Lego Licensed Parts available from Bricks & Pieces

[Soupperson1]

Has there been any instances when a piece previously regarded as licensed became available after it started appearing in unlicensed sets. I’m specifically intrested in Marcel’s headpiece from 41444, which previously was exclusive to Ernie in a Harry Potter set. That’s the only piece of Marcel’s that isn’t available on Bricks and Pieces yet. 

[DuckBricks]

So strange - I called in to LEGO service and was told by two separate customer service agents that they are no longer allowed to place back orders on Bricks and Pieces because it “messes with their inventory,” just a few days after I placed a back order myself. Has anyone else done so recently? Going to try a third time with a different customer service agent today, but being told by two that corporate forbid them from placing back orders is not a good sign...

[lego_guyon02]

4 minutes ago, DuckBricks said:

So strange - I called in to LEGO service and was told by two separate customer service agents that they are no longer allowed to place back orders on Bricks and Pieces because it “messes with their inventory,” just a few days after I placed a back order myself. Has anyone else done so recently? Going to try a third time with a different customer service agent today, but being told by two that corporate forbid them from placing back orders is not a good sign...

Wouldn't surprise me if they just got way too many calls from enthusiastic fans.

[BitByBrick]

Unfortunately I was told the same thing this week when I called: back orders are not allowed. Must be the new normal?
 

Hoping to catch some of the new pieces when they eventually get back in stock. At least they were able to give me a re-stock date on some items. I will be upset if I have to buy them from BrickLink scalpers.

[DuckBricks]

1 hour ago, Guyon2002 said:

Wouldn't surprise me if they just got way too many calls from enthusiastic fans.

 

57 minutes ago, BitByBrick said:

Unfortunately I was told the same thing this week when I called: back orders are not allowed. Must be the new normal?
 

Hoping to catch some of the new pieces when they eventually get back in stock. At least they were able to give me a re-stock date on some items. I will be upset if I have to buy them from BrickLink scalpers.

Well, shoot! Was really looking forward to getting some Black Falcon figures for army building without paying Bricklink scalper fees. Guess it's back to intermittently checking stock as usual...

 

Edit - just called a third time and confirmed, backorders are no more, it's a recent rule change but apparently, there was a high influx and it overwhelmed their support team. I was also told that they got a lot of complaints from people who were promised that parts would be back in stock at a certain time, and it turned out that they had to wait much longer than anticipated. Such a shame and I'm hoping they will reconsider their policy at some point.

Edited February 6, 2021 by DuckBricks

[karrit]

I can understand the no back-order decision especially considering that they hold and need to store orders of in stock parts while waiting for the back-ordered pieces.  In some places legally they must deliver promised goods within a specific time frame or else they can be fined.  With all the delays due to Covid they have been pushing the limit quite a bit just on sets that are in production.  The Parts is a whole other thing because If they don't know when or how many they will have available by a specific date they can get into big trouble taking back-orders that may take months to fill.  Just look at how long many of us have had to wait on back-ordered sets over the past year.  In some cases they should have been forced to cancel the orders when they couldn't fill them on time but fortunately for many of us they have eventually fulfilled the back-orders.  I'd much rather they place reasonable limits on new parts & hope they are in stock when I look for them.  It's bad enough trying to keep track of what I ordered when while waiting for normal B&P orders to ship so I'd personally rather not throw back-orders into the mix too. 

[Technically]

Yesterday I saw that the Cyber Drone head is available. Then I saw the white horse was in stock again (and shoulder armor/wagon wheels)! I added one to my cart, few mins later decided I wanted another 1, but a pop-up told me that I've reached my limit. So perhaps they've implemented limits on certain items like some of you have suggested. Probably a good thing!

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Technically
things changed irl

[Grover]

2 hours ago, Soupperson1 said:

Has there been any instances when a piece previously regarded as licensed became available after it started appearing in unlicensed sets. I’m specifically intrested in Marcel’s headpiece from 41444, which previously was exclusive to Ernie in a Harry Potter set. That’s the only piece of Marcel’s that isn’t available on Bricks and Pieces yet. 

This happened with the white bird.

1 hour ago, DuckBricks said:

Edit - just called a third time and confirmed, backorders are no more, it's a recent rule change but apparently, there was a high influx and it overwhelmed their support team. I was also told that they got a lot of complaints from people who were promised that parts would be back in stock at a certain time, and it turned out that they had to wait much longer than anticipated. Such a shame and I'm hoping they will reconsider their policy at some point.

