Sets with pieces missing

[Lakop]

Evening all,

I promised myself over the weekend that if I was brave and attended an all day departmental meeting, without wanting to scream, I would go to the lego store after. I survived the day and off I went. I bought the small hovercraft set, 42002, just completed it and I have to say it's a nice little set with some interesting parts. But imagine my shock to discover no stickers are included. I've never known a set to have something missing, if anything I always find a few extra small parts. i've reported it to lego.

Anyone ever had any serious parts missing from set?

H

[merman]

My pet shop had a window missing and my VW van had a slope missing

[Kronos]

My 9396 was missing the large blades. They were not in the instruction "bag" like they should have been. I just e-mailed LEGO and they sent them to me.

[Lakop]

Missing blades on a helicopter set is quite serious. It's like having the crawler with no wheels.

H

[freakwave]

I never ever had a missing piece in a set.... however...

In April I got the 10232 Cinema, opened it... and out came... yellow support pieces?!? Pulled out the rest, not even a single bag was right... sealed instructions, also wrong ones. Completely puzzeld. Asked my wife if she sees the same thing...yes. (Good) Next thought, how to explain the store manager? Checked the seals if they were overtaped, nothing. Original seals... So what was in? Quarter of a harbor, two police cars, two bags from some basic brick collection, half a train set...weirded...

Returned to the store, explained the rather unbelievable, got an exchange which was much heavier than the first box I got. Unfortunately I did not get to know if they had a return of a set before.

That was the craziest thing happened to me when buying LEGO.

[Kronos]

Missing blades on a helicopter set is quite serious. It's like having the crawler with no wheels.

H

Yeah, I was surprised to say the least. I didn't wait for the blades to build it though.

[Blakbird]

I've built hundreds of sets from new boxes. I'd say about 5% of the time I am convinced that the set has at least one missing part. A period of intense anger usually follows after which I go pull a similar part from some other model so I can keep building. However, it 100% of cases I've later found that the part was actually there after all. Either I just didn't see it or it was on the floor or it was still in a bag that I thought was empty or it was wedged inside the crevice of another part. This is followed by a period of feeling like an idiot.

The point is, I've never actually been shorted a part in hindsight. Sounds like some of the other posters have though.

On the other hand, my wife lost the stickers for my Palace Cinema so I've considered claiming that they were missing.....

[Phoxtane]

I seem to get a 50-50 balance of pieces either being missing or "wrong", whenever something's not quite right with the sets I get. For example, I've got a flag piece from the Zombie Car promo kit where the clips are all squashed and mangled. What's really odd - and talking with another Lego fan in my area confirms this - the only sets I have problems with parts missing or mis-molded are the ones I buy off the shelf from Wal-Mart. Considering how it's just the one piece broken or the one piece missing, I don't think it's someone getting into the packages and grabbing the goodies.

[Alternator]

I've built hundreds of sets from new boxes. I'd say about 5% of the time I am convinced that the set has at least one missing part. A period of intense anger usually follows after which I go pull a similar part from some other model so I can keep building. However, it 100% of cases I've later found that the part was actually there after all. Either I just didn't see it or it was on the floor or it was still in a bag that I thought was empty or it was wedged inside the crevice of another part. This is followed by a period of feeling like an idiot.

The point is, I've never actually been shorted a part in hindsight. Sounds like some of the other posters have though.

On the other hand, my wife lost the stickers for my Palace Cinema so I've considered claiming that they were missing.....

I often find myself in the same position - I take the statistical view that if I can't find a part it is probably my fault... To add to your list of possibilities, I can also add having accidentally used the part earlier in the build (either in place of a similar looking piece or just because I got mistaken with how many of a piece was required).

Having said that I have noted a handful of defective parts, enough so that I'm getting a little concerned... I've had two biggish sets recently that have had this, one is a sticker sheet where all stickers are peeling off, the other was train track that was warped.

[Doc_Brown]

I remember getting a small yellow digger set back in 1992 or something. There were two 3 tall slope bricks for the back of the model, and the ones in the box were upside down versions.

I had to build the model with correct blue ones from spare pieces.

