I talked to 50+ BrickLink sellers and buyers. Here's what frustrates them most

[Creating17]

Over the past few weeks I asked sellers and buyers across multiple LEGO communities about their experience with BrickLink. I got responses from power sellers with 20+ years on the platform, casual buyers, people who've switched to BrickOwl, and people who've left for eBay entirely. Here's what came up most often.

1. Sellers feel ignored since the LEGO acquisition

This was by far the most consistent theme. Sellers described a platform where bugs get fixed but feature requests and suggestions are completely ignored. One person said: ”communication is completely one-way - they read the forums but never respond”. Multiple people independently used the phrase ”maintenance mode”.

2. The new inventory upload page is worse than the old one

Several sellers were frustrated by recent changes to the upload interface. One power seller who used to do hundreds of uploads said they've basically stopped listing entirely because the new page is ”bloated, laggy, crashes from various search or radio buttons”. They described it as fixing something that wasn't broken.

3. Platform changes are pushed without user input

No public roadmap, no changelog, no beta testing, no option to roll back. Changes just appear and sellers are expected to adapt. As one person put it: ”users should be at the forefront of this site and they clearly are not”.

4. Buying parts for MOCs is painful and time-consuming

Multiple buyers described spending hours manually comparing sellers and building carts just to get a reasonable deal on a parts list. The automated tools often don't give great results and there's a lot of manual work involved in finding the right combination of sellers.

5. Shipping is unpredictable

Some sellers show shipping as TBD, meaning buyers have to commit to a purchase before knowing the full cost. Several buyers said they immediately abandon carts when they see TBD shipping. Rising postage costs have also made the model of placing many small orders across different stores less viable than it used to be.

6. BrickLink works if you already know the quirks

This one surprised me. Multiple long-time users acknowledged that the platform works for them - but only because they've learned to work around its limitations over many years. One person said it perfectly: ”the people saying it works fine are the survivors”. New users face a steep learning curve that the platform does nothing to ease.

7. BrickOwl gets praise for responsiveness

Several people mentioned BrickOwl positively - specifically that its single developer is responsive, implements feedback quickly, and the buying experience is cleaner. The main drawback people mentioned is smaller inventory compared to BrickLink.

For anyone wondering - yes, I'm working on something based on this feedback (and I promised that I would share the results). It's still very early but if you're curious: brick-curator.com (we’re looking for beta testers)

Thanks to everyone across the various LEGO communities online who shared their experiences. Your feedback has been very insightful.

[SpacePolice89]

Is this part of some BrickOwl marketing campaign?

[MAB]

On 7/6/2026 at 9:18 AM, Creating17 said:

1. Sellers feel ignored since the LEGO acquisition

2. The new inventory upload page is worse than the old one

3. Platform changes are pushed without user input

4. Buying parts for MOCs is painful and time-consuming

5. Shipping is unpredictable

6. BrickLink works if you already know the quirks

7. BrickOwl gets praise for responsiveness

1. I don't. I don't find it any different to before the acquisition. 

2. Agree, it is worse and it seems to be built for people that want mobile / tablet use rather than a PC.

3. As it always was. The problem with user input is that users don't necessarily agree with each other.

4. It isn't if you understand how to use wants lists.

5. It isn't if you choose sellers that use instant checkout and understand how to set up automated postage costs.

6. I'm not sure why this surprises you. Any complicated task becomes easier the more experience you have. Even building with LEGO is easier the more experience you have. So I don't find it at all surprising that people that have used BL for years find it easy whereas people that are new find it harder. BL has an incredibly powerful search, for example, if you know how to search for specific types of parts in specific colours. It takes time to learn, like any skill. 

7. Lawrence at Brickowl is very good at responding to issues and always has been. But then Brickowl has a much smaller userbase. 

[Mylenium]

On 7/6/2026 at 10:18 AM, Creating17 said:

3. Platform changes are pushed without user input

No public roadmap, no changelog, no beta testing, no option to roll back. Changes just appear and sellers are expected to adapt. As one person put it: ”users should be at the forefront of this site and they clearly are not”.

Trust me, there's nothing democratic about software development. I've been on many software Betas in my life, but at the end of the day we're all just little worker ants. The developers "vision" always takes precedent no matter how good an idea you have. Public feature requests are usually implemented very slowly way down the line, if at all. In my world that meant that even the best ideas sometimes took three or four versions of program X in-between to come to fruition. Web development should of course be more dynamic, but no doubt there's an endlessly long to-do list already. If you file a feature request today, it will also only show up months or years from now. If it isn't considered important enough it will never show up at all. And as @MAB already pointed out - just like we can't agree on many things around here, so people can argue on software forums all day.

Mylenium

[JesseNight]

I remember BL felt difficult at first, but there's plenty of Youtube videos clearly explaining and showing how to make the best use of it. Both for buyers and sellers.

My main annoyance as a buyer isn't BL's fault and could happen on any platform... It's when sellers lure buyers with fair prices on very specific parts, then charge tenfold or even more on worthless common parts. I've seen some charge as much as $15 for a part that goes for 0.10 or even less. Sure it's smart business, praying on those who don't wanna invest the extra hours in checking their entire order, researching prices, and setting max prices on every single part in Wanted Lists. BL even marks items in stores these days if they're priced high above the average.

Oh and don't get me going about very cheap stores that charge insane handling costs per lot.

I praise BL for having functionality to deal with these things. Like setting max prices we want to spend on items, or blacklisting stores. It's not perfect, but I don't know of any other platform doing it better at this moment. In the end, it takes patience and effort to get good deals. Whether that's worth it, is for everyone to decide for themselves.

[MAB]

16 hours ago, JesseNight said:

Oh and don't get me going about very cheap stores that charge insane handling costs per lot.

Extra handling charges per lot really put me off. I typically least favourite a store that uses them. I don't mind average lot values and so on, as running a store has to be efficient for the owner. But manipulating the prices by advertising low prices then adding on high per lot charges messes up wants list searches so I avoid those stores. I prefer a store to charge high prices then to use low plus a per lot handling fee.

I don't mind stores charging higher than average, and I do it myself for some items and especially on cheap ones. If I have a part worth a few pence/cents, it is really not worth listing on its own. However I don't mind selling 25 or 30 of them for £1. If I have 10 of the same item worth a few pennies each, I might still list them at £1 for the lot. And amazingly they will sell but most likely to someone that is placing an order anyway and can save on postage by buying that lot from me rather than placing a separate order with someone else with extra shipping to get those cheap parts. Or maybe just not worth their time checking and removing items to buy them from someone else to save a few £ even if it is cheaper including paying extra shipping. Having higher prices is transparent. The buyer can see the prices when building their cart and choose to buy that lot, or not. It's when the prices look good while building the cart but then suddenly get ramped up at checkout that I dislike.

[JesseNight]

That's definitely understandable! I was more referring to extreme cases. I don't mind paying a few dimes a piece on simple basic parts that normally cost a few cents, if it saves me an extra order. But when it runs into multiple Euros a piece and I need a lot of them, that can suddenly make a difference of hundreds of Euros.

In most cases BL's tools are smart enough to help with that, but in some cases we just have to put in the extra effort to verify our orders to pick out the bad deals, or set maximum prices in advance. And that's what I like about BL, it's all possible to those willing to put in the effort.