That's really annoying.  I don't have time to check back every day for pieces, and I'm not going to place 7 orders for 7 different pieces since they will never be in stock at the same time, and I'm sure not going to pay scalper prices on BL.  Maybe this was designed to keep the scalpers down, but I think it will just make the scalpers worse since they are the people with time during the day to keep checking back in every hour to find what they want.  I'd be more than fine waiting 2-3 months for a backorder if I don't have to keep checking back in.

[DuckBricks]

3 minutes ago, Grover said:

This happened with the white bird.

That's really annoying.  I don't have time to check back every day for pieces, and I'm not going to place 7 orders for 7 different pieces since they will never be in stock at the same time, and I'm sure not going to pay scalper prices on BL.  Maybe this was designed to keep the scalpers down, but I think it will just make the scalpers worse since they are the people with time during the day to keep checking back in every hour to find what they want.  I'd be more than fine waiting 2-3 months for a backorder if I don't have to keep checking back in.

Exactly - I don't care about waiting indefinitely for a backorder, what's really annoying is having to check in at odd times constantly (because as far as I can tell there isn't a set time that Bricks and Pieces updates), and especially with the recent Black Falcon stuff, I was up checking at 5AM my time zone and still somehow managed to miss out just barely. Knights are selling for $25+ on BL so that's definitely not an option either, unless prices manage to go down at some point.

[Grover]

34 minutes ago, DuckBricks said:

Exactly - I don't care about waiting indefinitely for a backorder, what's really annoying is having to check in at odd times constantly (because as far as I can tell there isn't a set time that Bricks and Pieces updates), and especially with the recent Black Falcon stuff, I was up checking at 5AM my time zone and still somehow managed to miss out just barely. Knights are selling for $25+ on BL so that's definitely not an option either, unless prices manage to go down at some point.

In my experience, many of those parts are only available through backorder, or maybe for a few seconds here or there before they go OOP for good.  I am hoping this is temporary for the pandemic, but I bet it will be permanent.  I have a feeling I'm going to be missing out on a lot of parts in the future.

[Flak Maniak]

Yeah they should let us backorder (and they did let me backorder the Black Falcon pieces four days ago), and just... Tell us it might take a really long time. Which I'm fine with. If I'm told that something will take ages to reach me, then I'll be patient for it. Or even if it's an unknown time; as long as I'm confident it'll get here eventually, that's fine.

The way to beat scalpers is to manufacture more (which may be very difficult), to set low limits per order on desirable pieces (for example, no more than twenty of a given minifig part per order), to raise B&P prices on these desirable parts, and maybe as a last resort, to police BrickLink a little. "Manufacture more" should be seen as the first and best option, given it literally means more sales for Lego. Raising prices is also an appropriate response to very high demand. I wouldn't fault Lego for pricing molded animals/high-demand minifigure parts higher than they do. And yes, placing limits per-order will help, so long as shipping per-order isn't ludicrously low. (Which it is in the States; I don't understand how it can be as low as $3 in the first place; B&P isn't a charity operation!) I suppose you could limit per-customer if you really wanted, but per-order seems like it'd be enough of a nominal hurdle to significantly deter scalpers. Maybe I'm wrong and it has to be per-customer.

I did email Lego telling them "please institute lower per-order limits on high-demand parts"; probably if enough of us do that they'll take notice. (And I suppose, mention it on the phone whenever you call in, just as a last thing, "Oh and please stop the scalpers by manufacturing more/setting limits per-order".)

[Nicster2000]

I managed to try calling earlier on for back order of the orange spaceman and it was confirmed to no longer be an option. Guess it’s just hoping and praying now that those pieces as well as the new knights will be listed as available on B&P at the end of March...

also I may have skimmed over this point but when I called and asked about payments, she said they couldn’t take PayPal payments for previous back-orders over the phone...something I found strange since I figured a purchase link would be emailed?

[Lord Insanity]

I was lucky enough to catch the deer available the other day.  I ordered 24 of them.  8 to add to Santa's sleigh so he has all 9 reindeer (including Rudolph).  8 for my elven knights and 8 for my forest as a wild herd.  Ideally herd animals would be as common in sets as horses used to be.  I am not taking that chance with deer after what happened with goats and the fact that cows are still stupidly rare too.

 

1 hour ago, Flak Maniak said:

The way to beat scalpers is to manufacture more (which may be very difficult), to set low limits per order on desirable pieces (for example, no more than twenty of a given minifig part per order), to raise B&P prices on these desirable parts, and maybe as a last resort, to police BrickLink a little. "Manufacture more" should be seen as the first and best option, given it literally means more sales for Lego.