Found it! sooo cute.

[Lipko]

I've built hundreds of sets from new boxes. I'd say about 5% of the time I am convinced that the set has at least one missing part. A period of intense anger usually follows after which I go pull a similar part from some other model so I can keep building. However, it 100% of cases I've later found that the part was actually there after all. Either I just didn't see it or it was on the floor or it was still in a bag that I thought was empty or it was wedged inside the crevice of another part. This is followed by a period of feeling like an idiot.

The point is, I've never actually been shorted a part in hindsight. Sounds like some of the other posters have though.

On the other hand, my wife lost the stickers for my Palace Cinema so I've considered claiming that they were missing.....

Same here. It happens 100% of the time with me though.

The first (if I recall correctly) defective piece was in my current purchase, the 42000, a fake engine cylinder piece was dropped on its edge I guess, it had a 0.5 mm protruding piece of plastic with a depression next to it, but I could carve it with a knife.

[maxxens]

I already managed a few times to miss a piece in one of the bags. One time I had to check the garbage afterwards ;)

The only time a piece was missing was with my UCS Millenium Falcon, where one of the smaller wingy pieces was not there. Lego send me a replacement free of charge and because there are quite a few in this set for stability reasons I could "finish" my build nethertheless :)

[chorlton]

I think I've had missing pieces twice now. Nothing major or unique to the set so replaceable.

I've emailed Lego who always send replacements. I do like the response explaining, in child-like terms, how their quality control works including weighing each box. Patronising for an adult maybe but interesting for a small kid to think how does checking the weight ensure all the parts are there.

[gmshades]

I hate the feeing I was missing a piece, only to find out I put the piece I was missing in the wrong spot! Only problem I ever had with a set was the 1st Mindstorms. Two motors didn't work right so they sent me 2 more at no charge.

[Lakop]

That's interesting to hear. I suppose with millions of parts going out all over the world it can't be easy for the machines to check everything is in place. You can't beat the human eye. Having built the set with no stickers I have, however, some extra parts including three connector pegs, a small axle, two axle bush/stops. Those parts are more use to me than stickers. So, has anyone ever got any major extra parts with a set.

H

[shimon]

Once I bought the 7784 batmobile and it had a missing bag that was nowhere to be found. After contacting TLG they sent me the missing parts.

[Erik Leppen]

I have had problems with Nitro Menace 8649. There was a batch of them that had some parts in the wrong colors. Just at the time I needed the set it was hard to come by, and in hindsight this was recause of Lego calling the sets back to add a sheet showing the replacement colors.

My set also had two axles 4 missing. For the time being, I used axles 6 which I noticed were still left and which was fortunately possible in the construction, and at the end it turned out that alongside the two missing axles 4, there were indeed two axles 6 too many. So I never reported this, as I could just build the model.

[DarkShadow73]

@Erik Leppen-

I bought 3 8649 Nitro Menaces back in 2012 at a reasonable price, all MISB. 1 for myself to build, 2 to resell for a profit which I listed in my BL store. Decided to build one of them a couple days ago. Funny thing, 2 sticker sheets which I thought odd and also 1 poly bag had broke open so I figured I best inventory it using BL's parts list.

I ended up missing nothing from the bag that had opened, but was missing some key lime color parts, and unfortunately in that color, I don't have any extras, got plenty of every major Technic color except I have very few lime parts. Going with another color looks funny anyway since the shell and fascias are all lime. I was seriously po'ed. Not as much as the one I wanted to build, but also at the fact that I have 2 I wanted to sell. I can't in good faith do that now. I decided tonight to open the 2 other sets and just upon cursory inspection of the poly bags they are missing some of the same parts out of 1 set, but had 1 of 2 of one part in the other set. I bought them all from the same seller on Amazon at the same time.

Normally if you sell sets and find a good deal you hang onto them for a while to let them increase in value, you don't want to break the seals, but this really sucks. Sure, I could probably find the missing parts through BL but since I opened them I can only sell as used sets now as I would have to inventory both completely, and from what you said in your post, I could be missing more in the other 2 sealed sets I opened.

Eric