International shipping prices within the EU too. The VAT charged makes it worse to import from the EU and presumably the same is true for EU buyers buying from the UK. There is also the hassle of dealing with customs/VAT forms and there are frequently complaints in the BL forum about VAT being collected twice, on BL and again on import.

But the UK is a decent sized market. And many of those buyers have stopped or reduced buying from abroad due to the higher shipping costs and the extra VAT, so they tend to buy from UK sellers. I used to sell a little (maybe 5-8%) to the EU. I turned off International shipping completely a couple of years ago and I don't think it has impacted on my sales. What would have sold to the EU or USA still sells to UK buyers.

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

Also, the "you then spend a 2-3 hours picking to make 3-4 Euros/dollars/pounds", assuming you're not selling used parts (which is completely different logistics), you're wasting most of your time sorting something that was definitely not packaged to be in the first place. It's all wasted time & money unpacking and then manually sorting and re-packing. And of course it would be pointless for LEGO to streamline this, since they're already selling parts themselves, and BL is the reason why a toys store will always be able to sell LEGO, which has value and I can't imagine LEGO willing to get rid of that.

As above, there are ways to make money from cheap parts. It is not cost effective to take 30 or 60 seconds picking a 1c part. But taking the same time to pick a lot worth 50c is cost effective. Personally,  I only sell cheap parts if they are new and parted out from sets bought in multiples. That way, there is no searching to identify what parts are, no need to look up prices, etc. Sorting 20 small sets and selling off cheap parts in 20s is reasonably efficient. If I buy used lots, I can usually identify the set quite quickly (I rarely buy completely random bulk, I look for bits of sets). Then, I part out the set excluding all parts and scan down the inventory 6 month average price list for anything valuable enough (including minifigures) to look for in the bulk, then select and store that if found. Plus I pick out any parts I know sell well as bulk, especially if they are stacked together so quick and easy to find. But there is no way I'd sort 1000s of parts looking for 1c items. The rest goes into a bag of bulk and sold on a local market place by weight or volume.

1 hour ago, SpacePolice89 said:

As a frequent Bricklink customer I don't see that as a problem. Almost every time I build large MOCs I am missing some part that I need. Even without any restrictions I buy five or ten or twenty of small inexpensive pieces when I order even if I only need one for the MOC that I am currently building because I know I might need them in the future. Yesterday I was very happy that I had stocked up on blue forestmen hats because I needed some for a MOC.

Indeed, customers that browse stores tend to do this especially for low value parts. If I need 10 of a penny part and see the seller has 50, I'll probably buy all 50 as I'll probably use them in future. And I have replacements if there is an issue with any of them

I think wants lists have made the issue worse. If a buyer has a wants list of one of this and one of that,  then they tend to create shopping carts based on the wants list rather than browsing the store. For some sellers, that business model works and I am more than happy for them to get the order as that is the type of order I don't want. The minimum lot value helps me accomplish that.