When it come to "army building" figures I would consider 24 to be the bare minimum to even bother ordering.  Really aside from "just make more" what they need to do is enforce the "not for resale" rule and start banning accounts from Bricks and Pieces when they just turn around and list the parts for sale on Bricklink.  Now that Lego owns Bricklink and can compare addresses there really is no excuse not to do that.  I would put that at the top of the list of things to do, not the last resort.  Punish resellers, not those of us who are actually using the parts we buy.

[Clone OPatra]

Welp, I was procrastinating calling in to backorder the orange spaceman. Now it seems like that ship has sailed. Theoretically, if I called in early March and the parts were technically "in stock" even if they aren't listed on the B&P website, would they sell it to me?

[DuckBricks]

46 minutes ago, Lord Insanity said:

I was lucky enough to catch the deer available the other day.  I ordered 24 of them.  8 to add to Santa's sleigh so he has all 9 reindeer (including Rudolph).  8 for my elven knights and 8 for my forest as a wild herd.  Ideally herd animals would be as common in sets as horses used to be.  I am not taking that chance with deer after what happened with goats and the fact that cows are still stupidly rare too.

 

When it come to "army building" figures I would consider 24 to be the bare minimum to even bother ordering.  Really aside from "just make more" what they need to do is enforce the "not for resale" rule and start banning accounts from Bricks and Pieces when they just turn around and list the parts for sale on Bricklink.  Now that Lego owns Bricklink and can compare addresses there really is no excuse not to do that.  I would put that at the top of the list of things to do, not the last resort.  Punish resellers, not those of us who are actually using the parts we buy.

Man, now I'm really regretting only backordering 5 deer literally 2 days ago, was trying to space out purchasing for maximizing a backlog of VIP rewards I have to claim but seems like it'll be nigh-impossible now that backordering is no longer a thing.

Does anyone who has experimented with this in the past know if there's a way to remotely access the backend or API for Bricks and Pieces to get stock alerts? Not knowing when stuff will be back in stock is really painful.

[Grover]

4 hours ago, Flak Maniak said:

The way to beat scalpers is to manufacture more (which may be very difficult), to set low limits per order on desirable pieces (for example, no more than twenty of a given minifig part per order), to raise B&P prices on these desirable parts, and maybe as a last resort, to police BrickLink a little. "Manufacture more" should be seen as the first and best option, given it literally means more sales for Lego. Raising prices is also an appropriate response to very high demand. I wouldn't fault Lego for pricing molded animals/high-demand minifigure parts higher than they do. And yes, placing limits per-order will help, so long as shipping per-order isn't ludicrously low. (Which it is in the States; I don't understand how it can be as low as $3 in the first place; B&P isn't a charity operation!) I suppose you could limit per-customer if you really wanted, but per-order seems like it'd be enough of a nominal hurdle to significantly deter scalpers. Maybe I'm wrong and it has to be per-customer.

I would be happy to simply wait until the parts I wanted were available if I was assured that they would be available for a period of time at some point, but my experience tells me that the parts will be unavailable until they are no more.  Many of the elements I order I can only get because they have been backordered.  It would be nice to form a collective, and whoever finds a part first buys 200 and then we distribute them among ourselves later.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Grover

[Flak Maniak]

Man it'd suck to have to make some kind of anti-scalper 200-ordering coalition... To be reduced to that... Just, everyone in this thread should email Lego telling them to do various anti-scalper stuff (including very specifically making more of these high-demand parts), and mention it when on the phone. If enough of us say things, they might change policies a little.

Back to the topic of interesting/cool upcoming parts... Looks like we're gonna get 21849, that one windscreen/canopy piece, in trans-bright green, in that one Monkey Kid set. Pretty good stuff. I'm torn on cool trans-bright green stuff because in general I'd prefer stuff in trans-neon green and they don't go together, but they're both legit good colors; I just have more of/more nostalgia for trans-neon green. Probably I should find a color scheme that uses trans-bright green prominently, to make space-style vehicles in. Black + dark bluish grey would sort of be it (like those Nexo Knights bad guys), but it seems too similar to Blacktron II.

[Garmetrowolf]

1 hour ago, Flak Maniak said:

Man it'd suck to have to make some kind of anti-scalper 200-ordering coalition... To be reduced to that... Just, everyone in this thread should email Lego telling them to do various anti-scalper stuff (including very specifically making more of these high-demand parts), and mention it when on the phone. If enough of us say things, they might change policies a little.

In the past, I would have said that that probably wouldn't work, but then Gamestop happened.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Garmetrowolf

[Roebuck]

12 hours ago, DuckBricks said:

Edit - just called a third time and confirmed, backorders are no more, it's a recent rule change but apparently, there was a high influx and it overwhelmed their support team. I was also told that they got a lot of complaints from people who were promised that parts would be back in stock at a certain time, and it turned out that they had to wait much longer than anticipated. Such a shame and I'm hoping they will reconsider their policy at some point.

On the other side parts that come in to stock will not disappear right away because there is not a hole stack of backorder orders waiting to be filled up with that part. If they put a limit at least on new sought after parts it should be no problem  I wonder if this will make it pointless to call in orders, should help with the queue at customer service at least

9 hours ago, Flak Maniak said:

Raising prices is also an appropriate response to very high demand. I wouldn't fault Lego for pricing molded animals/high-demand minifigure parts higher than they do

Are you mad, the animals are expensive as they are If they limit the number of part that each can buy it should be no problem

8 hours ago, Lord Insanity said:

I was lucky enough to catch the deer available the other day.  I ordered 24 of them.  8 to add to Santa's sleigh so he has all 9 reindeer (including Rudolph).  8 for my elven knights and 8 for my forest as a wild herd.  Ideally herd animals would be as common in sets as horses used to be.  I am not taking that chance with deer after what happened with goats and the fact that cows are still stupidly rare too.

That's right, I do not take any chances with animals you never know when or if we ever will see them again, just look at how rare the horse is in sets now a days

[Anonknee Muss]

19 hours ago, Flak Maniak said:

Man it'd suck to have to make some kind of anti-scalper 200-ordering coalition... To be reduced to that... Just, everyone in this thread should email Lego telling them to do various anti-scalper stuff (including very specifically making more of these high-demand parts), and mention it when on the phone. If enough of us say things, they might change policies a little.

I completely agree, we should all try this when we call to add parts to our orders.

[jonwil]

Not sure if its been mentioned before but the pink frog (from the Bonsai tree) is now for sale.

None of my top wish list parts have become available yet though (1x4x6 door in dark green/cool yellow, blue high-vis torso, orange cellphone print from the CNY set, new fire helmet, cool yellow flippers, titanium metallic beehive, new city cash register prints)

 

[Megbricks]

On 2/6/2021 at 2:40 PM, DuckBricks said:

I was also told that they got a lot of complaints from people who were promised that parts would be back in stock at a certain time, and it turned out that they had to wait much longer than anticipated. 

 

A few posts ago, i was talking about how we were fortunate to have such a service. And i also talked about how we must not complain too much about the service...unless a mistake is made of course 

See the passage I am quoting... that was exactly what I was talking about. We are in the middle of a pandemic. For some of us these orders come from across the planet. Complaints, when justified are often listened to even the if we don’t think so. Complaints because we are unhappy that we have to wait for our pieces a few more weeks also get heard. If they can’t change the delays, they just change the service offer. This is what I think happened here. 

this is my view, don’t hate me for it but I think we should complain less and realize that we have a great chance to have this service. 

2 hours ago, jonwil said:

Not sure if its been mentioned before but the pink frog (from the Bonsai tree) is now for sale.

 

Cool!! Thanks!

 

edit: just checked. Still at 0.00 here in Canada

Edited February 8, 2021 by Megbricks

[Gianluca Morelli]

Received my BaP order last friday (ordered on jan 1st) and it was like 50% incomplete. All the small stuff was missing, all the 1x8 tiles, etc. Total value 160 euros, received half of it.

 

Also waiting for another order I made on Dec 14th and still not showing up. I will never understand the logic behind shipping a 5 euros set with tracking, but a 100 euros BaP by standard mail.

[Megbricks]

2 minutes ago, Gianluca Morelli said:

Received my BaP order last friday (ordered on jan 1st) and it was like 50% incomplete. All the small stuff was missing, all the 1x8 tiles, etc. Total value 160 euros, received half of it.

 

Also waiting for another order I made on Dec 14th and still not showing up. I will never understand the logic behind shipping a 5 euros set with tracking, but a 100 euros BaP by standard mail.

Maybe the small stuff was put in a separate bag and got mixed up and sent to someone else. 

[Maple]

16 minutes ago, Megbricks said:

Maybe the small stuff was put in a separate bag and got mixed up and sent to someone else. 

Happened to my friend. He hit a jackpot. He placed an order for torsos and such. He received a bag full of 10-25 of each of the first two China New Year sets food and bowl pieces with some torsos, probably worth well over $100USD, the ones not sold world wide. This was right after they were removed from B&P when I had no money to buy them. He got to keep them and get his order.